Colored Textures

Imagine how you'd see in darkness
With little for the eyes to do
Then feel the texture of spring colors
Daily gifts of red and blue.

Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme “the textures of your life”.

Also linked to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. My smile this week comes from memories of spring colors at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Poppies
Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile

Weekly Smile

We spent Sunday afternoon at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The day was warm, bright and full of fall colors. The thought occurred to me that having happiness may not always be possible, but being joyful regardless may be.


Linked to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile.

Beehive
Trent P. McDonald’s Weekly Smile

Smoke and Mirrors

Yesterday’s enlightenment
Becomes today’s delusion.
Smoky mirrors give a show
Then charge for their confusion.

I trust. What else is there to do?
Perhaps the smoke will clear
And should that need a miracle
I’ll wait for it right here.

Linked to dVerse Poetics where Amaya is hosting with the theme “smoke and mirrors”.

Circles of Change

Memory is a circle of love that’s not always pleasant. It allows us to experience the present so we can take action moving toward the open future. It offers a passionate place to stand. The present unties the circle giving us the opportunity to spiral that remembered past into a new direction while memory weaves it all back into another circle.

That probably makes no sense.

The painful changes I have experienced through my life have been to watch parents, and others, get sick, emotionally and physically, understanding and misunderstanding these things as caused by environmental, agricultural, medical or dietary mistakes I once thought of as progress. It’s not that it was all wrong. It just needed some kind of correction that didn’t make sense to me earlier. As we let the circle untie and spiral forward there is no reason not to trust that we will do our best to add what we can to make it, in spite of everything, more beautiful.

That probably also makes no sense, but it does to me, until it doesn’t, but that’s when I can look forward to the heartbeat opening the future once again.

HAPPY PUMPKIN ORANGE
AUTUMN CHANGES MAPLE RED
SPIRALS ROUND AND ROUND


Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme circles.  I am also linking to dVerse Haibun Monday where Merril D. Smith is hosting with the theme changes or transitions.

Photos: “Pumpkin Circles”, above, and “Pumpkin Spheres”, below.

Pumpkin Spheres

Inside

Inside is where it all gets real.
Despair destroys the dance:
Feet won’t move. Then comes that song
That lets forgiveness sing along
To give us one more chance.


Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme “inside” and to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays.

Photos: “Inside the Chicago Botanic Garden”, above, and “In Up Close with Sun Rays”, below.

In Up Close with Sun Rays

Frank

The name means “free”, or so I have been told.
I share it with my ancestors as well.
May freedom bring its blessings to us all—
Forgetting not the smallest one of us.


Linked to dVerse Poetics. Amaya Engleking is hosting with the theme to take our names and write about them.

This Thursday, I will be hosting Meeting the Bar at dVerse with the theme of iambic pentameter in general. This poem is an example of iambic pentameter used in blank verse.

Photos: “Pumpkin Pile”, above, and “Orderly and Free”, below.

Orderly and Free

Forgive and You Won’t Have to Remember to Forget

While walking I recall whom I once was,
Some child, perhaps, more often someone who
Did not do what I now would do, because
At that time that was not what I thought true.
Was that child only me or was it you?
Defiled and broken, not worth much at all,
I catch it in my arms and break its fall.


Text: Linked to dVerse Poetics. Jilly is hosting with the theme of giving twisted adages. I twisted the adage “forgive and forget”. I am also linking this to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays since the poem was inspired by her four-step practice of forgiveness.

Photos: “Rays and Blue Circle on Green”, above, and “Room to Grow”, below.

Room to Grow

 

Miracle

Forgiveness is a miracle that we
Might not deserve, but it comes anyway.
Before it comes we doubt and skeptically
Confuse forever with some years delay,
Or maybe decades, centuries–or days.
But when it comes we’re awed to feel it bring
The peace that lets us breathe, and breathing, sing.


Text: Linked to dVerse Open Link Night. Grace will be hosting and the pub opens at 3:00 PM EST. I am also linking this to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays.

Photos: “Geometry”, above, and “Up-close Crystal”, below.

Up-close Crystal

Because

Because a yellow road is there
We follow hoping it may lead
To lands beyond our present where
Our dreams may plant a fertile seed.

I would like to grow some brains.
The tin man wants a heart of gold.
The lion wants his fears restrained
And Dorothy would just go home.


Text: Linked to dVerse Poetics where Michelle Beauchamp offers us the challenge to pick a character from “The Wizard of Oz” and write from that character’s perspective. I picked the scarecrow.

Photos: “Bridge”, above, and “Trail”, below, taken at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Trail

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