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“A Gift of Love” … and other responses to Wednesday Writing Prompt

Here are the responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, January 3, Too Late for Miracles, which asked poets to share what’s on their minds as we move into the new year.

Welcome to newcomers: Isadora De La Vega, Miquel Escobar, Sheila Jacob, Elaine Reardon and Anjum Wasim Dar.  As is custom for new poets, their bios are included by way of intro.  

Thanks to Colin Blundel, Paul Brookes, Denise Aileen DeVries, Renee Espriu and Sonja Benskin Mesher for coming out to play again.

Together these poets have given voice to joys and concerns that we all share and they’ve done so beautifully from their diverse perspectives.

Anyone who would like to join in tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt is welcome to do so no matter the status of career: beginning, emerging or pro. All work shared on theme will be posted in the next collection on the following Tuesday. If you are sharing work for the first time, please send your bio and a photograph to me at thepoetyday@gmail.com. Meanwhile, enjoy these poems. I hope they delight you as they do me.

A Gift of Love

Without you,

Life is just existing.

With you,

Life is worth living.

You put a name on the

Songs, birds sing.

And, you bring the smell of flowers,

To a breezy spring.

You are my sun,

You are my moon,

You are in my heart,

Forever and a day.

© 2018, Isadora De La Vega (Inside the Mind of Isadora)

ISADORA DE LA VEGA, my homegirl (we’re both from New York) is: “Intriguing, sensitive, mysterious, loving, artistic and crackling with excitement for life is a pretty good description of who I am. I’m retired from the art world where I sold my Artfully Designed Handmade Jewelry for 28 years.  Art will always be a part of who I am no matter what venue I choose to express it.  I’m always dreamin’ of ways to touch the hearts of those who visit me in far greater ways then before they happened upon my blog. ”

Everyone Counting

a lost year

just gone by
just gone
just

oh hell

one argues as much there
lost as hope wants to bubble
up ahead uncreated

winter
— built-in grace period up
until thawing

the real bear the lost was —
is in hibernation

the carryover is pure genius

the straddling
the picture
sitting on the fence

absence of go-go dancers

ultimately
ten weeks in the grand
scheme of things
means
there is no good answer
to the question
yet

while the northern
axis observes
this tilt

can we
respect metaphorical roots
as much as continue to use them as
excuses

everyone counting

© 2018, Miguel Escobar

Miguel Escobar

After a long career in software technology that is in its last few years, MIGUEL ESCOBAR is newly living alone and channeling what he calls his other Self from bygone years: poet, musician, songwriter, aspiring editor, appreciator and sometimes critic of the Arts. He shared regularly on social media off and on in 2007-2008 and now again since 2015. He’s had a small number of poems published with Luciole Press, and Diaphanous Press and looks forward to a future of defining, developing and evolving a personal Art life that right now feels almost like a religious calling.

As the old year ends

Days and nights
bring silver moons
and tangerine sunlight
melting snow
from the mountains;

tell of a rose bush
bearing crumpled flowers
and branches scarred
by summers long gone,
summers to come.

© 2018, Sheila Jacob

Sheila Jacob

SHEILA JACOB was born and raised in Birmingham, England and now lives in North Wales with her husband. She has three children and five grandchildren. She resumed writing poetry in 2013 after a long absence. Since then her work has been published in various U.K. magazines and websites. Her ambition is to have a collection of her poems published before her seventieth birthday in three years. 

 

New Year

The cold.
Unrelenting.
Pushes through each
thin crack by frigid wind
I greet the two degree temperature
happily. It’s climbing! Housebound,
I walk the stairs between the woodpile
and couch, hot water bottle ready.
I aim the heater to the back of the cabinet,
so it warms the pipes on the outside wall.
I cut my compost into small pieces,
lay them on the snow to feed the hungry
driven to my front door in the full moon’s light.
The radio on is on for company, against
the all day quiet. I hear about North Korea first,
then President Trump’s bigger button. Is this his
New Year’s address? I remember us all
crouching beneath our desks at school drills,
head tucked in, dog tag on, when I was a kid.
Was that the Bay of Pigs? Maybe there is some
hope, if we now send cruise ships to Havana.
Maybe one day NorthKorea will welcome cruise ships, too.

© 2018, Elaine Reardon (Elaine Reardon, Poetry, nature, art, magic, environment, relationships)

ELAINE REARDON is a poet, herbalist, educator, and member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators. Her chapbook, The Heart is a Nursery For Hope, published September 2016, won first honors from Flutter press as the top seller of the year. Her writing includes featured poet in the January 2017 issue of stanzaicstylings.com ezine, Bella, Three Drops from a Cauldron Journal and yearly anthology, poetrysuperhighway.com, naturewriting. com, And MA Poet of the Moment. Elaine also published global curriculum through University of Massachusetts Press. She lives tucked into hillside forest in Western Massachusetts.

Who Knows What Life May Have in Store

The year ends,
leaving gifts joys and blessings
reunions , joining relationships
for some the time is joyful
for some full of pain
as days of sorrow and parting
come back again

this year I feel peace and joy
yet sorrow and fear move along
for life manifests hungry poverty
threats to security and liberty
enemies restless firing bullets
innocent killing goes on…

some enjoy the snow and play
for them cold snow is a game
some lie shivering,no name
some build bonfires the same
sing dance and be merry
for tomorrow is,no blame

will come to shine and light
my heart says forgive more
make happiness and space
for others to share, spend less
save more, war looms ahead

who knows what life may have
in store,
work work and work
make life meaningful and easy
for others,help them if you can
smile smile smile
be grateful for all the blessings
look around there are miles
and miles and miles of them

© 2018, Anjum Wasim Dar (EternalLights, Life Style and Strange Stories and Poetic Oceans)

Anjum

ANJUM WASIM DAR says she is Srinagar born and Kashmiri educated at St. Anne’s presentation Convent High School Rawalpindi. She has a Masters Degree in English & History and is a professional ELT /TEFL teacher and trainer. Anjum is dedicated to serving the cause of education and English Language Training in Pakistan.

midnight:
the moon’s chimneypot
on the back lawn

© 2018, Colin Blundell (Colin Blundell, All and Everything)

Will is fuel

Impulse is potential.
Emotion without mind is violence.
The mind without heart is sterile.
The unfiltered will is scattered.
The untethered will is impotent.

Harmony is passion and reason,
refined and anchored, to perfect,
that conscience may be as leaven
in Humanity, to honour and express
the Beauty of the cosmic sum.

The heart beats. The mind’s job is to justify its rhythm to the soul.

© 2018, Juli [Juxtaposed] (juxtaposed – subject to change)

End of the World (again)

It was the year of air raid drills,
learning to crouch under desks
in the third grade classroom.
Little did we know, the world
had ended the year before.
By my high school graduation,
I had survived five annihilation
predictions, not counting
my personal teenage tragedies.
After four more apocalypse dates,
I finished college, married,
moved closer to ground zero.
The world ended six more times
and my first child was born,
a sign of hope in a hopeless world.
Four more Armageddons passed
and I gave birth twice, still hopeful.
Twenty-three holocausts later,
my last child was born. Life
persisted. The world
has not ended, despite predictions
and even our heartfelt wishes.
I have stopped counting cataclysms.
It’s time to do the dishes.

© 2018, Denise Aileen DeVries (Bilocalalia)

Too late for miracles

Little miracles happen every night in life.
That’s what the old blind man told me, leaning against the rugged bench in the park. And at this point, a ladybug shone in front of my eyes. He saw – he smiled at me – it was the mother of the seven-color arc.
He smiled again
and
went over the rainbow.

© 2018, bogpan – Bozhidar Pangelov – (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия)

Old Year

Celebrate the going of the new year
and the arrival of the old year.

At midnight on Old Year’s eve
sing of how it all ends,

make decisions to keep old habits
And not pander to new ones

that have outstayed their welcome.
Newness gives you wrinkles.

Stay with youthful decrepitude.
The fresh has lost its taste.

Welcome the old with fireworks.
Reold the world

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

We Must Avoid

doors that open too smoothly,
scissors that open too well,
doors slam in your face,
scissors cut you to strips.

Words that come too easily,
stories that come ready made,
success handed on a plate,
accolades sent too soon

poetry that slips off the tongue,
without hard work and sweat,
words that bother the reader,
with too much work to do,

poetry without music and rhythm,
complicated images and phrases,
not asking if it’s boring,
not being entertaining enough.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

Buy More (From “Queue At World’s End)

food than we need.
Never want to join again

these endless queues.
The end of the world

is due so we’ve got to make sure
we have enough

of everything for two days
when the shops are closed.

Two days closed is an economic sanction,
an act of war we rush to counter

with extra rations, things we would not
normally buy. Just in case a battle

breaks out and we are bunkered
in our homes. Eat and be merry.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

Paul’s most recent collection, She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Books, 2018) is available now from Amazon US HERE and Amazon UK HERE. Another fabulous read by this indefatigable Yorkshire poet. This time with his singular style and and acute insight into the human condition, Paul takes us through five stories, pictures of the great and small ironies of life drawn as we observe the daily routines, rituals and reactions in lives where birds have jam sessions on rooftops, mausoleums live on fridge doors, the memory of a touch stays with the skin; lives where hands are telling and people hunger, give what’s not wanted and take what’s not given. In short, Life with all its pathos and ethos. She Needs that Edge is well worth your time and pennies.

Dreams of Flight

Closing my eyes dream like synapses
coalesce images of youthful fears
tainted by mountain high and
valley lows of emotions

feathered wings in flight I fancied
releasing me from my humble dawning
with the smell of lemons and lilacs
growing against a backdrop of cement
tainted with the odors of asphalt

on the other side of town peppered
with factory workers, shop owners
life ached for gleaming upscale as
housewives tended children crying
dutiful lives of status quo

but only dreams took me flying
into the darkness of night
smelling of sweet honeysuckle
scaling walls of rising freedom

as now all dreams of tender youth
have left me I no longer fear
nor struggle from whence I came
for the spring of my soul
bubbles forth a peace within

© 2018, Renee Espriu  (Renee Just Turtle Flight and Inspiration, Imagination & Creativity with Wings, Haibun, AR, Haiku & Haiga)

::the year::

gently go forward, then gently back
recreating past deeds and misdemenours
you thought forgotten.

gently go forward knowing we are mostly
all the same, with motes not spoken of,
except disorder.

gently it passed behind you, seen
clearly while looking for god.

gently gather winter leaves to keep
in paper bags. these are the golden
days .

my friend.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

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