I’ve so enjoyed the responses to the last prompt, the republic of innocence, January 31, which was to tell us how near to good and honest is that which is untamed in ourselves. Thanks! and Bravo! to John Anstie, Lisa Ashley, Colin Blundell, Bozhidar Pangelov (bogan), Ginny Brannon, Paul Brookes, Sheila Jacob and Sonja Benskin Mesher.
I’ve also included some information on Pretichor Rising, a collection of The Grass Roots Poetry Group (proceeds to UNICEF) and Anjum Wasim Dar’s gentle response to Evelyn Augusto’s passionate U R Not Your Gun.
Join in tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. You are welcome here.
Moon Child
Once in a while you exceed yourself.
Are you blue, because we thought no more of you
as the driving force for life on Earth
or potent impetus for the exciting waves of witches.
Thrilling moments … or contemplative
of a thriving, muddy, salty, riverine universe of life
waiting for you to draw the pelagic
covers repeatedly over the fruits of sustenance.
A force of nature, fully formed
yet so much smaller than the mother of your birth,
you hold sway, in countless ways
you touch our lives and drive us through our days.
Humble, unassuming, even unnoticed
by those who hurtle, mindlessly, and make no time
for the wisdom of our insignificance
or feel the difference between our age and yours.
As necessity tramples over truth
most days, we hide in fear of the darkening,
of the madness that ensues.
Does not the hunter choose your waning dark
to spike the nervous memory,
and remind us of the untamed Wolfpack?
We may not ever tame you
but your mother is dying a slow and painful death.
Oh super blood blue moon,
does not your God and our God sing the same tune?
© 2018, John Anstie (My Poetry Library and 42 … Of Life, the Universe and Everything)
JOHN ANSTIE is a poet, musician, renaissance man, The Bardo Group Beguines core team member, and editor of and contributor to Petrichor Rising (eBook and paperback), a delightful 2013 poetry collection of The Grass Roots Poetry Group. The proceeds from sales go to UNICEF.
I dislike using the word “accessible.” It’s usually code for a lack of intricacy or profundity. The work here is comprehensible but still complex. The poems move from nostalgia to appreciation, from the beauty of nature to the frailties of humanity, from sorrow to hope. From Craig Morris’ Introduction, which sets the mood, to Joe Hesch’s theme poem Petrichor, which closes the book, it’s a joy. Well organized with the weather metaphor as the through line, the sections are The Drought, Gathering Storm, and The Rain.
For more about Pretrichor Rise, John Anstie and The Grass Roots Poetry Group, read Pretrichor Rising and how the Twitterverse birthed friendships and that in turn birthed a poetry collection.
Two dancing white butterflies have no idea
how dark the world is today—
fires and floods, ethnic cleansing,
wars in deserts and in words—
nor the brown spider who just lowered herself
from the red and purple fuchsia blossom
to the green basil glowing in the September sun.
Those lives go on, still, as does mine,
part of a greater web, gossamer threads, tensile strength.
The neighborhood is noisy with construction equipment
moving earth for seven new houses. Seven.
People need a place to live,
though the trees are gone, crashing to earth,
once homes to birds, insects, mosses, squirrels.
And though I’m tucked away in my own private paradise
I know school buses are lining up
to carry young ones home.
We’d go for rides when he was very small
searching for construction equipment so he could name them—
front-end loader, grader, the double-dump. He knew them all.
The big machines, the small boy, the love bursting from my heart,
pink flush on his cheeks when he spied a big scoop,
Mary Ann, Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel, in the flesh.
He turned over rocks on the beach
to touch tiny crabs
before they skittered to safety,
oblivious, like the butterflies and the spider,
of their near-death experience at the hands of a toddler,
or the suffering of the huge world,
still with us these many years.
The apples are turning redder every day.
I made a pot of soup yesterday.
Apples and pears in golden crust,
juices oozing warm cinnamon and ginger breath
to my eager nose, salivating mouth,
hedging my heart against the misery of so many
struggling mightily to survive.
The butterflies dance down the yard,
untamed,
as they must,
lighting my wild love, again.
© 2018, Lisa Ashley (www.lisaashleyspiritualdirector.com)
a lion hunt
begins with the hypothesis of lion:
a roar in the night; a boy gone missing
or a bullock; an enormous spoor
in the path where the women walk;
a fur-net caught in the thorn bushes
speculatively examined by the old men
so it is with the pursuit of poetry:
one assumes that there is
something called poetry to be found –
but compared with hunting a lion…
well you can know in advance
what lion will look like
when you catch up with him
while the whole purpose
of the pursuit of poetry us to discover
by running it down just what a poem is
the pursuit must begin more or less
where it hopes to end – with a report
of the rather dubious quarry; if you start
with the wrong report you will end up with
the wrong phoenix or the wrong unicorn –
or whatever the fabulous creature
turns out to be
what one needs is a reliable scout
– somebody who was there at the end and
(against all odds) managed the journey back
– then you become the scout
*
From my ‘Years Later’ (2016)
*
© 2016, Colin Blundell (Colin Blundell, All and Everything)
Return to innocence
The hand that caresses the wave.
The mouth that hardly opens –
breathes in the fresh wind of the stone-pines.
To speak to the stars,
to write out signs –
that can be learnt.
It is known by the astrologers, magi,
illusionists, newspapermen.
All this can be learnt.
To be in conformity
with the expectance.
That is the art
of the skilful ones, the thought of the blind men.
People who sing in the boat
that has sailed off, do they know?
Does the sand remember other steps
but those of the children?
The hand that caresses the wave.
The mouth breathes in – the fresh wind
of the stone-pines.
© 2018, bogpan a.k.a. Bozhidar Pangelov – (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия)
Optical Illusions, Dreams, and Delusions
We watch as moon ascends in eastern sky,
a massive disc now peaking over fence—
an optical illusion on the rise,
appearing ever larger to our eyes
than any image captured through a lens.
And what we see and what the mind imprints
border between concrete and surreal;
we tuck away to pull out and reprise,
but should we find delusion has dispensed
we search to understand what was revealed.
Same could be said for all the pain we feel,
whether it is caused by physical distress
or mental anguish covert and disguised—
setting off alarms and raising shields,
then leaving us despondent and depressed.
‘Hope’ rises like the moon in pale nightdress
her whisper carried soft among the stars—
and even earthen mother can surmise
that if trials and tribulations are the test;
then blessings and endowments are our prize.
© 2017, Ginny Brannan (Inside Out Poetry)
Believe
I don’t believe folk who are honest.
I were brought up with lies.
I’m happy with dishonesty.
It’s more real. Tell me porkies.
Elaborate. I take my wife, my kids,
government with a pinch of salt.
If anybody tells you you’re good
You can see their eyes twinkle.
Same if they tell you you’re rubbish.
Tongues forked or straight
wind you up. I smile sweetly
when you say I’m handsome,
talented. Always I say, “O, aye!”
© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
The Need
for your inattention.
Don’t compare and copy me.
My life is not an example.
Don’t follow my words.
Don’t try to match your skills
and attitude to mine.
All these sites ask for followers
and likers. My popularity
is not measured in clicks.
A comment is not a vaiidation.
A share is not a support.
You are not mimetic.
Do not find yourself in others.
You’re not hollow.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
History (A World Where 2)
is only ever now.
Events marked as then
can be dismissed as unreliable
personal testimony.
All records are falsifiable,
vague and without substance.
Numbers and dates are prone
to change with new evidence.
The past is uncertain.
Only the now is trustworthy.
Memories are full of doubt,
false and fake images.
Have faith in the eternal present.
It can’t be held onto.
Whatever can’t be grasped
has our hope, faith and trust.
I love you now. Whatever happened
is subject to conjecture.
© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
In the garden with Caius
I follow him across puddles,
his yellow wellies twinkling.
He climbs onto a tree stump,
points to water-logged grass.
“Now look,Gran,look,
this is the floor,
down,
and this”
-gesturing upwards-
“is the sky.”
He stretches out his arms,
raises them, leaps,
lands and cheers.
“You do it, Gran”
and I do it,
his face
the unruffled lake
where I run
clear as moonlight,
balance perfectly
on damp, sawn wood.
We take turns, root
beneath the garden’s
green memory,
our hands brown leaves
cupping the breath
of early autumn.
© 2018, Sheila Jacob
::you say such nice things, sir::
one dot.
not two?
you say such nice things sir, while you are one in many,
many
disagree.
some struggle with the work each day, yet carry on, what
else can be done?
working in the field is good & honest.
quiet day with bread, purposeful baking, folding and pleating.
tomorrow is the run of the mill type daily.
as before, this is no metaphor.
where is the self worth sir, when we look full long in the mirror, see
darkly the things of youth, darkly those ideas & happenings not
written of here.
no guardian review.
it has not been the
experience we hoped for. we shall wear pyjamas. the book remains
tied.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; Sonjia’s daily blog (WordPress) is HERE.)
.he wanted a garden.
have you collected seeds of many years, packed, labelled, dated.
have you died, and left the table unprepared. i have them now in boxes, a gift.
from those who love. they will bring me work, joy, an independent air.
seeds need water.
sun stays later.
i have imposter syndrome, never diagnosed yet googled when heard on radio live .
there may be too many additives these days not enough honesty grown.
she said i should have something new in the greenhouse.
i have, i said, and thought of you who
planted the seeds.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; Sonja’s daily blog (WordPress) is HERE.)
Anjum wrote the following poem in resonse to Poet Takes a Stand Against Gun Violence in the United States
If Guns Were Flowers
if guns were flowers they would be colorful
beautiful, appealing and smell so nice
they would be light to carry, would carry love
and powder of affection rather than affliction
if guns were flowers there would be gardens
more and graves less, joy more, sadness less
would soothe comfort please and caress
friends favorites fans more,enemies less
if guns were flowers I would plant them
then gather the seeds to share for PEACE
then gather some more, go to the shore
sail the seas on ancient ship,to get more
Anjum Wasim Dar
Pakistan
CER Copyright 2018
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“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” Madeleine L’Engle … perhaps one can even say this applies to poetry.
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