We Cannot Forget

Less than a day’s drive, for twenty three years she felt she was on the other side of the moon. Estranged from her family, ties on both ends severed, she never looked back. Today all was different. She drove into the driveway and stared at the Victorian estate. White Birch among tall pines framed the 3-acre homestead.

All she had was a letter from an aunt requesting her visit; something about an unresolved issue she wanted discussed face to face. Closing her eyes, saying a brief prayer, she went to the door.

Crimson Mums sat atop the wide porch railings on both sides of weathered stairs. Next to the door, a wooden swing looked lonely, obviously unloved and neglected. The air was crisp and yellow leaves were scattered, crackling under her feet.

Once again a child, these memories were left here with the trees.

I revised  it a bit, per a bit of critique.

I am so late with this prompt. “These memories were left here with the trees.”

A line to use in “Prosery”, a fictional bit of prose and up to 144 words. I used exactly 144 excluding the title.

I am not skilled in fiction, not even a bit!

 

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Tranquility

Don’t drink the stagnant water
It gathers filth
Reeking a stench
Malaria and dengue
Silently awaits its prey
A moving current ~
Health to all
May one abide still yet move?
Restlessness begs tranquility
Hope breathes upon a fixed mind
Gently birthing serene, rippled waves

Quadrille Monday at dverse. An exact 44-word poem. Prompt word is tranquility.

 

 

 

No Space For Regret

 

Summer is winding down. A thin crispness shapes the morning. Temperatures rise slowly, bringing humid afternoons. A stretch of thunderstorms followed by a week of drought, extremes can resemble imperfection.

I separate the mint, fashioning a bouquet I donate to a restaurant each year. Overtaken by weeds, I trim the flowers and brown, leaves. What is left is more than what I removed.

I don’t envy to be young, nor do I despise my years.

Back side of summer
Reaching toward Autumn’s colors
Each season a gift

 

Open link at dversepoetspub.com

 

How to Fly, Yet Free Another

 

Emotions harbored in an enclosed vortex
Anchored amid troubled winds and billowy waves
My heart is set to the one who created both quark and VY Canis Majoris
My eyes see beauty in cardboard and paint having no space to breathe
Crowded behind a fragile glass
While I am perched outside, free yet grounded to this prison

Wings unmoving, my feet remain heavy on the outskirts of my prison
Flutter without flight, I am caught in a vortex
A mirror rather than a window becomes this fragile glass
An anchor below the surface circumvents winds and waves
I am now more than cardboard and paint, still labored breath
Yet His breath is in all from quark to VY Canis Majoris

Who can see without scope but God, either quark or VY Canis Majoris?
But I free, can see from where I come, this prison!
Cardboard and paint a metaphoric illusion stops my breath
I hear the clicking of my emotions harbored in an enclosed vortex
Anchored by another, powerless are wind and wave
Perched I am free while I see others in the same prison

Shadows from the outside are cast from this fragile glass
They won’t hear of the one who created both quark and VY Canis Majoris
I tell them they are safe from troubled wind and billowy waves
But they see me alive, yet still bound to my prison
Emotions echo louder enclosed in a vortex
How do I reach cardboard and paint so their beauty breathes?

Why are they inside and I outside my prison?
Cardboard and paint interlocks, one picture, one breath
What if I broke such fragile glass;
Would my emotion shatter from this vortex?
Who frees is free, who is free, frees both the quark and the VY Canis Majoris
Inanimate I sit, showing off my pink wings, no one sees my new prison

This anchor a tether, stronger than wind and waves
Tells me I am more than cardboard and paint; I can breathe
Though outside, did I drag my fear with me from my prison?
What is most easily broken, but fragile glass?
I am somewhere between the quark and the VY Canis Majoris
To you, I may appear silent, but not within this enclosed vortex

A vortex of empathy swells as rising waves
Quark and Majoris are no more beautiful than one who cannot breathe
Mirror or glass, my choice remains to free us all from our prisons

 

 

Linked with dversepoetspub.com

It came from staring at my framed puzzle of the butterflies. My first Sestina. Six stanzas with a crazy line scheme for each one, and a seventh 3 line stanza as an envoi.  Not sure about this, but it is what it is. It took days!

 

A Moment of Hope

Light rushing into the room without invitation blinded her. Pulling the covers around her shoulders, she turned, burying her face into her chin, her long black hair falling over her eyes. Space between asleep and awake, she felt heavy as she plodded through thick, impervious sand dunes in her head. “A few minutes more”, she heard. Loud words, she couldn’t tell if she actually spoke it or thought it.

Like morning fog lifting, she slowly opened her eyes. A gentle breeze from the open window felt unfamiliar on her skin. Its loving caress reminded her she was through the worst of her withdrawal. For a moment she wondered if this time it would last. How many times she had wanted the words to prove true. “You will love again the stranger who was yourself.”

Neither Atheist nor Saint, only human, desperately reaching for hope.

 

Monday prompt for dversepoetspub.com is “Prosery” exactly 144 words of flash fiction prose including the line “You will  love again the stranger who is yourself.”

Praying for the multitudes who suffer with addiction.

From Me and You to We

In symmetry we Move
Together searching unknown
Deep places of our soul

Immovable and cold
Each thirsty, yet defiant
Reaching for our own mirage

Twisted unity, unbroken
Furtively bound by time
A tightly woven tapestry

Sharp, slicing clean
Wounds below the flesh
Cries muffled in fury

Weightless surrender
In shimmering display
Unfettered and free to be

dverse is exploring “lost in translation” . Choosing 1 of 3 poems, derive your own translation from the original.

This is new for me, and I am audacious enough to take a challenge.

Octavia Paz (1914-1998) – Another Spanish speaker and more recent Nobel prize winner. Born in Mexico, he was a political activist, ambassador and essayist so that much of his poetry reads like prose poems, “written within the perpetual motion and transparencies of the eternal present tense” **

Two Bodies 
Two bodies face to face
are at times two waves
and night is an ocean.

 Two bodies face to face
are at times two stones
and night a desert.

Two bodies face to face
are at times two roots
laced into night. 

Two bodies face to face
are at times two knives
and night strikes sparks.

Two bodies face to face
are two stars falling
in an empty sky.

A Space In Between

I was mute
Then I spoke
No one listened

I withdrew
Then I wrote
To some, an imposition

Now I’m mute
Till I hear
The only voice that matters

Christ in me
Speaking clear
Drowning out the clatter

Often God speaks loudest in metaphor

dversepoetspub.com Quadrille for Monday. An exact 44-word poem. The prompt word is voice.