This is a re-post of a ghazal that I wrote a couple of years ago. I am sharing with DVerse for this month’s poetry form.
Treasure Hunt
This is a décima for Ronovan Writes’s current décima challenge: Gold.
A sailor sets out, brash and bold,
To venture into the unknown
Sea towards where his dreams have shown.
To find a treasure chest of gold.
His map is faded, brittle, old
Yet with great trust he starts to sail,
As nascent dawn makes the sky pale —
Adventure, not only gold, gleams:
Happy to be following dreams
Knowing that courage cannot fail.
Fond yet Melancholy Memory
At DVerse, for Poetics today, it is “Blue Tuesday.” I was inspired by this picture, which I took with an old friend several years ago (the poem says 5, but it turns out it was actually 6 years and 2 months ago):
The blues of the view from the Huntington Beach pier:
Five years ago now, yet current they appear
The current of the ocean waves, greenish-blue,
Above horizon-line’s divide, cloudless sky, a lighter hue.
It is the background of my smartphone screen,
Above which other blues, from icons are seen:
Apps like Facebook and the telephone cannot reach
Into the past, nor reconnect with that friend at the beach.
To Mom
On this day after Mother’s Day, I wrote this poem in honor of my mom and moms in general. 🙂
To Exist Safely
Today at DVerse, we have prosery again. This is usually very difficult for me, so I rarely try it, but this week I want to try. 🙂 However, the given line, from Rilke, is challenging: “Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?” – from Rainer Maria Rilke, “Heartbeat.” I am also sharing this with yesterday’s Writers’ Pantry at PSU. I usually don’t share anything other than poems, so this should be fun.
There is something inside that must be spoken, before it eats its way out of its cage inside of her mind. She tries to find the words to express her secret, but with difficulty, for she can barely get any words out without shaking. She trips over those words, like stones in her path to freedom. Even the words that escape the prison of her lips do not seem to express fully what she means to say. Sadly she realizes, “Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?”
Continuing to tremble, as if trying to shake off the chains of the past, she hugs herself and feels the beat of her own heart in the center of her chest. It is the life inside of her, which is close and which has its own, wordless song. She takes a deep breath in and begins to speak again.
When Winter Thaws
This short poem was inspired by FOWC: Buoyant and MLMM’s Saturday Mix: Opposing Forces.
Winter freezes her: numb thumbs
Until winter becomes spring,
Turning frozen heart to melting.
Frozen in one lonely spot,
Now back to front she floats,
Buoyancy with happy notes.
A sign in the garden
Today’s stream-of-consciousness Saturday is an interesting prompt: we are to write about the memories / associations we have with whatever happens to be to our left, when we sit down to write. I was sitting in my back yard and saw a new. little sign in one of the pots in the garden: “Plant a seed and watch it grow.” That was the seed for this post. 🙂
Palinode
Although this is a bit late, when I saw that DVerse was challenging us to write a palinode for this week’s Meeting the Bar, I had to participate. I almost never write these, but they are special to me: Back when I was an atheist, I wrote three poems about how God probably doesn’t exist. After I became a Christian, I felt bad about it. Then, during the next NaPoWriMo, one of the prompts was to write a palinode, and so I wrote a palinode for each one of those anti-God poems, retracting their statements. It was a healing exercise for me, and when I read the story of Jesus and Saint Peter in John chapter 21, I was floored!
Today’s palinode has nothing to do with that, but I really wanted to share that background story. This is, instead, written as a response to the shadorma I wrote yesterday (click here).
More Paint-Chip Poetry
For Linda Kruschke’s paint-chip poetry this week, it is basically a free-write, but we are to use at least 5 of the paint chips below. I wrote a free-verse poem and also a shadorma, and I’m sharing the shadorma because I’m rather proud of being able to fit 5 of the words in such a brief form.
Moments of Clarity
This was inspired by FOWC: Blur and Writing Wednesday (which I, for once, am writing on a Wednesday), “commonplace.” For the past year or more, I think many of us have felt like the days blur together. I definitely have, although my life is getting a little busier / more exciting.
Take Note
For this week’s décima challenge: Ground.
