Tag Archives: Light and Dark

Dappled

7 Replies

IMG_6318.jpg

Dappled

Shadows of leaves stipple the ground
in swirling patterns, all around,
like footsteps left by tiny feet
dancing to the wind’s wild beat.
They lessen as the sun goes down
and the forest floor turns brown.

The sunlight that all day has made
each leaf stand out as dappled shade
sinks into some other sky,
but soon enough, the moon comes by
with shadows of its own to cast.
With wind died down, their patterns last,
sure and steady, through the night,
each ringed by the moon’s soft light.

Staunch resident of the heavens, the moon—
your constancy our guide and boon—
the pathway that your light lays down
brings my lover from the town
to stand beneath my bedroom pane,
handsome, gentle and urbane,
to nightly plead my hand and troth.
Soft call of bird and wing of moth
likewise beat against the glass,
supporting what will come to pass.

Our passion, soon to come to light,
was birthed in shadows of the night
whereas the light that without fail
will fall upon my wedding veil
will be the dappled light of sun,
revealing what the moon has won.

 

The Ragtag prompt is Dappled.
Fandango‘s prompt is Lessen.
Daily Addiction‘s prompt is Resident.

 

Shadow Play

3 Replies

DSC00024

Shadow Play

The dark
is stark.
The night,
too tight.
Its lack of sight
is nighttime’s  plight.

I also fight
direct sun light.
Full height,
its bite
too much
as such.

Before I fade,
I seek the shade,
half light, half dark
in which to park.
Veiled light?
Just right.

 

For Fandango’s “Stark” prompt.

 

Lit up! One Word Photo Challenge.

4 Replies

Click on first photo to enlarge all.

For Jennifer’s One Word Photo Challenge: Light.

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Night

4 Replies

The Visitor

Night creeps in on ghost feet, crawling o’er the hill.
We draw it close around us, as though we’ve had our fill
of sunlight’s lighter glories, ready now perhaps
for shadowed imaginings and black cats on our laps.

Night has different talents—dark, occult and deep.
They stir our dreams and cause us to call out in our sleep.
Acting out the shadows is what our dreams are for.
Surely without night time, our days would be a bore.

For Jennifer’s Halloween Challenge.

Let There Be: Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Dark and Light

4 Replies

Click on first photo to enlarge all:

>DARK AND LIGHT<

Cee’s fun foto challenge is Dark and Light.

Shine Through

16 Replies

Light is at its best when coming up against its opposite. Perhaps this is the secret of the world—that greatest secret that is the hardest to understand.

 

(I love seeing these photos in a collage, but to really see their detail, you need to click on them.)

 

Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge, Shine

Time Is Generous in its Offerings, but Has its Limits.

11 Replies

img_3070

Petitioning Time

The day first blooms, then flowers and fades away to night;
and though I’d choose to slow its progress if I might,
no part of nature sympathizes with my plight.
It is a futile undertaking trying to seize light.

Time feeds upon us all—the ultimate parasite.
There is no way to sate her appetite.
No clever words can save us from her cruel bite,
for she feeds with equal favor on dull and erudite.

Though we might flail and struggle, it does no good to fight.
If we try to outpace her, it is a futile flight.
All our human efforts to stay her just incite.
Time always is the winner, feeding on our fright.

Though we might choose to hoard our time—to hold it close and tight,
or hope that pills and potions might hide us from her sight,
no rituals or magic words that we might recite
can keep our fading colors perpetually bright.

No matter what initiatives we choose to expedite—
no matter what our efforts are to reignite
the light so quickly fading from our sight—
we cannot defeat time through acts of plebiscite.

The prompt word today is “Generous.”

Truth

5 Replies
 I invite you to send a photo to illustrate this poem, according to your understanding of it.


Truth

I fly on wings through morning dew
to try to get away from you.
I cry in vain, I kick and scream
to slip away—but still I seem
in spite of anything I do,
still to be caught up in you.

So I give up to float the stream
flowing from this morning’s dream.
Let all that it may generate
flow through me to create my fate
at first for minutes of my day
then hours and days that float away

to lose themselves in clouds of dreams
that leak out from the day’s stitched seams
conceived to keep reality
of other worlds inside of me.
I pull at threads and slip between
into the universe’s scene.

There thoughts float free in eddies of
creation that consist of love
and hate and light and dark and all
that generated our earthly ball.
We seek to have just part of it.
Impossible from the start of it.

We do not know the why of it,
but we are born and die of it––
that paradox of evil and good
made tragic by our parenthood.
That truth born out by earthly schemes
we seek to comprehend in dreams.

We are not meant to understand
by what generative hand
life flowed into the universe.
But still we’re fated to rehearse
the truth of light shadowing dark,
in novel, painting, play and quark.

Dramas in the world around us––
the sounds and sights that still astound us––
contain these opposites within––
light versus dark, yang joined with yin.
These ironies of life and art
are, in the end, what create heart.

The prompt today was “Generation” which of course means not only a generation, but also the act of generation.  That prompt led me to this poem which is really about some hard truths of life that we all face but few of us, if any, really understand.  Nonetheless, the truth of the world is  something that we all hold within us.


 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/generation/

Changing Lines

3 Replies

Changing Lines

Would passion carry the same voltage
or heartbreak the sting
if from the beginning we knew
that every extreme
brings us a step closer to its opposite?
It is that great pendulum of the I Ching—
that flowing from the yin to yang—
that foretells the fall of great regimes
glorious in their altruism
who, reaching their apex,
must head back again
towards cruel tyranny.

If we’d known this from the start,
each Summer Solstice would become
a day of mourning,
knowing that having reached one summit,
there is no further height to climb to.
And tomorrow, the start of our slow descent
will bring us closer to that other summit
where dark will reign.

Part of the power of youth’s sweet ecstasy
as well as bitter heartbreak is that it seems as though
they’ll last forever.
This is the spice of life.
Its bread comes later,
as we recognize that
everything,
everything                   everything
changes          into its
opposite.

Since today is June 21, today’s prompt was to write about the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.