WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT April 26, 2017 ~ Climate change is on our minds these days – perhaps more than in the past given the regime – and we are feeling one with Mother Earth and all her creatures and gratitude for the people who marched on Saturday. What pictures come to mind when you think of our home? How do they make you feel or respond? Tell us in prose or poem . . . and several readers took the challange creating work that rewards your time spent.  Enjoy! … and do visit their sites. Get to them better and let them get to know you.

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Wonderlust Rain Forest

Approaching fading blue skies, we wandered silently through the

Costa Rican Rainforest on our private boat tour. Reaching peaceful estuaries

quietly seeking the wildlife that inhabits this forest.

Silently listening to nature at play, we soon reached the end of our destination.

Unspoiled waters filled with hope for natures future.

2017©Isadora DeLaVega

Isadora DeLa Vega is featured for the first time on The Poet by Day. Since I’ve enjoyed her creativity for years, I’m pleased to have her response to last Wednesday’s writing prompt.

Isadora blogs at Isadora Art and Photography, A Place for Visual Creativity. She began her career in her late thirties after raising her children. For twenty-eight years, Isadora created award-winning silversmith art jewelry. When she retired due to failing health, she knew that she still needed to be creative. She decided to explore photography because she is inspired by and passionate about luscious colors. She says, “They’re the manna that feeds my soul.”  Before long she realized that writing and poetry were good outlets as well for conveying her thoughts. Her long-term goal is to one day publish a book with her photography and quotes.

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and

in the wobble & bulge
of the hurtling universe
I am the sound of blackbirds
and the flutter of a butterfly wing

the shifting shadow on the summer lawn
and the tall tree wind getting up;
all this fixes me for the moment
along with the ancient memory

of two maternal relatives we visited
in Wimbledon Park—it seemed quite often
though it might have been but once or twice…
their lawn turned into a pathway

round a herbaceous oblong
to follow which seemed a minor mystery—
one that transposed many mysteries
to lead to this moment now

darkening shadows and squawk of pheasant
and beeflies above the mouldering sundial

© Colin Bundell (colinbundell.com) from Colin’s The Recovery of Wonder Hub Editions 2013 (Note: Wimbledon Park is a suburb of London.)

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Tarnished Goods

The fox follows her along the byway to reach untouched forests
those forests unfettered by time and pristine oceans devoid of human touch
and each time always she passes freeways littered with a garbage landscape
the fox glances at bottles and fast food wrappers collecting
on roads under construction on a continuum of future whys
where the smell of black tar invades with stinging and burning
she should be accustomed but wrinkles her nose in disgust
as does the fox now her shadow trusting she will reach a destination
not concrete and black asphalt now covering the richness of earth
and does she still hope windows rolled and closed will be enough
enough to keep her safe or will they be unable to block
out the constant drone of the noise of a civilized world
a world that is one built impinging on nature’s habitat
one adding insult to injury and becoming a macabre graveyard
to endangered species & the fox wonders if he will be next
but he cannot bring himself to let himself be absorbed
into track homes swallowing up citrus groves as the raccoons have done
stealing into the night to rob garbage cans of their next meal
this becoming an unnatural habitat as it has for bears and possum
and he feels oddly fortunate that tigers and lions do not live here
but he can still hear them all screaming in pain underpinned with sorrow
and the fox listens as he follows and always the level of noise increases
increases exponentially with every tree cut down and concrete poured
and the fox feels his shadow growing less as theirs becomes more
where claustrophobic habitats are multiplying housing for a rising populace
and the need to reach the forest to be able to stare in awe at the ocean
propels them down the road and she knows she is like the fox
and that no amount of polish will shine and bring it all back
to bring it back to a time delegated to past histories before her
before the fox became her shadow on a journey to find survival
the only solution being the ability of technology to merge with nature
to be a part of the answer in preserving the beauty here long before us
long before becoming tarnished goods in the midst of climate change
long before the fox became her shadow and she became the fox’s shade

© 2017 Renee Espriu (Renee Just Turtle Flight)

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. reimagine the world .

leave your ideas at home.
on the hatstand. forget all
that you have learned, things
may not be so.

all people have thoughts, so
yours is not so precious now,
elder.

she told me that even things
at home have changed.

looking round we see they have.

reimagine the world, forget
the learning, start again,
then we may understand, or not.

king david.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher
***

. stitch. search .

we will not have blankets, if there are none, take the old rags, layer , stitch and stitch by hand till fingers bleed.

work is steady, absorbtion as if the outside world is ended. looking up find it has not. stitching can be rhythmic, and never mind the capitals. other words confound. birds beat the window.

the questions came that i cannot answer here or ever. did not count this time only the final one. noticed the first ones are now undone. the wrong knots.

maybe we need to check our numbers at the end to see if one or more are missing. ? we need to count them carefully, one side then the other?

work along the coast with thread and diligence. gather wools, layer carefully, we shall have warmth this winter.

eight thirty till five. it could have been easy, yet there were issues of the electronic kind meaning wasting time with wires and connections.

cover the surface. it takes time.

© 2017, Sonja Benskn Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA)

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Your Damned Anthropocene

“We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”

O, your presumption did not account
for the delicacy of flesh and bone,
the death wish of the human soul.

You had an impact on my future,
I’m not sure I forgive you.
There is your clear signature
in the fossil record , an observable
sudden decline
in the abundance and diversity of plant
and animal life. Perhaps we should
define your time from here.

Did it start when we traced your pulse
at the start of the Industrial Revolution?
Your carbon-dioxide pulse that underlay
what you thought was global warming.

O, your dreams to guide mankind towards global, sustainable, environmental management. How could you see
the juggernaut was unstoppable?

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow) From Paul’s forthcoming chapbook The Spermbot Blues, OpPress, Summer 2017

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THE WORDPLAY SHOP: books, tools and supplies for poets, writers and readers

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We continue with the current recommended read: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Left, right or center – American or not – it’s a must read.

LESSON THIRTEEN: Practice Corporeal Politics  “Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.  Make new friends and search with them. ” Prof. Snyder,  On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century