Wild Open
The spacious room is open to the clear blue sky.
Waves of grain sway drowsily with a distant sigh.
Somehow, things seem simple in this open place,
everything instilled with a sort of easy grace.
If what you seek is quiet, listen to what I say,
There is no better place to choose to spend your day.
Prompt words today are spacious, open, room, blue, say, grace, waves, plains, simple, drowsy, clear, seek. Photo by Forgottenman.
For the Sunday Whirl Wordle prompt
Leftover Nightmares
Sharp teeth of moths that daily fray the fabric of my dreaming
through the faulty screens of youth continue to come streaming.
Will nothing seek to stop their flights and free me from my dread
of lines of dusty millers that by rights should now be dead?
I try to curb my memory—the dull sheen of their eyes
as they fly slowly toward me in their moth disguise.
All those evil prairie spirits, rising from the grass
to find me after midnight and fill my dreams enmasse.
This poem is partially memory, partially fiction. The flutter of Miller moths, the adult form of the cutworm, are so much a part of my growing up on the prairies of South Dakota that I named my first book, “Prairie Moths.” Then when I built my own house in Wyoming, moths again rose to swarm around me–so many that I had to light ceiling bulbs at night and put large bowls of sudsy water under the lightbulbs to trap the moths by the hundreds to free my house from them. So, although the surviving nightmares of moths are completely exaggerated, the theme is authentic, brought out by this week’s Wordle prompts. Prompt words today are daily, sheen, rights, try, nothing, sharp, moth, fray, free, line, seeks and streaming.
For The Sunday Whirl Weekly Wordle Prompt 519
Wrong Decision
Candlelight feigned the light of the day
and wheels crunched the gravel as he drove away.
I knelt down on the carpet and let my tears fall,
then rose to my feet and walked to the hall.
Too late for touching, I opened the door,
surprised at the flowers placed there on the floor.
Recriminations were all I expected,
but as I opened the card and inspected
the words that he’d written, they opened my heart
and I wished that I hadn’t let him depart.
Instead of surrendering to my misgiving
that he would be angry instead of forgiving,
that I’d opened the door and invited him in.
If I had, now I wonder what might have been?
I might have been living to this very day
with the love of my life that I sent away.
This week’s prompts for Wordle are: land, carpets, line, down, kneeling, tears, flowers, late,
wheels, touching, living and candlelight.
Open Cage, Open Window
Oh, you eager strayer,
cold little limb hanger,
Can the freedom of any tree
equal the warm womb
of that nest you now deny yourself?
Finish your brash flight
and try to remember that we wish you well.
Flutter back home to your cozy cage
or accept this extended finger
to ferry you safely back to us all.
For the Sunday Whirl Wordle #517
Lothario
When she screamed his name out on the wind, their story spread for miles—
how she fell for all his stories and fell victim to his wiles.
Black shimmering hair, that boyish grin, his manner smooth as cream—
how could she know that things are not always what they seem?
Her arms rise up to meet the moon, conducting symphonies
of painful music as her screams and wind weave harmonies.
She spins her sins around her in a close-wound net—
A chrysalis of mourning that signs her deep regret
as miles away he races, making haste to leave.
Another maid abandoned with her heart upon her sleeve.
What Hell is there for men like this, off to unknown parts,
leaving spread behind them a trail of broken hearts?
This week’s prompt words are: name, out, wind, cream, shimmering, sin, grin, conduct, rise, miles, close, stories. Image by Claudia Soraya on Unsplash.
Puddle-Jumping in the Rain
A surge of wind predicts the storm,
blows in the clouds, dispels the warm.
One dry gust sends blinds to swinging
and in the eaves commences singing,
billows drapes, blows open doors,
spreads leaves on counters and on floors.
Soon the rain masks land and sky
as the whole world begins to cry,
fashioning a different role
for each ditch or deep pot hole.
Children scurry home from school
earlier than is the rule
to tug on boots over their feet
and splash through puddles in the street.
These stompings in the driving rain
earn their mothers’ deep disdain.
Mud caked on leggings, jeans and coats,
remnants of ramblings through moats,
oceans, rivers, seas and streams—
all the faux waterways it seems
kids are drawn to in a gale
and moms forbid to no avail.
Prompts for the Sunday Whirl Wordle Prompt are: role, surge, fashion, gust, dry, send, children, masks, storm, and counter
A Day at the Beach
My hairdo is unraveling in the ocean’s spray,
and the men are talking fishing so I haven’t much to say.
I do not know their language and the sea breeze makes me cough.
My skin’s at risk in sunlight, but a stone-throw’s distance off,
in the shelter of a palm tree, I find shade, at least,
open up my backpack and partake in a small feast.
Then after I have eaten, when the sun has reached the rim
of the far horizon, I finally have a swim.
For once the sun’s not flaming, it creates a lovely glow,
sinking toward the ocean and vanishing below.
The sea has pleased the fishermen all day, cast after cast,
but as the sun sinks into it, it’s pleasing me, at last.
This week’s Wordle words are language, eat, feast, fish, unraveling, spray, shadow, flame, stone, risk and off.
These are some of the ancient tiny jars used for sacrificial blood offerings that washed up on the shores of the lake during the period when it shrank to 1/4 of its former size.
Written in Stone
The rain came as an onslaught after years of drought,
splashing on the cobbles and washing pebbles out.
Cleaning out the gutters, pouring down the hill,
until those who’d prayed for rain declared they’d had their fill.
As it came down in torrents, first welcome and benign,
at first the people welcomed it. Saw it as a sign
that they’d been forgiven for ways they had maligned
Michicihualli, whose shrinking banks were lined
with sacrificial offerings—atonement for the sin
of years of people living there that they had thrown in
to feed the spirit of the lake and ask for what they wished for—
water for their crops and the silver fish they fished for.
But for years they had forgotten the history of the lake:
how grandfathers had slit their ears, blood sacrifice to make,
collected the drops in a jar and dropped it in the water,
to give it as an offering to its guardian daughter,
to thank her for her providence and calm potential ire
that made the lake reach heavenward in a colossal gyre.
To try to still the water and end its angry churn,
one-by-one they brought their gifts, her blessings to return.
But these practices had ended in this modern age
as the people let traditions slide and failed to set the stage
to present her with the symbols that by rights she’d earned.
So in retaliation, perhaps the lady spurned.
Split the heavens open and the rain poured down,
washing boulders from the mountains down into the town.
Walls and buildings leveled, cobblestones stripped bare,
stones piled up in piles high into the air.
One hundred years of fury washed down in only minutes
reminded all the people of those forgotten tenets
of giving back when given, and finally they listened
cleaning up the garbage until the lakeshore glistened,
restoring all her beauty to calm her angry rancor,
and giving other offerings to honor and to thank her.
These are the prompt words for The Sunday Whirl, 506: pour, drought, history, still, symbol, sign, week, slide, end, rights, onslaught and people.
Michicihualli is the legendary lady who dwells within Lake Chapala, providing all the bounty necessary that the people who dwell here need to survive. When I moved to these mountains above the lake twenty years ago, the lake had shrunk to 1/4 of its former size and a few years later, weeks of downpours culminated in the waterspout which rose up from the lake and dumped water onto the mountainside above me that had already been super-saturated, causing a huge landslide that brought boulders the size of cars rushing down the mountain arroyos, through the fraccionamiento where I live, ripping up all the roads, destroying walls and buildings, then down through the town and into the lake. It is said that this was the most recent example of hundred-year storms that had ravaged the area before, but after massive restoration efforts as well as legislation that has restored more water flow into the lake from dams further upriver which had been holding back the waterflow, the lake came up to its former banks. Now, this year, it has again been diminished to 1/2 of its former size. Hopefully, the rainy season that we are just now entering will restore some of that water. HERE is a link to an article I wrote about the devastation during that huge avalanche. Luckily, I lived exactly in the middle between two of the arroyos that had the most damage and although the water came to within feet of my house and houses a block on either side of me were demolished, my house went undamaged.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 