800px-Ripe,_ripening,_and_green_blackberries

“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.” John Steinbeck, East 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.

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Poet and writer, I am a former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently, I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

27 Comments

  4. 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. 💔

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  5. 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.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  6. .. 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.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  7. #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.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  8. 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/

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  9. 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.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  10. 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

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  11. …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.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  13. 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

    Liked by 2 people

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      1. 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.

        Liked by 2 people

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  14. 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)

    Liked by 2 people

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Thank you!