Look at those trees, will you, look!
Sun bursting into dazzling columns
and eucalyptus dripping its stringy
bark, drizzling its medicinal scent

Dragonflies stretch stenciled wings
Zephyr mambos with wild grasses
Sunshine camps out on shoulders,
the damp salty air curls our hair

We tumble into the sea’s embrace
to find that this is salvation and
the mountain expanse a cathedral
The ocean’s roar is its Te Deum

For mortal beings, a beautiful place
Voluptuous and wanton and willing
to be caressed, like Life, held close
never understanding the mysteries

Our existence, the sea-held mountain
We love them in our frailty, we grasp
these gifts until we can’t, until
letting go is just as it should be

© 2013, poem, Jamie Dedes, Photo – a Monterey Cypress (Pebble Beach, CA, USA) courtesy of rickpawl’s photostream  Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

The world just spent September focusing globally on climate change and climate action. Though the news isn’t great there are still those moments and places where we enjoy the beauty and peace of nature and a deeply sensed connection with the source of our being. Tell us through your poetry about your moment, your place and …

  • please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link
  • please submit poems only, no photos, illustrations, essays, stories, or other prose

PLEASE NOTE:

Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published.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, October 7 by 8 pm Pacific Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.

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.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights.  Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.

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Recent and Upcoming in Digital Publications Poets Advocate for Peace, Justice, and Sustainability, How 100,000 Poets Are Fostering Peace, Justice, and Sustainability, YOPP! * The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice, August 11, 2019 / This short story is dedicated to all refugees. That would be one in every 113 people. * Five poems, 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 * Three poems, Our Poetry Archive, September 2019

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

24 Comments

  2. Hello Jamie! Another thought provoking prompt – hope my submission makes the cut amidst these other wonderful pieces:

    The Maple at the End of my Street

    The setting sun filters
    Through your leaves
    Highlighting the new
    Yellows and oranges and reds
    I see you
    As I drive away
    Every morning going
    Through the motions
    That life is ok
    Even when it’s not
    You filter the beauty
    Back in my life

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. I haven’t had time to write a new poem( just started a ten-week Poetry School course)but here’s one I wrote a few months ago which I think fits the prompt.Trefriw is a small village in the Conwy Valley, North Wales.

    Church Window In Trefriw

    We’ve heard the Crafnant
    since daybreak.
    It’s chimed across pebbles,
    gurgled under the bridge
    beside the Woollen Mill
    and now, it won’t leave us.

    We’re learning its tune,
    transcribing it to memory
    while we explore
    beneath wooden rafters:
    stand in sudden stillness,
    before a small window.

    A small window
    stained with poppy red
    and summer-sky blue,
    its figures so graceful,
    and translucent
    we wonder

    if water rose up
    from the nearby river,
    held Mary and her Child
    in its flowing mantle
    and set them, smiling,
    into their warm stone niche.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. WHEN BUTTERFLIES DIE copyright IRENE EMANUEL
    What if
    butterflies die,
    no babies cry,
    birds don’t fly.
    What if
    rains don’t fall,
    cats don’t call,
    no sound at all.
    What if
    trees don’t grow,
    it doesn’t snow,
    cars don’t go.
    What if
    GOD is not there
    to hear our prayer
    and doesn’t care.
    What if
    GOD retires
    and the World expires?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. Respected Jamie Ji
    Some thoughts -hope they are worthy of the highly creative thought provoking theme-

    A beautiful place for  mortal beings would be
    the forests, let us for a while be nemophilists
    and haunt the woods, step on pine needles,
     hear nature’s soft rustling crunch  of love

     let the sunshine seep down from entwined
      embracing eternal friends of the verdant sea
      rooted to the inner essences of fertile Mother
      Earth’s endless riches of black gold firm holds’

      at the foliage edge, divinity reveals the unseen
      dome, its twinkling silver studded umbrella,epic 
    unmoved  whirling,unnoticed dissolving darkness-
      Komorebi  awakens ferns to whisper prayers

     so mortal brings can walk through a rainbow
     with  feet on velvet green, breathe freshness
    feed on fruit,hear  soft soothing sithurisms
    no hate or conflict or curfew or cutting bonds

     our mortal life  is love and beauty mystified
     infirmity overtakes desire, our werifesteria
     goes unsolved but in spirit we exist,witness
     miracles, alive in soul we succumb to eternity
                                                                                      

                                                                                      

    Liked by 1 person

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  6. A Dawn Chorus (Vacana 11)

    O, Lady of the Breath.
    how to arc in your air?

    A dozen or more tiny caves
    sing you into the world

    from the trillbudded barkskin
    volume and delivery

    a root that connects with
    its origin tree,

    broadcasts to my ears,
    territory songs,

    and chat up lines, a Saturday
    night on the town played out

    on a morning before the wormshop,
    home repair, teach bairns how to fly,

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  7. Inhale Dappled, A Perfumed Air,

    step through cast
    illuminated windows
    of tree crowns,

    birdsong lilts blossom fall.
    Key all senses keener.
    See claw hunt feather.

    Feathered mams rescue bairns
    from hungry talons. Bigger birds
    snatch fluffy kids from nests

    to feed their young. Beetles battle
    over territory. All fend, forage
    in this vision of quiet.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  8. ..no word..
    that feeling, that

    arrives unexpected from darkness, some winters’ mornings,

    opening the door to the sound of one black bran bird calling.

    track four repeated. that

    comes on waking finding peace and comfort bound in clean
    linen.

    arises with perfume, an uncertain memory.

    it may be chemicals, peptides in the brain as love, what
    ever the germ or warfare

    I find no word to describe, no random feather nor dust on
    my plate. pass a finger.

    that feeling of trimmed nails upon the keys pounding
    words and silences.

    while music plays. that feeling. that.

    syrup stings my tongue.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  9. ..wonder..
    rhythms of black birds ; black jack ; flap jack stream of consciousness

    these recollections ; another time eighteen hundred eighteen hundred …

    i wish i wrote like others with words of wonder full syllables, bells ringing, you know.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. greetings from LA thanks for the opportunity 🙂

    Ryan Mountain

    a young girl i was
    when i drove to the desert
    i took what Allen dropped
    when he was young
    like i was
    the Joshua Trees
    imperial yes they were
    tall a strong dark green
    some with arms bent up at the sky
    which by the way Sky did rain on me
    a supple velvety soothing rain
    i slipped a little higher
    the rocks they opened their slate stained eyes
    and the he snake slithered from their underneath
    the rain she smelled like new born clay
    the vitality of her holy droplets
    caused the birds and lizards to come alive
    in a jubilant resurrection
    at which time i had ten hands
    but i could still see my cut up shirt
    doused in the liquid of the day
    me thinks Dylan Thomas and i could have made love
    in dream of mercy a girl laughing with the crimson ants
    and the ashy grasshoppers orchestrated with their legs
    auditory melodious delight
    the horizon a throne
    golden
    filled with blue angels
    as i tilted my face toward the west
    the Queen Sun released me into sedation

    Liked by 2 people

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  12. SOUL FOOD

    Planted splat firm atop this green hill
    Taking time to return to the source
    A cloud or two, the occasional bird
    Higher peaks a shadowed backdrop
    Thankful miles from the muscle bustle

    (Raw cells, fibres dancing a frenzied jig
    Cringing under the whip of urgency
    Mad underlying insistence on arrival
    At all cost – lest the unthinkable …
    Their journey demoted to annoyance)

    Breathing, inhaling the plenitude
    Mere presence the sole attainment
    Destination attained and time to
    Inhale … relax … exhale …
    Enjoy the sumptuous display

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  13. Unlike the rose, whose life
    is all too short;
    whose beauty, transient,
    strikes the heart
    olfactory refrain,
    melancholic pang,
    intoxicating ache,
    caressing right brain

    you … you resist the tides,
    whose rhythms try to change,
    but never seem to wear you down;
    you bear them easily.
    The temporal perspective
    that measures your sojourn
    belittles our lives
    to appear as nought.

    You draw out the time
    to more than long,
    so barnacles and limpets
    can confidently cling
    to your immense foundation;
    testament to your solidity;
    our permanence is relative
    as it sits beside you, Rock.

    But how significant are we
    considering the Universe?
    By how much mega-time is
    it’s longevity, beside ours?
    And yet neither you, Rock
    nor Universe can judge,

    because

    there is no poetry
    in the cosmos
    without a human soul.

    © 2011 John Anstie

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

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