Category: Photography

The World In Lockdown

On beaches blocked and empty
Oceans still will drum.
Seagulls once searched on this shore
For bread crumbs. They can find no more.
The sun turns slowly bright
To fix the morning with daylight
Discharging darker dreams of night.
The gulls arise and soar.

Linked to dVerse Quadrille. De Jackson (aka WhimsyGizmo) is hosting with the word “fix”.

Linked to Cosmic Photo Challenge where Dale offers the theme of “The World In Lockdown”.

Also linked to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. I noticed this past week that the beaches are still closed, but the boardwalks are open. I do prefer walking on the boardwalks’ hard surfaces than on the soft sand, but the sand with bare feet washed by the waves is nice too. Things will change in ways I can’t imagine perhaps for the better and the thought of that makes me smile.

Beach Closed

My Summer Space

They didn’t have to hurry
Running through the glen.
Perhaps I didn’t see them,
Nor me, those forest men.

But if you didn't see them
go on, proclaim me mad.
A summer place, a happy face,
Cannot be all that bad.

I may as well be loony.
I’m isolated, too.
I smile and learn to whistle
These lock down summer blues.

Linked to the Cosmic Photo Challenge where Dale offers the theme of “my summer space”. My summer space would have plants and places to walk.

Linked also to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. I didn’t know what to write for a poem for Dale’s prompt and so I just let my mouth run (which is what I normally do). The result helped me keep smiling and hopefully it didn’t make others cringe too much.

Many Leaflets

From an Unusual Angle

While looking here
Or searching there
Am I now near
Or now nowhere?

Alone and standing,
Silly breeze,
Trails and landings
Restful ease.

Autumn green
And yellow blooms,
Sunsets seen
From prairie rooms.

After searching did I find
All that's best I left behind?

Linked to dVerse Quadrille. Lillian is hosting with the word “silly”. Also linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar in the final hours of the prompt where I am hosting with the theme of fourteen lines.

I am also linking this post to the Cosmic Photo Challenge where Dale offers the theme of “from an unusual angle”. I took the top photo on a trail in Colorado Springs. I don’t know why I decided to take a view of the trail while kneeling. Perhaps I liked the railings. It now looks like an interesting angle. The bottom photo was of a prairie in Northbrook, Illinois. I pushed all of the potentially interesting detail to the top right portion of the picture, not how I would normally look at the scene when walking through the park.

I am also linking to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. Some friends decided to continue our monthly breakfast virtually on Zoom. I thought it was odd, but then I have heard of a couple recently who decided against postponing their wedding and instead do it virtually. So I guess it wasn’t all that odd after all. It made me smile to attend our virtual breakfast.

On Thursday at dVerse Meeting the Bar, I will be featuring poems with only one constraint that the poem have fourteen lines like the one posted here.

Yellow, Green and Sun

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Though not the sort of Gods that I
Would bother to believe in,
They raise their silence to the sky
Rejecting useless reasons why
Without pretending they can fly
Point edges up uneven.

From a distance they look small
And red against the range.
They shock me. What was once so tall
Stands dwarfed as nothing much at all.
What rose majestic seemed to fall
Where wind and rain bring change.

Mountain heights may help me see.
Foothills praise more modestly.

Liked to dVerse Poetics where Lillian is hosting with the theme of describing a place we can travel to in our minds during in this lockdown.

The top photo I took from within this beautiful and well-maintained park. I took the bottom photo at Palmer Park a few miles away. At the top of the photo just right, off-center, below the mountain range are these unusual rock formations called the Garden of the Gods.

In the distance is the Garden of the Gods below towering Pikes Peak

Symmetrical

There's symmetry as night greets day
And day greets evening’s light.
The virus flushed our breaths away.
It’s time to win that fight.
If I’m around when years go by
Remembering this time,
I’ll inhale breathing if I may
And offer one more rhyme.

Linked to Cosmic Photo Challenge where Dale offers the prompt “symmetrical”.

This past week I also read Kim M. Russell’s Joe and Nelly and wrote an Amazon review. I highly recommend this story about two children and their families during World War Two in London.

Also linked to dVerse Quadrille. Mish is hosting with the word “flush”.

I am also linking to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. Below are two more or less symmetrical versions of me wearing a T-shirt mask. These masks don’t take a lot of skill or materials to make (even I can do it). The broccoli sprouts that failed last week now sprout without molding. And so with two successful projects to brag about I have no reason not to smile.

Same Mask Different T-Shirts

Friendship

There is so much I do not know
And more that I won’t ever do.
Repent. Stop grabbing. Let things flow
Away if need be when they’re through.

See which odd ones stick around
Old friends I didn’t know, then found.

Linked to dVerse Open Link Night where Lillian is hosting.

I took these photos some years ago at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. I don’t think I will ever visit that park again since it is far away and we no longer have family living there, but these photos like old friends stick around in my memory.

Trail at the Garden of the Gods
Trail at the Garden of the Gods

Order

There’s order somewhere in this garden space.
I tuck the sheets and toss the blanket tight.
I wash the dishes daily, wipe my face
To carry with me courage for the night.

Dreams help order what I ought to do 
Summarizing stuff with morning light.
Today there may be some I shall get through!
I’ll plant them. Watch them grow and check their height.

This all depends on trust. That’s hard to find.
I know that if I did this on my own 
I’d often go astray or fall behind.

Who is that hoeing offering his aid?
I tend to think I’m on this walk alone,
But we’re both planting dreams though some may fade.

Linked to dVerse Poetics where Laura Bloomsbury offers the theme of “order” featuring Elizabeth Jennings. My poem is based on thinking about Jennings’ sonnet The Garden. I took the photos some time ago with different seasonal views of the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Garden Scenes
Garden Scenes