For FOWC: Sustain and the prompt at My Vivid Blog, “tops.” I am also sharing with DVerse’s open-link night.
Hard to sustain this August heat:
I hope the temperature will not beat
100 degrees, wish it would stop
At 90 tops — but thankfully
The air-conditioning runs breezily,
A saving grace from summer sun,
It’s glorious and helpful hum.
For DVerse Poetics, we are challenged to use the myth of Persephone as inspiration for a new poem. I am also making a pingback to ChelleBee’s daily prompt, because the word is “pingback.” 🙂
Soon Persephone is leaving
Demeter, mother in mourning,
Let it be
Winter
As long as you need.
One mistake so long-lasting
Ruby-red pomegranate seeds deceiving:
Let the leaves
Brittlely
Lament Hades’ greed.
Persephone, too, is unhappy
Caught in this cycle unwillingly:
Let it be
Springtime,
Soon, briefly freed.
For DVerse Poetics, we are using proverbs as inspiration for a poem. I really wanted to write a poem about having one’s cake and eating it too…
but the proverb I ended up choosing was, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I actually wrote this poem about 6 months ago but don’t think I’ve ever posted it, so here you go. Please read “Flash Crimson” by Carl Sandburg, which, aside from that proverb, also inspired this poem.
I am finally participating in DVerse’s prompts again! Today it is Quadrille Monday, and our word is “stream.” I also wrote this for FOWC: Lonely.
Welcome to the stream of consciousness:
No idea where we are going today,
Whether the water will be placid
Or choppy (how quickly I become lonely)
Whether we will swim blithely.
Will you join the current with me?
Hoping it’s a pleasant place to be.
This poem is a response to this prompt about wildlife. There’s plenty I could have written about, even in the city where I live, because plenty of birds, butterflies, lizards, and other animals live in the garden in my backyard. Today I was particularly inspired by being in a park with a lake earlier. The water sparkled, and so did some of the insects. Also linked to DVerse OLN.
Jewels on the lake:
Helicopter-dragonfly
Hovers in the sun
But why must all the operations in life be performed without an anesthetic?
– Ernest Hemingway, To Have and Have Not (1937)
A haibun alluding to the solstice for DVerse’s Haibun Monday.
Sweet, ripe strawberries convey the taste of summer. Store-bought may be bigger, but nothing can beat the beauty of garden-grown. The sun from my own back yard reddens the fruits, which have grown from hand-planted seeds, just as this daylight has grown from the seeds of winter nights. Teeth sink gratefully into the fruits of our labor.
This moment stands still
Reaching the peak of ripeness —
Sweet strawberry juice
For Dverse’s Quadrille Monday, the word of the week is “smudge.” I might not have ever written a quadrille so promptly! This was kind of a stream-of-consciousness, but I think that works with the theme of my poem.
Well, in not posting yesterday, I broke my 2-month+ posting streak. It felt weird not to share anything, but I had a full day, and of course I wrote a few things. 🙂 Today, I’m sharing a haibun inspired by FOWC: Modular and DVerse Poetics’s prompt about risk. I looked up the definition of “modular,”and it made me think of furniture from IKEA.
Because I want to post something today, here is something that I’m linking with DVerse’s prompt about repetition.
You think with time it will ease.
You think you can kiss away all my worries.
Yo don’t understand the hurt is too deep.
You do not see how much I keep
Trying to stay upright in a mental gale,
Something that ought to feel like a breeze.
You do not see my strength start to fail.
