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

Fourteen Lines

We hope we built it on the solid stone.
Earth that would get dizzy makes things wave.
We used what we were given, staying brave,
Though walls might fall and we’re left all alone.
We did avoid the sandy, shifting shore
Licentiousness had offered in its hand.
We chose perhaps unjustly the well-planned
When legalism offered frowning chores.

Looking high we see dark skies above.
The morning brings us color from the sun.
We built our best, remained in spite of doubt
Talking from our hearts to only one,
Walking on the waters of his love,
Confidently breathing in and out.

Linked to dVerse Open Link Night where Kim, Writing in North Norfolk, is hosting.

I started focusing on poems with fourteen lines. Here is an attempt at a Petrarchan sonnet.

Lake Michigan

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

Food As Art

Pumpkin piles rising high
Pointing to the blue fall sky.
Going up perhaps a mile
Or just enough to make me smile.

Linked to Cosmic Photo Challenge where Dale offers the theme of “food as art”. I hope those pumpkins or squash taste as good as they look. They are from two different fall displays at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Also linked to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. One unexpected thing happened this past week. I realized I have now re-seen all of the Pink Panther movies including the not so great ones. There’s nothing left to watch. That made me realize that I will have to crawl out of my comfort zone, take a breath of fresh air, and find something else to risk watching. And that made me smile.

Another Pumpkin Pile

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

Birds, Bugs and Bees

There go the birds and busy bees
As I disturb them walking by,
Stalking sometimes on my knees.
They rightly feel the urge to fly.
They know I’m there and don’t care why.
Mosquitoes on the other hand
Come closer and with gusto land.

Linked to the Cosmic Photo Challenge where Dale offers the prompt, “the birds and the bees” with “all the varieties of our feathered friends and with all bees, bugs and creepy crawlies allowed”.

Also linked to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. I am trying to sprout broccoli seeds, but they seem to mold in the mason jars. Solution: keep trying! One thing did work. I was able to make a mask (of sorts) out of a t-shirt. I put the t-shirt over my head and then raised it up over my face. I use the sleeves to tie it in place behind my head. And that success, even if the broccoli sprouts so far haven’t worked, made me smile. Thankfully I don’t have to go out much.

Also linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar in the last hour for the prompt for seven-line poems.

They're Not Dumb They Know I'm Watching
They’re Not Dumb They Know I’m Watching

Morning Thoughts

One hundred years like one have wiped away
The former present from this ancient past.
There’s haunting mixed with fragile peace today
That spreads with some wild wind and travels fast.
We wonder how long all of this will last.
May somewhere, fresh with time, there be a place
Where I can pause concern to kiss your face.

Linked to dVerse Poetics where Bjorn is hosting with the theme of “plague, pestilence, and pandemic”.

On Thursday I will feature poems with seven lines. They don’t have to be Chaucerian stanzas as this one is. The only constraint will be that the poems have seven lines.

I found the following link to Barbara Steisand singing Somewhere on the KATiE MiA FredericK!iI blog. It lifted my spirits and so I am passing it on.