Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

Race—Ovi Poetry Challenge

I lost myself with some disgrace.
The mirror cringed to see my face.
I didn’t think it was a race
until I knew it was.

But that was then and now is now.
With soil turned beneath the plow
the seed was planted—God knows how—
and everything was changed.

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Ronovan Hester’s Ovi Poetry Challenge this week offers the word “race” as inspiration. Posted also at Poet’s Corner.

Strain—Six Sentence Story

For Stan the idea that anything might exist put a strain on what he could philosophically tolerate. Asserting himself he told his students that there wasn’t a single good reason why any of them were here.

But all of that was before the accident, the emergency room, the coma and the visitations. Things started to click when one visitor with attractive horns offered him a full twenty years in exchange for his spirit.

Stan wished he could have told his students what he discovered before his life support was removed. He consoled himself with the thought that they would find it more credible if they heard it from someone else.

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Denise offers the prompt word “strain” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Independence

Depending only on the Lord
I took His word, a two-edged sword,
but left the demon’s sparkling hoard
I used to wish was mine.

That change of life I won’t forget:
within reborn without regret,
with joy the well, with river wet
which flows with living water.

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For Ronovan Hester’s Ovi Poetry Challenge. Posted on Poet’s Corner.

Melancholy—Six Sentence Story

The hostility between Steve and Bobby was miraculously resolved during the funeral of their older-by-twelve-years sister and Fred’s wife, Lily. During Fred’s eulogy for his wife he handed Steve and Bobby separate boxes containing mementos of their lives from infancy through grade school that Lily saved having watched over them many decades ago. He then handed them envelops with the words “Last Will” written on them containing a letter asking her two brothers to stop fighting with each other.

Touched by a sense of melancholy while going through the box he received from Fred, Bobby apologized to and forgave Steve who seeing this as a sign of weakness announced to all at the funeral that this long-overdue confession coming from the likes of Bobby was a miracle (which it may well have been).

In spite of that remark peace between them lasted until Steve insisted moments later that he get credit for being the one who apologized first which everyone at the funeral knew was a lie. Through the resulting commotion Fred called for silence and handed the brothers another envelop containing Lily’s second Last Will which simply read, “Didn’t I tell you two to STOP FIGHTING?”

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Denise offers the prompt word “melancholy” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

1 John 2:9
He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.

White Flower

Security—Six Sentence Story

Neither Timothy nor Martha had a clue how to grow stuff as they looked at the good ground in front of them having enough stones to make a small mountain. Some neighbors reminded them that when winter came they were going to starve. Every time they heard the word starve they giggled without knowing why.

Come summer the crops grew. Come harvest time the yield was a hundredfold. Come winter Timothy and Martha, ignoring the neighbors’ security concerns, opened their doors to those hungry enough to stop by to make sure no one in the village starved.

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Denise offers the prompt word “security” for this week’s Six Sentence Story.

Matthew 13:23
But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

Field of Flowers