This woman always
Poured her cup
Full with fragrance:
Lavender, jasmine
And somedays
Roasting rooibos.
In passing one day
She whispered to me:
Be careful where
You steep your soul.
That boy there
Is acrid brine.
You don't want to
Make yourself
A pickle.
Monday’s prompt on dVerse was to wrote a quadrille (a poem 44 words in length) containing the word steep or any of its forms.
Link to dVerse prompt: https://dversepoets.com/2019/01/28/quadrille-72/
We spend our winters building hardened resistance
Through the routine of shoulder hunching and thickening blood
As gradually the filtered light that shifts
Across wood panels and kitchen tiles
Lingers into longer hours.
Without cognizance, we let fall
Our experiences, as a dog
Sheds its winter coat
Throughout
Each houseroom.
Leaving our
Convictions as paper scraps to be
Swept up with toast crumbs –
and our tear drops
for mopping.
Never knowing the
Featherweight
Of our skin
Until it is.
And we stand
Pondering
The swiftness of
Transformation.
This poem was written for the dVerse prompt given by Lillian on Tuesday to write a poem containing a form of the word shed. https://dversepoets.com/2019/01/22/shed-some-light-on-this-today/
Somewhere in this universe there exists an us
Laughing on the infinite shores of a thousand glittering diamonds
All bronzed skin and limbs under a late summer sun
And there you were
In glasses black and t-shirt blue
Cradling my spirit
In the embrace of your smile.
In the first five seconds that we met
I completely entrusted myself to you.
After the storm
And hounding waves,
The coastline changed.
I haven’t the memory
Of where rocks used to be
Or sand banks curved.
This boat has drifted
Further from shore.
In the mist, I peer
Over the edge to find
Sunken dark shadows and
A quivering reflection of myself.
The seagull’s long soliloquy
Echoes across a glass bay.
In my mind of fogged mirrors,
I squeak-rub clear patches
With my shirtsleeve
Only to catch my own eye.
Buoys scatter across the harbor.
I tie off my boat and follow,
Downward with my eyes,
The mucked chain
Toward its foundation,
Dissolving into darkness.
The dVerse prompt for today, provided by Anmol, is to write a confessional.
Some Sunday mornings
My bed stretches on endlessly to my door
I struggle to leave
I have everything and nothing to do
I eat my breakfast and am hungry again
I eat my lunch then it’s almost
Dinner and I must go to bed
I still have everything and nothing to do
I found you in a closet curled
and mopping up the dust
Now I've hung you to my bedroom wall
and framed you up in glass
To reminisce my summer youth
Peaks, valleys, gushing streams
And promise of adventure's future
Under snow and leafy green
Although somedays I cannot see
Beyond the sunset of tomorrow
For now I doze beneath your frame
And mountain dreams I borrow
This was written for a prompt by dVerse Poet’s Pub (link below) that I stumbled across today. The prompt was as follows: “So – here’s what I’m asking you to do today. Walk around your house and look at all the things hanging there: on walls, in closets, on your refrigerator door, etc. Pick something that “speaks to you” and use that as the basis for today’s poem.” This was fun! I look forward to more prompts 🙂
On the shores of infinite diamonds, we were
all bronzed skin and limbs,
under a late summer sun.
Ever gently a rose glow
caressing our eyes, saturated our world,
as light retreated beyond mountains.
On the shores beneath infinite stars, we were
all tender skin, twisted limbs,
surroundings obscured in the dark.
I wear this winter like a cloak
Unlike past winters that have worn me.
Each visible puff of breath
Proof of existing (and
Nevertheless rosy-cheeked),
In spite of northerly wind
And bleakened landscape.
As I breathe life out into this bitter world
It breathes it back into me.
For on these cold winter nights
We are all chimneyed-factories,
Burning heat within and
Emitting puffs of steam
Against the long night sky.
I want to be a poet and a painter
A writer and a dancer
I want to capture the world as I see it
And dissect it to be examined
I want to empty my mind
With the light and dark of the world
And spend my days beneath broad leaves
Or even bare branches
The roots of trees hugging me
Without ever touching me
Pulling me in through the dirt
As I remain on top soil
Though I am not a plant
I would be lucky to be so green
And growing towards the sun
Happy New Year everyone! For the first year in a while, I don’t have any concrete resolutions this January first. What I do have is this: a new year with new thoughts, new energy, new longings.
My Swelling Heart 