“The winter seemed reluctant to let go its bite. It hung on cold and wet and windy long after its time. And people repeated, “It’s those damned big guns they’re shooting off in France– spoiling the weather in the whole world.” JEast of Eden
Summer arrived a bit ahead of schedule
with dry air, stifling heat, persistent drought
and languid children, too hot and too sleepy.
The weird winter weather put a damper on some crops,
but others arrived earlier than usual …
So here I am, foraging for blackberries in April.
At the neighborhood grocer’s, they’ve arrived,
their deep purple tamed, trapped in clear plastic boxes,
stacked by pears tossed on a wayward rumor of autumn
Originally published in The California Woman
© 2014, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; photograph courtesy of Sage Ross under CC BY-SA 3.0.
WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT
What are your everyday observations of the fallout from climate change. Or, maybe you don’t think climate change is for real. Tell us why.
Share your poem/s on theme in the comments section below or leave a link to it/them. All poems on theme are published on the first Tuesday following the current Wednesday Writing Prompt. (Please no oddly laid-out poems.)
No poems submitted through email or Facebook will be published.
IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.
PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.
Deadline: Monday, May 13 by 8 pm Pacific Standard Time.
Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro. It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning non-judgemental place to connect.
You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.
Hello Jamie! Squeaking in again…I’m on a Lai Poem streak: https://iidorun.wordpress.com/2019/05/14/climate-schlimate-a-lai-poem/
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Hi, Irma. I will add it in in a little while. I didn’t see this before. Have a wonderful day and poem on … 🙂
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Thank you so much, Jamie! ❤️
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https://poeticoceans.wordpress.com/2019/05/14/for-respected-g-jamie-dedes-the-poet-by-day-wednesday-writing-prompt-i-wonder-why-clouds-cry/
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Jamie, here’s the link to my poem on Starlight and Moon Beams 🌼
https://starlightandmoonbeamsdotblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/12/letter-to-a-bluejay-written-for-the-poet-by-day-writing-prompt-may-8-2019/
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Hi Jamie 💜🌼🙋♀️
I have a Letter to a BlueJay.
Peanuts no longer lure
your cries I used to hear,
I long to see your aquamarine,
your cerulean presence.
It is the time of year, yet
no elder firs, nor ancient
maple lure you back to nest.
Perhaps you’ve found
a cooler place to rest
with your cousin Cardinal.
P.S. they say:
“THE DEADLY EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING HAS BEEN METICULOUSLY RESEARCHED. IT’S STILL NOT TOO LATE BUT THE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY IS QUICKLY CLOSING.”
Wishing you all the best and hoping you will be able to return soon.
Yours J.G. 💔
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Hi Jamie,
Here’s my third response:
The Cost Is Prohibitive
to refreeze the poles,
bury carbon dioxide beneath the oceans,
to save our fellow animals extinction,
the death of insects.
We have to watch the pennies
to manage this extinction event.
The cost will be too high.
We could bankrupt ourselves
to save the earth.
Is it worth becoming paupers
to save this planet?
Count the pennies in your purse.
Count the lives in your hands.
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.. clearing the jungle..
google, i get pictures of the amazon and related places,
being scoured, and a dead
horses head.
he said that some are lying on their ages.
I expect sir if you were there, so would
you.
the politician.
the jungle in calais.
sbm.
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😔🌸
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#jungle
‘so i looked for images on clearing the jungle’ , said the bear
sadly.
‘it is where we live, then they mow it down, with
no regard, just bulldozers’
yes.
‘so where will i live now?’
i watched him curl up.
sbm.
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So poignantly written. Thank you for sharing this wonderful piece of prose Sonja 💗🌹
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blessings from LA thanks for the opportunity ❤
Title: Werdin Alley
cold
concrete
the walls
are brick and
yet have witnessed many things
the stains of age are in the page
of the city’s palm the angels speak and demons kick out in laughter
i walk on thorns the books are long and i can’t see anything that breaks the spell of misery’s iron grasp
the worried sunrise comes and shines a light that fades into the cracks of time in the monuments to lethargic progress and flowers bloom in screens of doom and shots are too quickly taken
unlike Tokpella this alley way has finite space and we all walk in crippling slumber John Wayne won’t get me here
amongst this man made thunder the blood is thin and made of ashes
as i lay the east escapes from me
Pahana you are over due
canyons fell down
life out
of
balance
https://wordslessspoken781842219.blog/2019/03/24/werdin-alley/
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Thank you and Yes! Blessings! 🙂
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💜🌼
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Hi Jamie,
Here’s my second response:
The Annoyance Of Flies
Is the thing I miss most.
A buzz of irritation landing
Like a single tickle
On the skin,
Not even a continuous tickle
Then the awful thought of where
It landed last where it accumulated
Potential disease so you swat,
And it returns and returns
Till now when it never returns.
And spiders die, birds die.
Never to return. The annoyance
Of things that will never return.
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So easy to relate too and humourous, yet to sad to imagine. Thanks Paul 🌹
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grieving the eternal season of humanity’s climate change.
What is Climate
temperatures boil in hot headed shooters
caring ices in well financed legislators
floods pour into memorial services
droughts claim childhoods
man/woman/ somewhere in between
right/wrong/somewhere in between
family/stranger/somewhere in between
leaders/liars/ somewhere in between
freedom/fatality/ somewhere in between
protector/predator/ somewhere in between
school classroom/shooting gallery/ somewhere in between
future/funeral/ somewhere in between
climate change / everywhere
climate change / nowhere
climate change / always in between
deb y felio
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🌹
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…early summer…
we noticed it that day and found it omninous.
february 2019
the sea is quiet as we have never seen it
sun as hot as it gets
like summer
they gloried in it
the bathers
the media
we watched
while the ice melted.
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thanks Jamie
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fickler
weather fickler
than a fratboy
teaser tickler
doff yer hatboy
pack maniacal
if you’d venture
through varietal
storm’s indenture
witch by threesome
micro coven
preheat gleesome
solar oven
then go breezy
cool and steady
due to easy
whorly eddy
species halving
oceans rising
ice sheets calving
ill advising
earth the icebox
earth the griddle
close the spice box
solve the riddle
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I love the rhyming and the play on words. It’s whimsical, then suddenly it hit me and I read it again. Amazing write 💜🌼
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Thank you, Jen. One way to make a horror story more horrific is to use the sheep’s clothing of whimsy. One of the most horrific things I ever read was the final chapter of HANNIBAL by Thomas Harris. It describes travel and adventure with a companionable companion. She has been altered from who she was at the beginning of the novel, Stepford-Wife style, but worse, since she was molded from the original.
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You’re very welcome Gary. Perhaps I should try a little whimsy 🌹
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Hi Jamie,
Here’s my first response:
Your Damned Anthropocene
“We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”
as Stewart Brand said, and you agreed.
O, your presumption did not account
for the delicacy of flesh and bone,
the death wish of the human soul,
even in this supposed transhuman age.
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?
And as we move our minds
from this body to that,
we do not lose the terrors of being lost,
the night sweats of our own death.
(From my collection “The Spermbot Blues”, Oppress, 2017)
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I love this blackberry poem – such good imagery. And I smiled with each little unexpected twist.
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Thank you, Pat.
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