And it being Tuesday, here are the responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, Gone the Winter Gods for Those of Spring, July 17, which asked poets to write about a season or the seasons and so they do. From spring in Bulgaria to spring in India, from a pensive visit to a cafe in Los Angeles during a humid July to feast of seasons in South Yorkshire, from the sun in Côte d’Azur to rain in Dartmoor, from the promise of spring in San Jose (CA) to the seasons as metaphor and memory in Pakistan, the yearly devisions are weighted with sensual pleasures, rituals, reminders, and symbols.
This week’s collection is courtesy of bogpan, mm brazfield, Paul Brookes, Anjum Wasim Dar, Irma Do, Sheila Jacob, Dick Jones, Frank McMahon, Sonja Benskin Mesher, and Pali Raj.
Enjoy! And do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome. To those who’ve written to ask how to be published on The Poet by Day, participation in Wednesday Writing Prompt is the best way to introduce yourselves.
green green
ah, you won’t remember the sweet October when amber juice drips from the vines
and where does the little grape picker go on that greenest afternoon
ah, the sea got stormy today
little girl, shrink midst the swollen grapes quickly
because the goats’ hooves sing, ah, a joyful god and his dusty entourage,
and a green coluber in the sea of green
ah, you won’t remember the sweet October when you take a sip of juice
july evening warm humidly noisy
in the city i sit between Spring and Broadway streets
at a mall downtown where i’d like to fantasize Bradbury
could be found drinking coffee
looking to my left there are the kids joshing and cussing
rolling on skateboards zephyrs with iphones
to my right hipsters with credit cards today green means something else
micro chips smart chips designer chips vegan chips
i smile Mona L style and sip my Vietnamese coffee straight up
pigeons coo me out seductively with the waffle sound
of their aged wings dusty with the history of my time
here in this old new modern city
a tiny crack on the wall
by the fire department’s emergency pipe
holds my attention but i knit by brows
dainty lilac flowers
offered up to the most attentive student
the teacher dark green weed shows the little creatures
exquisite tiny intricate jewels luring in the bees
another universe within my urban home
i don’t like hot weather
sweat panting and stickiness
should only be for sex
but if the retiring sun hadn’t drawn me out
for the night i would have missed the buzzing of life
and random thoughts of HST soul madness and did JD really
shoot his ashes out of a canon
crazy kids at times trapped by the freedom of the mind
i’m working on an espresso now looking around
twirling my ankle like a cat’s tail
am i happy today i must be
today i’m not running
as much
My oak skin believes
it is spring, electric rhythm
pushes out long
yellow catkins
and small female flowers,
purple hairstreak
butterfly caterpillar food
A false spring in dendrites
in my wintered head.
My leaf-burst happens
next mid-May
not this end of December.
Watch my hawthorn buds blink,
new fresh green leaves cum creamy white flowers, Queen bumblebees pierce
nectar and pollen from my Spring flowers,
frogspawn wobble in my ponds, ditches.
Bluebells confetti my woodland
hear Chiffchaffs arrival ‘chiff chaff’
tops of my trees and Cuckoos, swallows,
house martins and swifts feathered return.
Small pair of step ladders
roped together
pink bucket
childs yellow chair
stood outside terrace
window await instruction
washing strung out
between red brick
terrace walls
and wooden fence lats
signs of spring
street bottom cold mist
like over grainy movie
photographic fault
greys out background
like floating
detached house
stands to one side
observes
with a disinterested point of view
not like our terrace
where neighbours hear through walls
or in entryway
our oven fan
flaps through boisterous
kids play football,
humpbreathed lovers at night
a gunning motorbike
beneath billows of surf clouds
walk against tide
in dappled sunlight
over tarmac sea floor
pass ash maple fronds
where marine call centre
talks bubbles
FYI: Paul Brookes, a stalwart participant in The Poet by Day Wednesday Writing Prompt, is running an ongoing series on poets, Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Connect with Paul if you’d like to be considered for an interview. Visit him, enjoy the interviews, get introduced to some poets who may be new to you, and learn a few things.
in cold, grief snow bound encapsulated
crushed fallen swept foliage separated
branches heaving moaning sighing
I , like the brave trunk stiff,contemplated
December’s last days, ending or drifting
to new beginnings, dreary evenings
what is to be celebrated, one is thinking
it is a time of gathering and blessing…
bloodshed blasts, death blows through
North East North West North South North
does not stop- by benumbing weather
death knows not barbed wire or border
why celebrate the coming of Peace when
peace is not belief,when strafe and strife
is here there and everywhere, then, do
do we really love or care for human life “?
Celebrate with joy in white and red
white is a shroud and blood is red
spirits rise, bodies lie, darkened sky
players play with arms’ held high-
I seek Peace and Holy Peace will come!
we pray and decorate honor and wait’
‘O People do not stop to Celebrate’ the
Gift of Life, let the Bells Ring, anticipate
bury the hate for black or white
world is a rainbow ‘ day or night
think stop think no one is winning’
Hark, I feel, Someone Blessed is Coming’
Know now the reason the time, not, is late’
Time to Be Happy Time to Celebrate , Celebrate
“POETRY PEACE and REFORM Go Together -Let Us All Strive for PEACE on EARTH for ALL -Let Us Make a Better World -WRITE To Make PEACE PREVAIL.” Anjum Wasim Dar
Thoughts on January 6
A Quadrille
My summer island beckons me
When the sun hides behind
Winter clouds. Her waves, trapped
In whispering shallows, softly request
My return. Her rocky shoreline
Curved in a waiting embrace.
Her salty scent of carefree
Days warming the frigid air.
Only 6 more months.
To purchase this little gem of a volume, Through My Father’s Eyes (review, interview, and a sampling of poems HERE), contact Sheila directly at she1jac@yahoo.com
SUN AND RAIN
La Croix-Valmer, Côte d’Azur.
By day we burn into our own
shadows. Crash-landed
on white sand, scoured
by salt, we rust and wither,
Once we were flesh,
now we are part terra cotta,
part dead leaves, all oven
dust. That birthright
certainty, cool water
falling, belongs to legend
lodged in rumour. Rising,
rising, the sun yells
in a blue room and
we drown inside
each other’s steam.
By night we slip
between cool covers
and we dream in green.
:::
Fernworthy Reservoir, Dartmoor.
Inside the gold-green heart
of rain we move like figures
in each other’s memory.
Directionless, we’ve lost
the certainty of standing water,
under a moiling sky, splayed
face down across the moor.
Now mighty blades of rain
have chopped the logic
of the hills into broken
language and we can’t read
the meaning of this world
without horizons. Taproot boots
are sucked between tussocks
and we stand, motionless,
mouths open, doomed beneath
our packs, bog men dissolving
back to salt and sinew.
Dick’s collection Ancient Lights is available through Amazon HERE.
AMBIGUOUS SPRING
The colours were returning: pathfinder celandine,
yellow as rich as butter freshly-churned,
pale infantry of hellebore and crocus,
racy flights of blackthorn, early bees.
A pelt of snow has caped the distant hills;
milk-white ice conceals. Now wind shrives skin,
uncorks a furl of rooks to larrick
in the heady draughts while buzzards
rise, their plangent calls ringing through the air
above the trees, at ease in their hunting spirals
or jousting, perhaps, in early season foreplay.
How will they fare tomorrow
when gales will drum and thump
and a waterfall sweeps downwards from the sky?
I will sow seeds, drink tea, wait until the storms
have clawed their way beyond,
judge the wisest moment to emerge,
to steep my hands in earth’s true wealth,
when sun and water have balanced
what the winds have weathered,
to sample,grit under finger nails, palms
dark-stained or smeared blue with clay,
to fondle the webbèd texture,
test, grain by grain, its tilth, sniff aromas
of leaf and loam, praise the work of worm
and microbe, frost and air, declare,
to no one in particular, that the land is ready.
Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings (This is her Facebook page, so you can connect with her there as well as view photographs of her colorful paintings.)
Blossoms and promise
Spring begins
Hopeful heart, who would now spoil a day
Winter is dead.
Sure, you can snuggle up *with*
a cup of tea and read
*I ain’t a bad guy*
What is it like?
Gone the Winter Gods for Those of Spring, a poem make an escape….yeah
I ain’t this year and I ain’t your fault.
Blossoms and promise
Spring begins ….
Recent in digital publications:
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet
* Five by Jamie Dedes, Spirit of Nature, Opa Anthology of Poetry, 2019
* From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems)(July 2019) * Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review (July 2019) Upcoming in digital publications:
* The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice (August 2019)
A busy though bed-bound poet, writer, former columnist and the former associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Levure littéraire, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, HerStry, Connotation Press,The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta/ Phor(e) /Play, Woven Tale Press, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, a curated info hub for poets and writers. I founded The Bardo Group/Beguines, a virtual literary community and publisher of The BeZine of which I am the founding and managing editor. Among others, I’ve been featured on The MethoBlog, on the Plumb Tree’s Wednesday Poet’s Corner, and several times as Second Light Live featured poet.
Email me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, reprint rights, or comissions.
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Rate this:
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
by 
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 
My phone unfortunately finds nothing “above this line.” I am reminded of SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson, which the library has ordered for me.
Sent from my iPhone
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Respected Jamie Ji
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank YOU, Anjum Ji.
LikeLiked by 1 person