Tag Archives: Ragtag Daily Prompt

The Place

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The Place

This year, 
all of the hard to reach places,
difficult situations and difficult people
are falling away,
and I’m letting them. 
I need an easier place for my heart.
Some gentler place
where my heart fits.

Meanwhile…
I’ve been misplacing everything,
and now it seems
that it’s my heart that I can’t find.

Knowing myself,
I know that I will never find it by looking,
but instead, must wait until I chance upon it
in some spot where I would never think to look.
Some place where it has been placed absent-mindedly
to free my mind for other tasks,
or perhaps  where a part of me kind to myself
knew it would be safe for awhile
while I was not in need of it

So I’m not looking for my heart.
Instead, I’m trying to build a new place
so that if I ever find my heart, it will have
a spot that it fits into just right.
A spot that has been prepared for it.
A warm spot and cushioned
away from elbows extended
just right for knocking hearts off ledges

The place for my heart
will not be a  high place–
no careless place that earthquakes
could spill it from.
It will not be a low place–
too near toes that might stumble
over a heart brought low.
It will not be a place in direct sunlight
that might fade a heart away.

The place for my heart
will be a handy place.
A place I don’t have to think about twice.
A dependable place like the door of my refrigerator:
grocery list, dentist appointments,
art openings, family pics,
and my heart—
here in this busy place near
other necessary things.

A place like that
is where my heart will want to go
once I get it back again
from wherever it has fallen
or been kicked to
or hidden.

In a whisper,
probably at night
while I am sleeping,
it will come into my dreams
with  a plan for where to put us both.
So I will dream harder,
watching for the heart I barely even recognize.
Listen  for its whisper.
Listen  for its shout.
Let it grab onto me and pull me after it.

Because while I’ve been building
the place for my heart to go,
it has grown so large that it no longer fits
inside of anything;
so that when I chance upon it,
my heart will just open its arms
and welcome me in.

Retablo, “Restoring the Peace” by Judy Dykstra-Brown  jdb photo

For the Ragtag prompt, heart.

International Date Lines

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International Date Lines

Italian guys are sexy,  but pasta makes me fat.
When a Scots boy served me haggis, had to hide it in my hat.
I had a Japanese boyfriend, but I gagged while eating sushi.
French crepes don’t suit my fancy. I find them bland and squooshy.
Foreign dates? I’ve had enough to man a whole battalion,
and so long as I take care that I’m not dating an Italian,
I’ve found that when I’m traveling and have a need to guy it,
it’s a perfect opportunity for sticking to my diet!

The Ragtag Prompt today is Italian.

Koi Ponds and SYW

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You can have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life, what is it? Sushi? Scotch Tape? Good Health

Teleportation or flying? Teleportation! Flying is no fun anymore.

Would you rather live where it only snows or the temperature never falls below 100 degrees?  I could live in either one and just teleport myself to reasonable climes whenever I wished!

What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week?  I’ve been wanting to share these photos of the koi ponds at the Chapala Society. You can see them better by clicking on any photo to enlarge them all. There are a lot of photos, so give them 30 seconds to focus before you begin the slideshow after clicking to enlarge. You only have to do this once, not for each photo.

 And, for the Ragtag prompt: ponds.

 

 

For Cee’s Share Your World

 

Sour Grapes from a Pissed Rhyming Poet

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Sour Grapes from a Pissed Rhyming Poet

I fear this world of prompts has gotten slightly out of hand
and so their choice of prompt words is likely to be panned.
Antediluvian? Come on!!! Who uses that strange word?
It best describes itself. In modern usage, it’s absurd.
Please give us words that help us, not vocabulary puzzles.
We need words that lead like leashes and not creative muzzles!!!!
Do not try to impress us with obscure nomenclature.
I don’t care about their backgrounds. I don’t care about their nature.
Give me conglomerations of letters that I know,
and not these fancy words that seem simply meant for show!!!!
In short, I’m pissed because I do not like “antediluvian”
which only seems to rhyme with hard to use words like Peruvian!!

 

This prompt sort of threw me for a loop, so instead of just giving up and going on to a different prompt, I decided to write a gentle protest, meant in fun.. The Ragtag prompt today is antediluvian. 

Falling Water

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This is one of three waterfalls that spill down the mountain behind my house during the rainy season.

Falling Water

You, my wild and rushing daughter
remind me of falling water
spilling  from one place to another
while your sister and your brother
are calm ponds—docile and still.
Do you think you ever will
come to rest within our glade
or will you continue to cascade
from mountainside to jungle floor,
always rushing out the door
to adventures in a farflung world?
Another part of you unfurled
in some new place and some new time,
a foreign place you find sublime.
We’ve had one life. You’ve had a few.
Why, love, will one world not do?

 

For the Rag Tag Daily Prompt, the word of the day was cataract.

Although I don’t have a brother and my family did move around a bit (but not as much as I have,) this poem was based a bit on the only letter my father ever wrote to me. I had been traveling and working abroad for a few years by then, first in Australia, then in Singapore and Africa. I’ve remembered one of sections: “The wild geese have rested on the pond for the night. They remind me of you, my wild fledgling, winging your way across the world with no place to call your own.” Those words, so poetic, show a side of my father I wish he had brought out more frequently on paper, so here I’ve done it for him.

Our Own Little Universes: Pains, Rips, Stars, Itineraries and Insights

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Somehow, a posting on intuition got posted on the Ragtag prompt for “Insight,” so I must reclaim my honor by reblogging this actual post on Insights from four years ago.

Insight. The Ragtag Post prompt #2 was insight.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

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Our Own Little Universes: Pains, Rips, Stars, Itineraries and Insights

Yolanda and Pasiano must have thought I was crazy when I started packing a week ago for my 2 month trip to the beach. First, all of my clothes piled on the bed in the spare room, then art and jewelry-making supplies piled on one end of the other bed, computer and photography needs piled on the other end. Bags full of other art supplies. Then two days ago, little piles of spices and kitchen tools, canned goods, disinfectant for fruit and veggies, bags of papers I’ve been wanting to sort for 13 years. (There will be time at the beach, where I know no one.)

But now it was the night before and with the car mostly packed with suitcase and bags, I still had hours more of sorting and packing to do. I knew it would probably…

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Purple Passion

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Purple Passion

 

Light can add an interesting aspect to what might otherwise have been an ordinay portrait
Click on any photo to enlarge all and view as slide series. 

Purple flowers––violets, maybe.
Purple eye makes purple baby.
Purple sweater, purple wall
and four o’clocks, the last of all!

 

 

Some of these photos and the ditty were published a few years ago.  I’ve upped the purple for this post, though. Hit this link and come play along!  For the Ragtag Prompt: Purple.

Nightmare

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Nightmare

You hide yourself in shadows deep
to watch me as I fall to sleep.
Half-lidded, with your sleepy stare,
you cup my cheek and stroke my hair.
I do not know as I fall deeper
that you stalk this drifting sleeper.

Then just as I do not resist,
you give my hair a painful twist.
I try to jerk awake but fail.
I tense my muscles, fight and flail,
but I cannot escape your grasp.
I call for help, I moan and gasp.

Sir Nightmare, from where do you come
with death knoll beat on ragged drum?
I hear its pulse now through the day.
At every hour, it sounds the way
back to the horror of the night––
a pathway to that final fight

when I will mount at last that steed
that nightly stands to do its deed
to carry to oblivion
this sleeper off to meet her kin.
That father lost, those lovers three
who wait for my delivery.

Is this nightmare just a dream––
a mere digression from the stream
of conscious thought––a nightly swim
through a fantasy most grim,
or a window showing me
an inevitability?

This is a repeat of a poem I wrote two years ago. It is just too perfect for the prompt not to use it. hope it warranted rereading. The Ragtag word of the day is nightmare.

Sunset Beach Ballet (For the Ragtag Daily Prompt)

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Looks like you have to click on the URL of my original post to see the photos that create the video-like show. These kids on the beach are the epitome of flexibility! Click on one and then quickly click on the arrows and it becomes an action video of their movements. Flexibility is the prompt for the Ragtag Daily Prompt.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Sunset Ballet

Their silhouetted slim perfection
backed by sunset’s splashed reflection,
these teens seemed to have some connection
that loosed them from a straight direction
as they chose a swift aborting
of their stroll for wild cavorting.

In frolics on the beach, each leap
was energy they couldn’t keep
but had to spend, paying their tolls
in somersaults and flips and rolls;
while I watched, spellbound, from my step,
entranced by  all their joy and pep—

glad that I had viewed by chance
this sunset’s stunning triple dance
of light on water and on sea
as well as bends of arm and knee
that turned this day all upside down
for each cavorting, spinning clown—

those of us more seasoned sat,
collected for a sunset chat,
well-worn by humor, sun and life,
taking ease from lives of strife.
And though we’re not as young and trim,
our hearts danced along with them.

(Click on first photo to enlarge, then click quickly on each successive…

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Flummoxed

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Flummoxed

I fear that I am flummoxed about where to post this poem
since Daily Post abandoned us, our postings have no home
where we can find each other sufficiently clear.
Just where do we post them? Is it here or here or here?
I applaud your efforts. I know you’ve planned and planned.
You have your daily promptings sufficiently manned.
The problem is we need one place where we can find each other
once we have surveyed the prompt and written yet another
poem or essay most profound that we would like to share.
Except, where should we put it?  There, or there or there?
The solution to this problem has me tearing at my hair.
Please give me a solution. Where should I post this? Where?

Perhaps I’ve overstepped my bounds, and if I have I fear
that you’ll simply say that I should  hang it in my ear!

 

The prompt today is flummoxed.