Tag Archives: Shadows

Dappled

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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.

 

“Walkin’ My Shadow Back Home,” Cee’s B and W Photo Challenge: Shadows

CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

 

To play along, go here: https://ceenphotography.com/2017/08/31/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-shadows/

Shadow Play

You’ll get a much better view of the photos if you click on one and view them as a gallery.

 

The photo prompt this week was shadow.

Yuccas: Sunday Trees, Nov 13, 2016

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https://beccagivens.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/sunday-trees-261/

What Have We Done To Our Earth?

(Click to enlarge photos, and for some reason it doesn’t show the commentary unless you click on them, either.)

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/earth/

Terza Rima for Earth’s Shadow

What shadow bigger than a lunar eclipse? I am lucky enough to have seen the eclipse of two blood moons in Mexico.  Below are photos or links to photos of each, along with a rewrite of a poem I wrote after witnessing the first one.

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Lunar Eclipse

Last night I rose to watch the full eclipse––
a blood orange moon, full in the dark night sky,
around it, scattered stars and tall palm tips.

It was as though in this world, only I
watched the last fingernail of glowing moon,
chewed at by shadow, slowly wane and die.

And then the night birds with their lonely croon
gave timbre to this darkened night soon joined
by lonely burro, braying for the moon

Perhaps they mourned for vision now purloined
or simply sang for joy of adding to
the beauty of this dark moon newly coined.

Then once again the moon’s edge came to view.
Earth moved aside in favor of the sun
and for an hour, I watched as moonlight grew.

I sought my bed, the pageant not yet done,
as light increased and shadow slowly waned.
Inevitably, once more light had won.

The ending known, no mystery remained.

This poem is written in terza rima, a form invented by Dante and used in The Divine Comedy. It consists of three-line stanzas, with a “chained” rhyme scheme. The first stanza is ABA, the second is BCB, the third is CDC, and so on. No particular meter is necessary, but English poets have tended to default to iambic pentameter. One common way of ending a terza rima poem is with a single line standing on its own, rhyming with the middle line of the preceding three-line stanza.

See more blood moon photos here: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/09/27/eclipse-of-the-blood-moon-over-mexico/

And smaller shadows here: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/09/03/reflections-shadows-cees-black-and-white-challenge/

 

If you want to write to this prompt, you can post what you’ve written here:  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/shadow/

Reflections & Shadows (Cee’s black and white challenge)

Reflections & Shadows

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http://ceenphotography.com/2015/09/03/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-reflections-and-shadows/

Leavings

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Photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Leavings

Do I walk the long kilometers of beach
to look for the next shell
or stand stable, like that woman
casting and recasting her hook,
patiently waiting to pull her world
in to her?

I’m gathering things
that I’ll collect into stories–pinning them down
to use like words.
Nothing wrong in finding meaning
through a piece of driftwood, a stone or shell.
Objects are only things
we cast our minds against
like images against a screen–
a shadow glimpsed crossing a window shade.

My shadow cast in front of me
is such a different thing
from one I cast behind.
In the first, I am constantly hurrying
to catch up to what I’ll never catch up to.
In the other, I am leaving behind
what I can only keep by walking away from it.

I take this place along with me
in clear images–
not as they were,
but as my mind has cast them;
so every picture
taken of the same moment
is different,
each of us seeing it through our unique lens.

We cast these things in bronze or silver-gelatin,
stone, clay
or poetry.

A grandma
holds out pictures of her children
and her grandchildren.
See? Her life’s work.
And then this and this,
without further effort on her part.

I share stories of children I don’t know
who gently unwind fishing line from a struggling gull,
hearts found on the beach
or other treasures
nestled in a pile of kelp.
I find my world in both these findings and departings;
the leaving each morning to go in search of them
the part I find most exhilarating–
perhaps teaching this
woman of the death-themed night-terrors
not to worry.
That longer leaving is just a new adventure.

People who do not remember
let me slip away
when I would have held on,
given any encouragement.
Yet fingers, letting go, flex
for that next adventure.

Life is
all of us letting go
constantly–
taking that next step
away from
and to.

A white shell.
I have left it there
turned over
to the brown side,
so someone else
can discover it, too.

Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Image Search—Pick a random word and do Google image search on it. Check out the eleventh picture it brings up. Write about whatever that image brings to mind. (Although the eleventh image was of a shadow on a beach, I’ve elected to reproduce my own photo here.)