It’s not something that I don’t know
Though what it is is hard to say.
It’s not something that words can show.
Wordiness is not its way.
It’s not that it is not not there.
I take a breath and let it be.
It’s not that I can point out where,
But everywhere it calls to me.
Text: Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar. Bjorn is hosting with the theme “via negativa”.
Photos: “Below Are Shadows”, above, and “Morning Light Touches Dark”, below.
Although day does its best to delight
In the darkness my mind can escape
With the Sun giving rest to the night
Like a dream while the stars stay awake
When its setting is done
Retains full mystery
And the night turns to fun
And whatever may be
Then the Sun knows what’s done was done right.
Of the love that was done for its sake.
Text: Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar where Paul is hosting featuring the form Contrapuntal Poetry. Here the limerick about the day hopefully adds counterpoint to the italicized one about the night.
Photos: “Maple Leaves in the Sun”, above, and “Calm Afternoon Waiting for Rain”, below.
They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.¹
This pair of stones once pointed tall, but now they’re near the ground. It doesn’t matter where they lay. May our ears hear what they would say with love without a sound.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”²
Text: Linked to Sue Vincent’s fallen #writephoto prompt. Also linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar. Amaya challenges us to take two quotes from two different sources. Use one to begin the poem and the other to end it. I might be stretching this bridge building to think I can meet both of these prompts with one post.
Photo: This is Sue Vincent’s photo provided for use with her #writephoto prompt.
By the dunes along the shifting beach
Water’s waiting within dreamers’ reach.
Take this path or choose to take another.
Hear the secrets silence has to teach.
Text: Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar. I am hosting today.
The challenge is to write a rubaiyat or some variation on that form. The example here is in iambic pentameter, four lines and rhyming AABA. There is only one rubai. Variations for this challenge could be anything the poet doesn’t mind calling a “rubaiyat”.
Photos: “Lake Michigan Shore”, above, “Along the Way”, below.
Words to sharpen out the white,
Offer some solidity,
Make me search for light when night
Teases with futility.
Text: Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar where Paul hosts with the theme of “ars poetica”.
Photos: “Facing the Morning Sun”, above, and “Trees at Home”, below.
I saw her
In the living room
Before I
Heard she died.
Wipe away the guilt and gloom.
Go with peace inside.
Text: Linked to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays and dVerse Poetics where Amaya is hosting featuring the shadorma poetry form.
Photos: “Light in Snow”, above, “Snow Up Close”, below.
Snow wraps white.
Sky beams blue.
Winter’s night–
Calmly true.
Text: Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar. I will be hosting and the theme is brevity with poems five lines or less. There are no other constraints. The pub opens at 3:00 PM EST.
Photos: “Sidewalk and Freshly Plowed Snow”, above, and “Winter Sunset”, below, linked to Frank Jansen’s Tuesday Photo Challenge with the theme “in my life”.
The Earth wears cloudy sunglasses today
And smiles as warmth gets through to us today.
The wind sleeps all the afternoon away
And trees have nothing much to do today.
The Earth eclipsed the Moon last night and may
Bare trees eclipse the Sun’s dim light today.
Flying birds herd like a song. They sway.
I wish my camera would turn on today.
Forgive that camera. Now, enjoy their play.
You saw them, Frank. That’s all that counts today.
Text: Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar. Paul is hosting with the ghazal form as the theme. I am also linking this to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays.
Photos: “Winter Sun Through Trees”, above, and “Earth Wears Cloudy Sunglasses”, below.
If hope should have small penguin wings,
We’d doubt how well it flies.
We want perspective on what’s true
To filter out the lies.
Alternatively, we may feel
It’s wings are fit to soar.
No matter what we think we know
We’ll trust that it knows more.
That’s why we let the present be.
Hope may fly through gray,
But when we know we’re good and lost
We hope and find some way.
Text: Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar. Jill Lyman is hosting asking for a response poem. This poem is a response to Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers”.
Photo: “This bird knows I’m watching it”, above, and “I don’t blame this bird for flying off”, below.
One fall when leaves were gone the clearings came. Those worth the haul were taken, but the rest would have to carry on. As if a flame had come to burn this forest’s ancient best, the parent trees, the wisdom they possessed, the ground turned bare as youthful family trees preserved their hold on Earth tenaciously.
Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar with Bjorn hosting on the theme of silence. I formatted the Chaucerian stanza as prose to highlight where I would expect a reader to enjoy the silence. I use line breaks to mark the completion of metrical patterns not to indicate silence although sometimes I run out of breath and need to pause before I carry on.
Photo: “Thinning” by the author.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 