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Dreaming of the Moon … poets respond to last Wednesday’s Writing Prompt

LAST WEDNESDAYS WRITING PROMPT: What would be your fantasy about the moon? Tells us in poem or prose and share the link to the piece in the comments section below if you are comfortable doing so that we all might read it. This is light one. Enjoy!

Renee Espiru (Renee Just Turtle Flight) said this prompt was timeley for her. She’s now a great-grandmother.  Congratulations, Renee and family. She writes about that experience with this poem.

I DREAMT OF THE MOON

I dreamt that I met you smiling
long before you were born

that I told you in sweet loving
to the moon and back we’ll go

that we held hands briefly soaring
seeking the beauteous moonscape

we traversed stars in the milky way
in meteorite showers of gold we played

we walked along dazzling moon beams
silken threads our carpets in space

too soon you left me in wonderment
life’s cord cut a spiraling empty place

& you sped quickly down to earth
faster even than Halley’s comet

that day I finally saw your birth
I remembered our dance among stars

marveled at so much of me in you
that your hands held stardust imbued

© Renee Espriu

And from Paul Brooks (The Wombwell Rainbow). Among other things, Paul says he does the things he does because ” I want to make sense of who I am, where I came from and where I live. An impossible but engrossing job.” Poetry can certainly be self-revealing.

The Moon

in the man
is transgender.

born of a collision
of bodies revolves
about its mam

tied by gravity’s apron strings
though mam does not wear aprons
as they’re not hip

pulls at her tides,
waxes on and off
wanes off and on

stepped on in pools,
admires our longing
sickles into plumpness

slight to fat as if pregnant,
gives a cheesy smile.

© Paul Brooks

From Sonja Benskin Mesher. Sonja tells us, “My studio is in a medieval longhouse in Llanelltyd, North Wales surrounded by mountains, lakes and rivers, and also very near to the sea. I moved here in 1993 to change the quality and direction of my life. This ancient place affects work profoundly, with its space, peace and sense of freedom.”

It was here that the work started, and I have worked full time as a visual artist since 1999, after an initial period of study of Art & Design.

dance under the moon

shall we place our heads together
and hum,
shall we twine our arms
and drift.
shall we lean together,
and hold each other up.

shall we slowly
dance under the moon
quivering in the frost
and starlight

shall we live the moment
forgetting time,
and opinions,
our choice, no reason.

or shall we slowly
bleed and die?

© Sonja Benskin Mesher

Kudos Sonja, Paul and Renee, intrepid poets.  Well done. Thanks for participating and sharing. ♥

The recommended read for this week is A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into Formal Imagination of Poetry by Robert Hass (b. 1941), an American poet who was our Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Awardand shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005. In 2014 he was awarded the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.

In A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into Formal Imagination of Poetry Hass brings to bear the same senisbility that marks his poetry with force, clarity and eloquence. From Rome in the time of Caesar to the Renaissance and our own times, Hass breaks down poetry, examining its components from a postmodern perspective. The book is ranging and intense. It’s over four-hundred pages – informed, witty, erudite – something we can go back to again and again.  Never a boring moment. It’s all about love.

By shopping at Amazon through The Word Play Shop and using the book links embedded in posts, you help to support the maintenance of this site. Thank you! (Some book links will just lead to info about the book or poet/author and not to Amazon.)

The WordPlay Shop offers books and other tools especially selected for poets and writers.

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wearing down stone, a poem

the sun came out of hiding this morning,
peeked in on me, disturbing my sleep
persistent, like a question nagging
as I play on the verge of knowing, of finding
of touching and wearing and loving from the
seat of my soul, perhaps my heart, a place
from which to think and be and I am no lonelier
than any tree anchored to the earth, reaching

outside a bird builds its nest, steadfast in its
construction, ants on the march for food
people going to work, the roar of the freeway
incomprehensible, building and rushing ~
on this earth you earn your keep, how tidy
and how untidy, this way of forming a self
by working against the rhythms of the heart,
which wants nothing more or less than flow
flow, like the rivers flow, wearing down stone

© 2017, Jamie Dedes

In honor of Derek Walcott who died a few days ago, the recommended read for this week is The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013.  Walcott first poem was published when he was fourteen and this book was published in his 84th year. Never more than now has the world needed the grace, wisdom and universality of his poetry. This is a must add to your poetry book collection.  It doesn’t include the epic Omeros, also recommended, but it does include some of his earlier work that I have not seen included elsewhere.

By shopping at Amazon through The Word Play Shop and using the book links embedded in posts, you help to support the maintenance of this site. Thank you! (Some book links will just lead to info about the book or poet/author and not to Amazon.)

The WordPlay Shop offers books and other tools especially selected for poets and writers.

THE WORDPLAY SHOP: books, tools and supplies for poets, writers and readers

LITERATURE AND FICTION oo Editor’s Picks oo Award Winners oo NY Times Best Sellers

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Crossing Brooklyn Ferry … me and Walt …

800px-69stpier5bbtjehSundays, summer ferry rides,
crossing the rough wide Hudson
from Brooklyn to Staten Island,
from one brave shore to another,
stalked by a colony of seagulls,
the boat frothing white waves in
its habitual and deliberate path.

I’d collect the cold green spray in
my warm hands, framing the tidbit
of raw river in the cup of my palms,
a child-self awed by the pleasures,
by whimsy and an affinity, organic
and ecstatic, like spindrift whorling
as if a dervish from boisterous waves

“And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.” Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

© 2013, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Photo credit ~ the 69th Street Pier: before the Verranzano Narrows Bridge was built, a ferry service ran between this Bay Ridge pier and the St. George Ferry Terminal in Staten Island.The photograph was released into the public domain.

In honor of Derek Walcott who died a few days ago, the recommended read for this week is The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013.  Walcott first poem was published when he was fourteen and this book was published in his 84th year. Never more than now has the world needed the grace, wisdom and universality of his poetry. This is a must add to your poetry book collection.  It doesn’t include the epic Omeros, also recommended, but it does include some of his earlier work that I have not seen included elsewhere.

By shopping at Amazon through The Word Play Shop and using the book links embedded in posts, you help to support the maintenance of this site. Thank you! (Some book links will just lead to info about the book or poet/author and not to Amazon.)

The WordPlay Shop offers books and other tools especially selected for poets and writers.

THE WORDPLAY SHOP: books, tools and supplies for poets, writers and readers

LITERATURE AND FICTION oo Editor’s Picks oo Award Winners oo NY Times Best Sellers

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If the man in the moon had a voice, a poem … and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

Grape-Shotlet’s flee to the moon
to that so improbable moon
hanging in the sky, like a
bubble of blanc de noir, sweet ~
pouring into the dark and dusty
corners of life, honoring its vow
to keep our nights alive with light and
filled with the moon man’s wise old eye

oh, what stories could he tell, would he tell,
if the man in the moon had a voice
and we had the ears to hear

© 2013, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Illustration ~ from a 1915 magazine, a lady taking a ride on a champagne cork, public domain

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

What would be your fantasy about the moon?  Tells us in poem or prose and share the link to the piece in the comments section below if you are comfortable doing so that we all might read it. This is light one.  Enjoy!

In honor of Derek Walcott who died a few days ago, the recommended read for this week is The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013.  Walcott first poem was published when he was fourteen and this book was published in his 84th year. Never more than now has the world needed the grace, wisdom and universality of his poetry. This is a must add to your poetry book collection.  It doesn’t include the epic Omeros, also recommended, but it does include some of his earlier work that I have not seen included elsewhere.

By shopping at Amazon through The Word Play Shop and using the book links embedded in posts, you help to support the maintenance of this site. Thank you! (Some book links will just lead to info about the book or poet/author and not to Amazon.)

The WordPlay Shop offers books and other tools especially selected for poets and writers.

THE WORDPLAY SHOP: books, tools and supplies for poets, writers and readers

LITERATURE AND FICTION oo Editor’s Picks oo Award Winners oo NY Times Best Sellers