Every New Start

This is for MLMM’s Tale Weaver prompt and this week’s décima challenge, where we are supposed to use the word “wind” in the B rhyme spot. Follow the links for more info! 

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The close of day is no dead end:
Though the path out may wend and wind,
The pinkish dawn is ripe to find
A better way, and hope, to tend.

The close of day is wont to send
Symbolic messages of fear;
Ignore that siren-song and steer
Away from treacherous creatures.
Nightmares to dreams: morning features
New rosiness of life to cheer.

One Shining Moment

We are writing traditional haibun about “one shining moment” in our life. Green and gold were mt high school’s colors.

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After four years came her shining moment: Finally she was graduating from high school, with high honors. Her grades were not perfect, but she was happier for the fact of their imperfection, since it showed that she could survive it.

The sky above the sea of green and gold smiled benignly, while the future lay ahead of her like an exciting novel, in a language she could not read.

Under blazing sun
Clouds float in their big ocean —
We toss tasseled caps

A Savored Moment

For the Writers’ Pantry, here is a quatrain that I wrote 2 days ago after spending some time in my back yard.

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She stares transfixed at the garden full of life,
She, full of feelings mixed, childlike delight
Planted between pressures of grave responsibility —
Yet the silent butterflies seem to speak prophecy.

Photo taken by me last month

Justitia

For this haikai prompt about the need for justice

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blindfolded Justice:
History can tip the scales
skewing the balance

image found here

Busy Streets

This is a haibun for DVerse about this image:

 

Piet Mondrian, ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, moma.org

 

The primary colors pop, but the spaces are prominent. The many lines are criss-crossing, but the colors are not mixing. There is a certain, conspicuous distance amidst all the activity.

Hustle and bustle
Life’s slow return to normal —
I still want a hug

Something That Returns

Our prompt for NaPoWriMo day 30 is to write about something that returns. It’s hard to believe that poetry month is almost over, but it is something to look forward to every year, and I think I’ll try to continue with the daily posts, at least for a little while. I am sharing this with DVerse OLN.

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You return, every year,
Like the cherry blossoms,
Like the swallows returning to
Capistrano (remember when
We went there?)
You return, every year,
Like the cherry blossoms,
And must leave just as quickly.

Novel Reality

NaPoWriMo day 22. This post was inspired by FOWC: Crazy and the current Weekly Scribblings.

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I am not sick enough
To lie in bed all day,
But to keep me
From going crazy — maybe
I shall retreat into fiction
Or fantasy, reading,
This situation for a day renouncing,
My head on a fluffy pillow:
A respite from the novel
Reality we now know.

Erasures

For NaPoWriMo day 17, my poem is actually on-prompt, about forgotten technology.

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In my youth, the typewriter

Was a treasured companion, despite

Its obsolescence : I typed

Stories using its keys — and remember

The difficulty of too many erasures.

 

Around age 10, I remember

Playing Oregon Trail on my own

Computer, a big boxy behemoth

Running Windows 98.

I died so many times.

But once I remember embellishing,

Rewriting the trail journal,

So that I had survived.

 

So easily erased now,

These technologies, and memories,

If we do not write them down.

 

Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

Bereft

NaPoWriMo day 14. This poem was inspired by this week’s Sunday Whirl, wordle #451. The official prompt of the day is to write about what inspires you to write poems, so I suppose my poem today is tangentially related.Update: I am also sharing this with DVerse open-link.

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With the world changing with such speed,
(Yet with the monotony of a hamster wheel),
Memories of yesterday begin to fade.

The seams of yesterday are ripping,
Mental-health crises as serious as
Bleeding out — What a treat it was
To have no need to retreat into houses.

And what is next? And what is left?
Bereft, we must nevertheless say yes
To tomorrow, watching panic happening,
Hoping for roots planted deep, sustaining.

September came cold

This is for NaPoWriMo day 8, and it is actually on prompt! I think it also fits the Weekly Scribblings, but I’m not sure. I wasn’t expecting to be inspired by Twitter feeds, but this quote from the Anne Carson Bot stuck with me:

“And for a moment the frailest leaves of life contained him in a widening happiness”
-Anne Carson

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September came cold
His body fevered, chilled
The ghost of the wind
Rattled the bones of frail leaves,
Brittle brown coverings on trees’
Branches reaching toward grey sky,
Knowing heaven lies beyond the clouds.

He gazes through a window,
Following the trees’ leading,
He shivers, lips quiver
Upward in a slight smile,
Last breath rattles his bones
The ghost is loud.