Tag Archives: The Sunday Whirl

“Adventure’s End” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle, June 23, 2024

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Adventure’s End

“Holy smoke!” the young man cries, pulling on the reins,
his heartbeats quickened, sending blood surging through his veins.
This glorious adventure—this quest across the plains,
fording raging waters, swollen by the rains,
seems  to have turned against him as the arrow whizzes by,
shaving off his hat brim just inches from his eye.
He cradles fear, as weeping, he whips the plodding team,
prodding them to frenzy as though within a dream.

The bitter taste of panic, one brief surge of regret,
causes him to finally accept his sobriquet.
When his mother named him Chauncey  which his dad shortened to “Chance,”
it signaled wild adventure and dangerous romance,
and as he set out on his travels to find fortune and fame,
not once did he consider the two sides to his name.
Now he rests forever beside that lonely road
that in his youth he thought would lead him to the mother lode.

 

For Sunday Whirl Wordle 660 the words are: holy plains waters beats travel weeping veins cradle rained taste brief glorious Image from Unsplash.

“Liberty” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 659

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Liberty

Birds find an opening in clouds to cross a languid sky,
their shadows sparking hope as I trace them with an eye
searching for some method, be it holy or black magic,
to dispel the shadows of an outcome I find tragic.

One waiting in the shadows by the font of holy water,
advances, clear in his intent to wed my father’s daughter.
Clear in my resolution that I will not have it so,
I ‘m resolute my troth to him would birth a life of woe.

As he greets me at the altar, I turn my foot to run
down that selfsame aisle, out into the streaming sun.
Let my father wed him if he’s so set in his plan
to bring into his family this workhorse of a man

so like himself that I well know that he would likely smother
all my dreams, just like my father did to my sweet mother.
In the woods there waits for me one other who can see
all those other selves I have it in my dreams to be.

Fleet of foot, I shed my heels and speed in my advance
ahead of those pursuers who would choose to foil my chance
of living my own life in the manner I would choose.
Thus fueled by my determination that I will not lose,

I speed into the forest where my lover waits,
my final summation to a lifetime of debates
about who rules my life expressed in action as I reach
to mount my waiting stallion and make off toward the beach

where his boat is waiting for my true love and me
to set out for our lives across a welcoming sea—
a new land for us both where we can come to be
whatever we might choose in a land of liberty.

Note: I’ve been waiting for 6 years to find an opportunity to use this photo I took from my porch at the beach in La Manzanilla.  Finally!

Words for The Sunday Whirl  Wordle 659 are: spark languid opening magic hope cross clear cloud holy birds 

@notebookmusical

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Misnomer, For The Sunday Whirl, June 9, 2024

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Misnomer

Red dragon of my garden, ascending walls and rocks,
seeking out a birth chamber on your extensive walks.
Your strategy is lethal, for the shelter you find best
proves you as an enemy—a thief of life and nest
of bee or wasp or other insect where you’ll lay
your eggs where larvae of your host will become the prey

of your eggs when they have hatched into larvae too,
long after you have left to resume adventures new.
Wingless wasp, you never soar aloft in air,
but your vivid color hints at the despair
of any who receive your sting, so painful that you’ve earned
the title of “Cow Killer Ant” as victims have soon learned.

Cool water will not stem the pain, nor will anything
soothe the throbbing torture of your defensive sting,
but unlike your insect victims, humans will not face
a fate more dire than pain that is extensive as you race,
channeling your power into a new direction,
tunneling into the ground to escape detection.

 

Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 658 are: strategy enemy thieves red dragon air hint water rock nest face channel

Although commonly referred to as the cow killer ant or red velvet ant, this insect is actually a wasp. They get the “velvet” part of their name from the fuzziness of the females, which are wingless and often brightly colored, appearing like a red and black ant. The powerful red velvet ant sting is what has led them to be nicknamed “cow killers”. The female will enter the ground nest of a host species, typically a wasp or bee species, and lay her eggs near the host’s larvae. As D. occidentalis’ larvae develop, the species’ true parasitoid nature is shown. The larvae grow and develop by feeding on and killing the larvae of the host species. [13] Velvet ant larvae will continue to feed until they enter the pupal stage. In this stage, larvae continue to grow into adults. Pupation typically takes 23 days, and most velvet ants are mature and ready to reproduce themselves after this. [15] Velvet ants have an interesting mating style compared to other Hymenopteran species. The male has no parental care responsibilities and the female leaves as soon as she lays her eggs. This is not out of the ordinary for a Hymenopteran species, but velvet ants are though to be monogamous and semelparous. This means females mate just once in their lifetime with only one male. Many entomological organizations suspect velvet ants to mate only once in their lifetime.[16]

(Thanks, Wikipedia, for furnishing research on these insects. I think I’ve seen three in the past 23 years and did an earlier post on the orange and black variety I discovered on my wall many years ago. This one I found near my kitchen door just a few years ago.)

“Unruly Words” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 657

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Unruly Words

This poem wants to dangle or take a giant leap.
I can hear it whirring as it wakens me from sleep.
I think that it’s been restlessly dancing in my dreams,
clicking on its castanets and bursting at its seams.

It may want to be a song, and thus the castanets.
Let’s hope this is the noisiest that this poem gets!
I like my poems whimsical and gentle like a sneeze.
Instead of words that storm and fuss, I prefer a breeze.

I grant that poetry has stirred others to their fate,
but poems that are too preachy tend to irritate.
Please talk to me in gentle words that put me at my ease,
for in this angry world it’s harder to find words that please.

For The Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: clicking whimsical leap poetry songs be whirring dangling fates talk grant storm (Image from a free image generator–couldn’t resist, but I promise not to get carried away with this!)

 

 

“Final Payment” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 656

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Image by Vitaly Taranov on Unsplash

Final Payment

Bees hum and die in brambles, hidden from our sight, 
and scrawled across the sky, untethered in their flight,
are birds swept by a tempest, urged on by its blast,
as down below, the earth cracks, and our future’s cast
in hurricanes and fires and climate change so vast 
that mankind’s ancient rituals no longer work their magic.
Our cut-down trampled forestlands foretell a future tragic.
We leap ahead to our own end, speed it on its way,
waiting for that reckoning for which we’ll have to pay.

For The Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: trample crack swept untethered hum urge scrawled bees sky ritual leap brambles

 

“Cosmos” For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 654

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Cosmos

My soul is restless, dark and lost.
Its flickering flame is tempest-tossed.
Ceaseless waves assault my ears,
their chanting pulse swelling my fears.

Slipping  into their restless grasp,
I void my terror in a gasp.
No fan of chance, I cast my lot
into that teeming marble pot

where those lost futures roil and toss,
whose progress is the potion’s loss.
Where is that world secure and calm
that cups one in a soothing balm?

Those caught in it feel its caress
unaware of that duress
that catches others in its swell––
one world encompassing Heaven and Hell.

 

For the latest Sunday Whirl, the prompt words are: waves slip void soul restless dark chanting flickering pulse chance marble fan.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle #652

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Memory 

The habits of mind come trickling through,
to add their salt to your simmering brew
of appointments and stories and poems and tasks
and all of the other things modern life asks
that you fill up your time with—full to the brim 
from its secretive roots to its furthest stretched limb.

It’s shadows and sunlight, it’s flowers and stones—
from the flesh of your life to its skin and its bones.
Those niggling doubts that fill corners of mind,
crowding out thoughts of a cheerier kind
as all your vast memory falls to the axe
of that onerous visitor’s tuggings and hacks.
Stripping your mind to set it to rest,
drawing its sunrise to fade in the west.

For The Sunday Whirl #652 the prompt words are: vast salty simmering habits mind trickle secretive brim axe roots shadows stones

Plagiarist, For the Sunday Whirl, Apr 21, 2024

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Plagiarist

I track my sleepy footprints down to the salty sea,
with only tide and sand to keep me company.

Now and then a wispy cloud silvers the rising moon,
breaking into filigree, then vanishing too soon.

A moonbeam cracks the tidal swell and draws a slender line,
whispering this story that now I claim as mine.

Huddling on the outskirts of wave and slivered light,
I nonetheless declare my self as part of this calm night.

Sly interloper that I am, still all I hear and see
opens up its arms and seems to welcome me.

 

For the Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: draw cracks sly sliver sleepy footprints stories moon outskirts wispy sky sea

A Semi-Tall Tale for The. Sunday Whirl Wordle 650 and NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 12

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Image by Satish Nagapuri on Unsplash
JDB Photo
JDB Photo

 

 

 A Semi-Tall Story

Once upon a time, dear friends, long before creation,
the spirits of the universe formed a delegation
to invent our ancestors: the cell  and then the fish,
and eons later, they decided to fulfill the wish
of the lowly haddock to wallow in the mud
with toes and feet to stay erect while walking through the crud.
And thus was born the dinosaur, king of a twig-strewn world,
crashing through the underbrush as all it touched unfurled.

Those parts of earth unbroken eventually gave birth
to animals less violent and much smaller in girth.
Warm-blooded, they awakened to divine memory,
invented words and realized that what had come to be
was what the spirits of the universe had foreseen long ago
while looking in a crystal ball. The predicted it, and lo,
that chain occurred unbroken—ending with you and me,
sitting here upon the ledge of infinity. 

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 650, the prompt words are: twigs divine wake blood wallow cell memory ancestors crystal creation ledge unbroken.  I am combining this prompt with the NaPoWriMo prompt from two days ago, which I forgot to do.  The 12th prompt of the monthly series was to write a tall story. This one is only tallish as it’s based on evolution. The Spirits of the Universe might qualify as the tall part of the tale.

“What a Turtle Has and Hasn’t” for Wordle 648, Mar 31, 2024

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What a Turtle Has and Hasn’t

It’s true that turtles can make do
with fewer bones than mortals do,
for all the bones that they may lack
are compensated by their back
which curves skyward and then back down
to form a solid armored gown.

They spill no blood, pray not for healing
with such protection  for their ceiling.
Thus does creation seed the waters
with its tough-shelled  sons and daughters,
for though they may lack fins and gills,
they can overcome these ills.

If, perchance, you’re given to wonder
how a turtle breathes when under
water for up to an hour,
it simply executes its power
to hold its breath instead of breathing,
and when it comes to turtles teething,

instead of teeth, they have a beak,
(although it’s ill-advised to peek
inside a turtle’s mouth for proof)
its mouth is toothless, jaw and roof.
Please leave turtles their private places––
whether under shell or in their faces.

Consider sacred what God hath wrought,
instead of thinking of what they’re not!

 

I am so happy to have an excuse to use this photo of a turtle that I snapped last week! 
Thanks for this fortunate prompt!!!! For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 648 the prompt words are: creation seeds waters blood breathe turtle sacred bones curve sky pray heal