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“. while in october .” … and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

I’m delighted to host Kakali Dos Ghosh, Renee Espiru, Paul Brookes and Sonia Benskin Mesher today. Between them they have almost covered a year in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, Portrait in February, September 6.  Read . . . enjoy . . . and please join in tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome.

#Autumn’s blaze in September #

Ablaze is my hamlet ,
Sheeny it is with autumn ‘s color in September ,
Bounteous it is along azure blazing firmament
with dotted aerials ;
A ravishing secluded garden it is ,
with border less kash dandelions  in skyline ‘s shine ;
A whisper -levitating through ravines and deep gorges ,
An inkling creeping through the cerulean kiss -curls of the deep bay ,
smearing the mysterious realm of twilight and moonbeam ,
casting  a gentle kiss to a conch -cell in dormancy ,
on the glittering sand chest fondling a  golden rivulet ,
enunciates the inhalant of Devi Durga ;
Ample shiulis loving the hardes ,
The goggle of the stubborn kingfisher in the Eastern hills ,
The red specked butterflies ,
Clink of anklets of a maiden solitary ,
Everything -everything is just to light up ,
Its a durbar to love ,
to kiss ,
to  thrill ,
and to worship the Goddess the mother .

© 2017, Kakali Das Ghosh

December Passion

the Fall brought her to me warm and soft
with dark brown eyes and tiniest hands
reminding me nine months prior to the
month of December when passion ignited
fervor between cotton sheets and darkness
transforming cold into heated pleasure
where in the aftermath holidays came
filling the kitchen with baking of pies,
sweet sugary cookies warm from the oven
& the promise of love lasting a lifetime

© 2017, Renee Espriu (Just Turtle Flight and Inspiration, Imagination & Creativity with Wings, Haibun, ART & Haiku)

April

1. Flo’s Day

Perhaps thas a thought I’m boss
only of fragile bunches, cocker;

but I also overlook tilled fields.
If crops have flowered well,
threshing-floor is stacked;

if the vines flowered well,
there’ll be wine; and fruit.

Once blossom nipped,
vetches and beans wither,
and thy lentils. Wines also bloom,

stored in great cellars in jars
a scum covers their surface.
Honey is my gift. I call bees,

to the violet, and clover,
and grey thyme.

I charge youthful years
to run riot with robust bodies.

Tha wears colourful togs, mucker, walk around with flower bouquets in thee fist,

your neck or hair wreathed in flowers. Tha scatter lupines, bean and vetch. Homes
scented by large purple Lilacs.

Go to races, or hunt deer, goats
and hare, enjoy bawdy plays and mimes.
Tha dance, sup and eat a feast
of roasted Lamb, homemade breads, fresh

and roasted spring vegetables, fruits, nuts, pastries. Give fresh cut flowers to tha neighbours, lay them on tha closest’s grave.

2. Victory’s Sacrifice

These are victories

fresh green shoots, leaves and flowers,
woodlands heady scent of wild garlic ,
bird song and bleating lambs

wild daffodils appear alongside the river
smaller and more delicate,
trumpet shaped flower a paler yellow.

kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, gannets, fulmar, shag and puffin return to seacliffs

blackthorn blossom a froth
of clustered white flowers
on thorny branches
before the leaves burst bud.

curlew’s soft, bubbling call,
Ring Ouzel’s a blackbird
with white bib blasting
out of the heather

emperor’s, orange and yellow
day-flying moths, eyespot patterns
on their four wings, struggle
from cocoons on the moors.

I sit and down a sacrifice of golden ale
sunglint on pint glass, a fine sup,
thankful another winter’s
deaths and distress worked through.

3. White Lady

Crowned white lady with flowing hair,
and fiery shoes, carries a spindle
and a three-cornered mirror
that foretells the future.

For nine nights before May Day,
chased by Wild Hunt Winter,
hounded from place to place,
she seeks refuge among villagers.

Folk leave their windows open
so she can find safety
behind cross-shaped panes.

Implores a farmer she meets to hide her
in a shock of grain. He does.
next morning his rye crop
is sprinkled with grains of gold.

© 2017, Paul Brookes  (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

. november.

describe the moment when walking

through the garden wind whips by.

look up the sky is full of leaves flying.

wonder and be joyful at all that there

is here.

do wet leaves blow as good as dry?

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

.september.

i did not want to get involved, nor be noticed.

particularly, nor impress.

yet you said you loved me, never mind the diagnosis,

mirror image.

so that was done.

dusted.

they came in differing aspects, by now I did not

want to get involved, nor did i.

remember I told you that I do not fall

in love?

we were in the garden.

this is not a mystery, just reality.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings) 

. while in october .

stand back to spite the craving,

look on as from afar.

leaves fall.

people, some write hymns & mantra

others watch tv, not the news.

oh no not the news, the truth is too

depressing, a bit near the mark.

good to live gentle, bites of reality

to flavour your safeness.

leaves fall.

with gratitude. the bakers has

closed as has the dress shop.

a side table will be convenient.

while children are in hell , Aleppo.

leaves fall.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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Portrait in February, a poem . . . and Your Wednesday Writing Prompt

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there’s a portrait in February of percale sheets
and the tempting rondure of warm shoulders
tucked under a rosy duvet and late mornings,
coffee in bed, playing your hips like the strings
of a harp, the rhyme of a true love’s honor,
soft, the whiff of spring, the meadow violets
their heart-shaped leaves and felicitous flowers
promise of summer peace in damask gardens
wealth of silver roses, tart lemons, frisky mint
finger tip the faded hillock of hair on your neck
and let go of all that is false and mean for this –
the warmth of our ardor, the trust in our kiss

© 2017,  poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

Take the characteristics one specific month – any month that you like – and turn it into a sensual poem … and let’s keep it tasteful please. If you feel comfortable, leave your prompt-inspired poem or a link to it in the comments section below.  All shared work will be featured here next Tuesday. The deadline is Monday night at 8 p.m. PST.  

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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“The Waters of Life” and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Wonderful responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, August 30, your wise owl eyes. I’m delighted with these works from Kakali, Sonja, Paul, Iulia and Mark and know you will be as well. Enjoy, like, comment and encourage these intrepid and imaginative poets. Visit their sites and get to know them better.

This week Mark Lanesbury has joined in with a profoundly lovely piece and as always with those new here, I’ve included a short bio by way of introduction.

Another prompt will post tomorrow and you are invited to come out and play.

The Waters of Life

Life and all its hardships, the rivers we do dare
Traveling dangerous waters, captaining its glare
The mastering of the winds, the swells of our pride
The holding of our tiller, for there is nowhere else to hide
But if I could but show, the beauty that dwells within
The reality in this path, built from where we’ve been
We see so much in our wake, but only through our fear
All the while on lookout, glancing to the rear
So grab that tiller firmer, know through this gale we go
That the sails of this journey, need this truth to blow
Find the hearts compass, point it as a guide
Hold it with gratitude, for in there you know you’ve tried
So seek out all your glory, venture to every port above
For within that travel far and wide, is a journey full of love

© 2017, Mark Lanesbury (Healing Your Heart, a manual of life from within)

MARK LANESBURY: My search for meaning in life. Going through the ups and downs in life trying to come to terms with that ongoing question that we all have…’is this it?’. And the process I took to finally understand that I’m a package and most of my life I had been playing with the wrapping, not realising that further in was this incredible present just waiting to be held, felt, listened to, understood and integrated into who I was to become. After recognising this part of myself, spirit asked that I put what I had learned somewhere that others may gain from it and help their journey just as I had also been helped to find that present within.

# Resurrected Quietude #

Scintilla of firewood I had kindled last year in your fireplace,
Celebrated its return last night to my destiny;
My fuzzy keekers,
My languid -feverish corpus,
My throbbing toes;
Were in most spectacular finds for thou,
In the dale of eclipse;
Unguarding my state
essence of my wise owl eyes,
Resurrected years after,
From the cinder of my mystical conjecture;
Like a phoenix;
The most spirited one -the Almighty resounded through my crinkled bosom;
Leaving abaft a lingering instant;
Immersing me beneath the rear of his wavy quietude.

© 2017, Kakali Das Ghosh

Once Them Lasses Start To Spin

with distaff and spindle whorl,
another year of sweat and effort
to break the stubborn sod
in the fields begins, so lads,
this day only, play the fool,
burn their flax and tow,
and lasses, while we laugh,
scurry round with water,
dousing our flames.

Virgin, mam, and crone, and present,
fate, and future, and spinner, alloter,
and unturnable are the stick
that holds flux of the flax,
delicate web of their clothes,
spin their unspun blood, breath,
bone and sinew and event
in a thread from underground.

Their spindle is a wooden rounded rod,
that tapers toward each end,
twists into thread, story,
fibres it pulls from
the distaff, the imagination.

The whorl is a stone weight,
fitted onto the spindle
to increase and maintain
the speed of the spin,
pace of the story,
twist of the imagination.

Spindle and whorl
spinner controls
suspended from the thread
that is being spun.

Worlds and stars spin,
use force and gravity,
to “turn” one thing,
into another.

Spindle and whorl
create through movement,
spinner at the centre
of be and become.

Once the lasses start to spin
with distaff and spindle whorl,
another year of sweat and effort
to break the stubborn sod,
while the threads twist.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

The Sky Is Food

The sky is food.

Above iridescent coral canopy of trees
let us throw nets of birds
to catch the fish of clouds
the spider balloons
aeroplankton

aphids in the currents and eddies
cross the atmospheric bridges of gusts,
dead cells in clouds and ice
morsels for migrants in the swim
through rivers and waterfalls of air

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

..grey..

I wish to say that I do not mind the grey,

dark over lakes, morning mists, my hills,

my window shows graves, the quiet ones

**

the colour comes later, in the studio.

the land reclaimed, is bolder now,

energy splashes in orange.

colour comes, from friends in conversation,

music and sounds, and i eat them

with hunger.

© 2017, Sofia Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

..illness..

is a short word in varying degrees.

a slight one, can be alleviated with
unecessary treats, parfum , curling
round in soft places.

lift the spirits with little things, be
glad it is not a more serious form
of the word.

i drove the road yesterday, it
is such a pretty place.

© 2017, Sofia Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

:: the pool of tears ::

from where comes the love,

comes the pool of fear,

the fright of interrogation,

guilt,

i hear.

from where comes the mourning,

late afternoon,

and evening,

comes the spirit,

and singing,

dancing, ringing.

i hear the bells,

the crows,

the chaffinch,

and it shows,

my hearing.

from where comes the whistling,

comes the pool of tears,

the laughter we hear.

here.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

The dual nature of clouds

A sponge to filter light and wash the pavement
A hammer to bang my head
And rise my blood into my ears
So I could see thunders and lighting shows before my eyes
A preview of the storm to come

The dual nature of the clouds
The dual nature of the light
The multiple nature of the human beings
An artist work of art
A dual nature artist
Both God and Flesh
Just a matter of perspective
A free will down to the subatomic level
And up to the clouds

© 2017, Iulia Gherghei (Sky Under Construction)

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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the grandmother stone, a poem

at the medical center you put your ear
to the trunk of a birch and listened to my heart
while i roasted potatoes in a snowed-under parking lot
and managed the effects of a shrinking brain

when i heard the door to the crematorium slam shut,
i found myself floating on waves of heat that flayed my skin,
mom held me in mourning and sang Salve Regina
(she was slightly off-key)
but i found the grandmother stone you left in my hand
it pulled me back to the earth and the snow

i heard you say you savored the taste of my blood
in the kalamata olives you ate the day i died
i listened to doves cooing and watched the wind
wrap silver filigree around tree branches

the morning was crisp and fresh
the others came with arms full of flowers to say goodbye
but your arms were empty and heavy with love
i decided to live

© 2017, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY