Time in the Underworld

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.” 🙂

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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.

Photo by Daniel Frank on Pexels.com

Quintilla: Healing

It looks like it’s not too late to share some paint-chip quintillas, so here are the words and phrases for the week. I wrote 2 of them today, and I will share with you the happier one. For more inspiration, I looked up the symbolism of jade.

When Winter Thaws

This short poem was inspired by FOWC: Buoyant and MLMM’s Saturday Mix: Opposing Forces.

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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.

Flashback Friday — Falling Snow

This is a poem from this exact date 3 years ago, shared again, thanks to Fandango’s “flashback Friday.” I decided to simplify my posting today by reposting an old piece that you may have missed. Even I had forgotten about it. 🙂 The original post is here.

Not Ideal, yet Idyllic

For Linda Kruschke’s paint-chip poetry prompt, I have written this poem. I’m not sure if it counts as an idyll, but I did use a lot of imagery of nature, and it certainly counts as a paint-chip poem. 🙂

Light: A Ghazal

Linda Kruschke has a wonderful poetry prompt for us this week: writing a ghazal using paint chips!  I love, love, LOVE ghazals so was overjoyed to read this prompt on Friday. I not only used a paint chip for the repeating part at the end of each couplet but also used a few others interspersed among the 5 couplets. Linked also with the Writers’ Pantry at PSU.

Awaiting Spring

I almost forgot to post a décima for this week’s challenge (“spring” in the A rhyme line). I’ve written two of them this week, and this is the one that I think is better. 🙂

Expectantly, we wait for spring,
We await the rivers’ flowing
And sapling greenery growing,
As meadows with sparrow-song ring.

Now winter still is felt. Its sting
Admittedly not so severe
In northern places, over here
In California, still is felt.
There are distinct ices to melt:
One which most needs to go is fear.

That brings me to what I am loving today: the weather in California. Even a cold and grayish day such as today is not actually cold.

Change of Hearts

This was inspired by this prompt about judgment, as well as the current Weekly Scribblings. Click the link to read more. 🙂

Snow and Mud and Ashes

This is for Linda Kruschke’s paint-chip poetry prompt, the first of this year. I’m not sure how well my “abstract poetry” turned out, but here it is, and I am sharing with DVerse OLN also.

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A safety-orange traffic cone is brighter than day.
Snow blankets the ground, stifling any seedling
Which might emerge from what was once just mud.
Ashes from a campfire dapple snow with gray —

Seedlings push through the greatest of difficulties.
Angels can be made in snow, days made brighter,
Even those ashes speak of happier days gifted —

Some people have a raven’s shadow above their door, never lifted.

Sorry, when I am given “raven” as a prompt word, my mind always goes, “Poe.”

Icy Fingers

Today is one-liner Wednesday and JusJoJan day 6, and the theme that Linda gives us is “icy fingers.” I have tried to write a form called an American sentence.

I believe that two sets of icy fingers can keep each other warm.

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