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Soul Food . . . and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”  Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Here are this week’s responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, A Beautiful Place for Mortal Beings, October 2. After September’s justified global focus on climate change and climate action, we turn our attention to the beauty and peace that is still available and to our deeply sensed connection with the source of our being through nature.

The many gifts bequeathed to us by Nature are celebrated today with poems from John Anstie, mm brazfield, Paul Brookes, Anjum Wasim Dar, Irma Do, Sheila Jacob, and Sonja Benskin Mesher. We welcome, Ben Naga, new to our pages but a stellar poet with a considerable body of fine work available to sample via his blog.

Enjoy! and do join us for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt, which will post tomorrow morning. All are welcome to come out and play, no matter the stage of your career: beginning, emerging, or pro.

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

© 2019, Ben Naga

Welcome, Ben Naga!
Ben’s site is: Ben Naga, Gifts from the Musey Lady and Me. “Laissez-moi vous recanter ma vraie histoire.” Read his ABOUT. It is delivered in a poem and well worth your time to visit.

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

John . . .

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

© m m brazfield

mm’s site is: Words Less Spoken: Gen X’er chronicles the art form of living in the Angelino metropolitan environment through poetry, creative writing, art, photography, and culture.

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

© 2019, Paul Brookes

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.

© 2019, Paul Brookes

NEWS TODAY! –  There’s a lovely photo of Paul HERE for Wombwell’s Pride of Place Project and HERE is a link to a poetry reading Paul did that was recorded and posted on YouTube.

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.

Prolific Yorkshire Poet, Paul Brookes

The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Jamie Dedes

  •  Paul’s Amazon Page U.S. HERE
  • Paul’s Amazon Page U.K. HERE

More poems by Paul at Michael Dickel’s Meta/ Phore(e) /Play

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

© 2019, Anjum Wasim Dar

Anjum’s sites are:

“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

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
© 2019, Irma Do
.

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.

© 2019, Sheila Jacob

To purchase Sheila’s 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

..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.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

..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.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

Sonja’s sites are:

Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand 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.

About / Testimonials / Disclosure / Facebook

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

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A Beautiful Place for Mortal Beings, a poem . . . and you’re next Wednesday Writing Prompt

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.

About / Testimonials / Disclosure / Facebook

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

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Those Washday Mondays . . . and other responses to your last Wednesday Writing Prompt

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.”  Dylan Thomas

Here we are at Tuesday again, the wonderful day when we share poems submitted by diverse writers in response the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, January is on the Wane, September 25, which asked our poets to write a poem inspired by one written by another poet. I think you’ll agree they’ve done beautifully and created a smart little collection here.

This worthy collection is courtesy of Paul Brookes, Anjum Wasim Dar, Irma Do, Sheila Jacob, and Sonja Benskin Mesher.

Enjoy! and do join us for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt, which will post tomorrow morning. All are welcome to come out and play, no matter the stage of our career: beginning, emerging, or pro.

Bartholomew Street

after Ian McMillian’s Tempest Avenue

Harry half way down collects wood
for his fire, leave it out front
Leave out anything metal Gypsies at top have sharp eyes,

Stan, two doors down
wants his radiator gone.

Dave next door holds ladder
while I look at roof tiles
and shares homemade ale after.

Our roofers knew man who murdered
a man
at bottom.

I thought someone murdered
at top but our lass swears
he was only badly beaten.

Old microwave I put in our entryway has gone.
Gypsies know a good thing.

Old gent Tommy three doors down
quiet when his wife died last Summer.

Put thumbs up when I cleared
his path of Snow last Winter.

Pear tree in back garden bagged
up by them all when ripe
as too much for our lass and me.

From Paul’s new eBook As Folk Over Yonder (Afterworld Books, 2019)

© 2019, Paul Brookes

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.

Prolific Yorkshire Poet, Paul Brookes

The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Jamie Dedes

 

  •  Paul’s Amazon Page U.S. HERE
  • Paul’s Amazon Page U.K. HERE

More poems by Paul at Michael Dickel’s Meta/ Phore(e) /Play

O’ Beautiful Rose

after Jamie Dedes’ January Is On the Wane

O’ Beautiful Rose
O’ Dear Flower,
folded in invisible scents
tender covers softly protecting
the unknown,wrapped in curves
like hands,a praying pair
patiently serving in quietude.

O Dear Flower, resting
in a book, placed by love
making the page sacred to the touch,
words that rest,forever silent, till they meet
the eyes,of an unknown, bear the flaps and
caresses, of moving finger tips, as the covers flip,

O Dear Flower, you are a rose of many colors
budding, blooming, on bush and bowers
in sunshine rain or cool summer showers
spread on shrouds, taken to high towers

O’ Dear Flower’ how long can you stay
the fragrance radiate, the presence, comfort
the love share, If only you could, for ever be
and like the words on the page lay for me to see

Life is but a short sweet fragrant dream, the page
is turned, new words appear , new buds yearning to bloom

The Besieged People of Occupied Kashmir.
Chinar Leaves Have Withered

© 2019, Anjum Wasim Dar

Chinar leaves have withered

after Jamie Dedes’ The Doves Have Flown

chinar leaves have withered,
willows weeping, bend low with grief, still are the ripples in the Dal Lake, silent deserted citadels, not a tiptoe on the wooden floors- how many are alive inside, maybe none-

chinar leaves have withered

rustic orange clusters merging with green foliage, quivering with joy,sensing the cool caresses of approaching fall, but not this year,they descend one by one, remain soaked in blood of young and old,

chinar leaves have withered

who is blinded today? whose body draped in green and white, dumped in the ugly pit, ‘what is the cry ‘freedom ‘ for, freedom from death, to death’ ?locked in a living grave

chinar leaves have withered

silence of terror, on snow peaks frozen, empty streets filled with fear armed, prisoners
in perils of forced captivity, what horror humans can do with humans.

chinar leaves have withered

helpless am I in fetters, in action enchained , in emotions pained, I weep like the willows
in spiritual agony grieve , for mercy I pray , I die with each passing day…

as hope with each falling leaf, glissers.

© 2019, Anjum Wasim Dar

Anjum’s sites are:

“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

The Best Foreplay for Husbands

after the poem on pg. 71 of Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

you wrap your fingers
around the sponge
scrubbing
until the sink is empty
this
is how you make
me change into my lace thong

you brush his teeth
and read his favorite bedtime story
twice
while making the voices of the characters
this
is how you make
me light the scented candles

you quiz her in spelling
and listen to how another girl stole her idea for her science project
you come up with a better science project idea
and promise to help her with it on the weekend
this
is how you make
me lie in bed
skin puckered
in love
in anticipation
thinking i am the luckiest woman in the world

© 2019, Irma Do

Irma’s site is: I Do Run, And I do a few other things too . . .

Those Washday Mondays

after Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays

By the time I came downstairs
Dad’s shirts were washed
and pegged on the garden line.
Mum lifted the boiler lid.
Steam rose from a hissing cauldron
and she grabbed scalding sheets
with a pair of wooden tongs.

Her hands were red and damp
and sweat darkened her armpits
as she passed me my breakfast.
I closed the kitchen door and ate
in the front room but still heard
the mangle’s cranky wheel
and squeak of its rubber rollers.

Mum wouldn’t buy a spin dryer
even on monthly instalments.
I turned up the music on my radio
and finished my bacon sandwiches.
What did I know about scrimping
and denying; about the sacrifices
she’d made in love’s unsung name?

© 2019, Sheila Jacob

To purchase Sheila’s 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

..neutered..

after Thomas Hardy’s Neutral Tones

oil pond mirrors the darkness the november

day. sun draws white against the grey

this leaf lays on earth

there is no god

not hungry nor otherwise

you look at me straight and ask the past

and briefly I say & say there is no god

you did not smile nor shout you are the deadest thing

dead down . no smiling despite birds gone by

on greasy wings .i remember your look

your face

drawn grey as the mourning dove

that remind

for me there is no god

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

Sonja’s sites are:

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.

About / Testimonials / Disclosure / Facebook

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

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January Is On the Wane, a poem after Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz … and your next Wednesday Writing Prompt

From the Rose Garden, Central Park, San Mateo, CA

“Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.”  Friedrich Nietzsche

January Is On the Wane

after Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

January is on the wane leaving behind early dark
and champagne hopes for the genus Rosa. 

Garden roses want pruning now, solicitous cultivation.
Layer shorter under taller, drape on trellises 
and over pergolas, the promise of color and scent,
climbers retelling their stories in a ballet up stone walls,
an heirloom lace of tea roses, a voluptuous panorama
rhymed with shrubs and rock roses in poetic repetition.
Feminine pulchritude: their majesties in royal reds
or sometimes subdued in pink or purple gentility,
a cadmium-yellow civil sensibility, their haute couture.

Is it the thorny rose we love or the way it mirrors us
in our own beauty and barbarism, our flow into decrepitude?
They remind of our mortality with blooms, ebbs, and bows
to destiny. A noble life, by fate transformed in season.

Divinely fulsome, that genus Rosa, sun-lighted, reflexed.
And January? January is ever on the wane.

A Una Rosa

Rosa divina que en gentil cultura
eres, con tu fragrante sutileza,
magisterio purpureo en la belleza,
enseñanza nevada a la hermosura.
Amago de la humana arquitectura,
ejemplo de la vana gentileza,
en cuyo ser unió naturaleza
la cuna alegre y triste sepultura.
¡Cuán altiva en tu pompa, presumida,
soberbia, el riesgo de morir desdeñas,
y luego desmayada y encogida
de tu caduco ser das mustias señas,
con que con docta muerte y necia vida,
viviendo engañas y muriendo enseñas!

Translation HERE

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz
(Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana)

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

I thought we’d do something a bit different this week. I hope it’s something everyone will enjoy.  Instead of a theme, write a poem in the spirit of one that you love and was written by someone else.  Put your poem in the comments section and reference the poem you’re working off of.

  • 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, September 23 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.

About / Testimonials / Disclosure / Facebook

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