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A writer is so like a spider ….

On Facebook, there’s a video making its way around Facebook that gives us a view of a spider at work on his web. As I was watching it just now – fascinated, though spiders are not my most favorite creatures – I thought how like a writer this little guy is. He starts to spin his web without a thread in sight. In effect he spins on faith. It’s a faith very much like ours when we pick up a pen or sit down at the keyboard. Often we don’t know what the words will be, how the story will end, or what is the best cadence and flow for each subject we chose to address or the story we are inspired to tell through poetry or fiction. We proceed in the faith that the perfect word, the perfect ending, the perfect cadence will come to us. We have confidence (perhaps a shaky confidence at times, but confidence all the same) that our writerly thread will be there as needed.

Note: Given a message on this post received elsewhere, this is NOT about writer’s block, something I never had. In fact, if anything, this is the antidote to potential block.

If you are viewing this post from an email, you’ll likely have to link through to The Poet by Day to watch the video.

The spider collection is under CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Details on each photo are HERE.

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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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hilly tincan evening

“We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.” Allen Ginsberg, Sunflower Sutra, Collected Poems 1947 – 1980

Well, and on this not quite as “hilly tincan evening,” a bit south of San Francisco, I wish you all the best. Sunday Announcements will return next Sunday. Sometime tomorrow – Tuesday – the collection of poems written in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt will post. Wednesday will offer the next prompt, a little something about hot August nights. Meanwhile, poem on my friends.

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.