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“Blessed Are the Sacred Folk” and other poetic r esponses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

These are the responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, August 2, Hot August Nights. Enjoy and be sure to support and encourage these intrepid poets by liking, commenting and visiting their blogs. Thank you for joining us. Tomorrow another prompt will post and you are invited to come out and play and share your own prose or poetry.  All work shared will be featured in The Poet by Day the following Tuesday.

The Honeymoon’s Over

Spring’s promise of high summer
has passed, the lush greens gone,
and now less vibrant. Parched.
Stale somehow. Disappointing.

The promise so much sweeter
than reality; the heady warmth;
sun filled days and mirage haze
the balmy heat, hot naked nights.

We should enjoy this time, by rights
but if it brings us closer to the fall;
the Autumn of our life, if that is all
then can we not enjoy the cooling

promised winter chill, another world,
its yielding to the blacks and whites
mysterious greys, the icy haze,
the freezing hibernation, preserving.

But no. An earlier Spring, that comes
too soon, and sooner still the melting
Arctic ice. One day, there’ll be no more
dreaming of a summer honeymoon.

© 2017, John Anstie (My Poetry Library and FortyTwo)

29 days .

he came early today. screaming round the garden.

a gentle feel, all chill and autumn mist already,
with us only mid august, yet we know the signs the feel,
the smell of the tide in the air, here.

we panic as the small boy grows, as times passes.

they say quicker now, yet i am not so sure.

i went to town yesterday, saw the signs of another
world. stood in the bank some time, only one
assistant these days.

the sun colours the clouds with empathy.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCS – Fine Art and Illustration) and (Sonja’s Drawings)

. 107 just a summers day ..

it is like loving a ghastly child

she said.

looked down,

noticed her puffy

ankles

in the heat.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher ((Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCS – Fine Art and Illustration and Sonja’s Drawings)

Ghost Holiday

Briefly open the earth gate into your head dark,
allow your kindly dead through the gate to be with
you, the living, let them sup ale in their old pubs,
if the places are not boarded up, demolished,

allow them to enter their old homes. Their rooms left
as they
were when they died, or find their goods given to
charity, sold, some kept, their homes lived in now

by strangers, who chase them off, crash pots and pans too
loud for the dead. So they wander streets as homeless,

uncared, they find your home and photos of themselves,
relieved that someone still treasures their memory.

Soon, respite done, they return by the earth gate to
your head dark, until their next holiday among
the living, to see, again how time has moved on.

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

Blessed Are the Sacred Folk

who plough
who prepare the earth
who plough with a wide furrow to bring water from the river
who plant seeds
who trace the first ploughing, reploughing as first did not work
who harrow
who dig
who weed
who reap
who carry the grain
who store the grain
who share the grain
who share their good fortune with us, the dead

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

Open the Grain Store Between Your Thighs

world of
dark in your underworld
full of your dead ancestors
warm food for the cold times
riches kept snug
allow a kiss
allow a lick
I should not let the dark out
for long
I shall plug it
so after winter you can give birth to heat
bring out small bawling heat to help

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

Gather Harvest

offering

rain to earth
hard labour harvests
first fruits for winter

counsel

uncut grain holds earth
in secret counsel as seas
do not hold sea floor

conversation

scythe interrupts grain’s
conversation with its earth,
ears no longer hear

ruin

ruin oversees cornfields
must be placated with fires
in field, hearth and head

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

The Heat of Hot August Nights

The longing for warmer weather and sunny days
falls somewhere between Winter rain
and Spring flowers beginning to petal

but it all has given way to a heat so heavy
that it settles upon her August nights
as though weighted a substantial burden

it permeates every living thing and even
insects take refuge long for cooling air
causing the synergy of habitats once again

for the fine line between longing and needing
takes her back to the petals of flowers and green
days with a cool breeze a paramour of the sun

© 2017,  Renee Espriu (Renee Just Turtle Flight and Inspiration, Mimagination & Creativity with Wings, Haiku Halburn and Art)

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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Hot August Nights … and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

After winter, the usual home repairs and gardening prep. On the East Coast in March crocus pushes its way through crusts of snow. On the left coast Trader Joe’s has yellow daffodils for sale. Come mid-April the IRS will demand wrists slit for things defensible and indefensible. We eat the days. Flowering bushes burst into bloom and finally the cheery air of farmer’s markets, street fairs, Shakespearian festivals and concerts in the park on hot August nights. We are rosy-cheeked with warm-weather pleasures, full of life and keeping house at the edge of Infinity . . .

SF_Oakland_Bay_Bridge_from_the_air

©2013, poem , Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Photo credit ~ the view from the Oakland Bay Bridge Sam Wantman via Wikipedia under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5, 2.0, 1.0 license

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

What are you thinking and doing these summer days and hot August nights? What are your summertime rituals? Perhaps you are doing something that is unique to the month of August. Let us know in poem or prose. If you feel comfortable, share your work in the comments section below or leave a link to it. All shared work will be published in The Poet by Day next Tuesday.

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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“A Weather Bouquet” and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Here are the inspired responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, July 26, 2017, orange fires at daybreak. I know you’ll enjoy this collection featuring the work of poets: Gary Bowers, Renee Espiriu, Sonja Benskin Mesher and Paul Brookes.

A Weather Bouquet

Sunny days and dispositions,
Cloudy shower-stalls and skies,
Rainy reigns and piled munitions–
These make heartleaps, sadness, sighs.

Eddies, tiny or galactic,
Swirl our joy and fear and grief–
Posit: hailstorm prophylactic:
Yields some hail to the Chief.

© 2017, Gary W. Bowers (One with Clay)

. the weather man .

i said it were a lovely day, i did not mean the weather.

i talk about the feeling, the mood that did not change, all day,

little tasks that please. planting chives in treacle tins, ironing pyjama pants,

and cotton handkerchiefs.

he warned me the rain would come, and when it did

heavy, we tucked in tight here, enjoyed the darker

green.

soon, the rain will stop.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, R.C.A.)

. weather man .

knows the wind will change,

the birds will fly.

while i know nothing.

©2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, R.C.A.)

The Divorce of Heaven And Hell

The excess of roads leads to the wisdom of palaces.
The wrath of tigers are wiser than the instruction of horses.

Multi gendered I hang wet washing
on the horse nebula. Iron 3d to 2d.

I have domestics with myself.
Air turns blue and galaxy neighbours
hear my gusty rant and rain rave

Bang on thin wall between
dimensions. Our star children

weep beneath my screams. Remind
myself never to drink and argue again.

Tell my other half it needs to pull
its weight. I can’t be aware of all

that happens or needs doing.
Neighbours are different sides to me.

Our star children turn from
wild blue things to yellow average kids
to red in the face before their fire dies.

I must stop falling out with myself,
as it is always me deals with the fallout.

I multi task a weather of constellations. I cope.
I’m multi versed. Too many different sides.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow)

As Billpayer

Universe looks at the upkeep
of stars and planets,

heating and lighting costs,
orbital maintenance,

monitor of natural entropy
scratches its head, goes for a walk,

amongst birth and death, waits
for unexpected comet of a solution.

Tighten Orion’s Belt, slow down growth,
non interference, allow the inevitable.

Cosmic gusts are harsher in austerity.
It must calm the arrival of storms.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)

The Lost Sock

The universe tries to find a lost sock.
Life is unbalanced with only one.

It is awkward over tiles, one foot cold,
the other warm, as if half in, half out the house.

Or in front of a fire, a part of you blisters,
a part freezes, a summer one side, winter the other.

How does one sock get lost in the wash?
Is it rammelled up in bedsheets?

No one else to blame when your not a multiverse.
Universe looks after itself in a bedsit of stars.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)

Capricious Magician

Unpredictable
in ‘nature’ is she
dropping hints
with sun rays
peaking out
between
clouds

apparitions held
as fading shadows
become
cloudy
mirrors

and the next moment
a downpour of
rain filling gutters
a deluge
down
drain
spouts

a disappearing act
slight of hand
the earth drying
cracks in
hardened
clay

a capricious magician
prone to laughter
a comic relief
dancing
across a stage
of her own
making

© 2017 Renee Espriu (Renee Just Turtle Flight and Haibun, ART & Haiku)

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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orange fires at daybreak, a poem …. and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

She’s at it again, capricious Universe
She never stops cutting capers
Playing at blizzards back East, bopping
Like an adolescent at a school dance

Camping out on Venus and Mars
She tosses stars across the night sky
And lights orange fires at day-break
Warming flowers into jewels and pastels

When you see them in yellow
You know the Universe is laughing
Pink is her Cosmic “I love you! I do!”
Yep! Here she goes again and …

Now in California we can
Hear the splatter of rain on the roof
Fat drops to reconstitute dry earth
Wet is the promise of summer and
crops of  almonds and artichokes
avocados, oranges and cherries

© 2011, poem, and photo, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

“Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” is a quote often attributed to either Mark Twain or his contemporary Charles Dudley Warner, a newspaper editor. Tongue in cheek for sure, but imagine a personhood, a Universe expressing itself as weather, making a show of her peculiarities. How would you characterize her? Mercurial or consistent? Mean-spirited or generous? Does she seem random only to turn out to be intentioned?  Is the Universe a she or a he? Tell us in poem or prose. If you feel comfortable to do so, share your work or a link to it in the comments section below. Work shared in response to eaerch Wednesday Writing Prompt is published in The Poet by Day on the following Tuesday.