For The Sunday Muse Prompt #234. Image source: Rosie Ann Prosser.:
**
Still, in the silent solitude of repose,
I survey the face that peers back at me.
Three candles flickering in the dark,
a space suffused by a mellow, yellow light
pushing back against the dark.
The ghosts of grief, railing against delight
fight the light, their dissonant sounds
a constant clang. But in light, there is delight
to know this is to rest, here.
For The Sunday Muse prompt #180:
**
We come to water
to be washed and be reborn,
this hand cupping the curvature
of the face, the other dipped,
drenched in the very fluid
from which we come, the space
between the fingers of that hand
filled with the water, straining
against the strictures
of the hand.
We come to water
to lose ourselves in the beauty
of the simple things, to see
the dirt of our days and the detritus
of the night loosen, dissolving
until we see ourselves pristine
whole again, the way we
have imagined in our dreams
a lip, an eye, lingering still
in the mirror of still water.
“Roots” 1943 by Frida Kahlo, for the Sunday Muse prompt 171:
**
They say that fiery flames
beget cold ash, the certainty of beliefs
passed down petering out into the lukewarm
ambivalence of doubt and questioning.
These roots are the things that hold us still
each tendril like a link tethering us
to the ones who went before.
For H, and The Sunday Muse prompt #170:
**
She lingers like a ghost in the night,
this memory of my mother, framed
by a distant light: the stately stillness
of her furrowed brow, the slight tilt
of her chin catching the light, defiant.
The moment when the lone tear hangs –
perched impossibly as though straining
against the world – comes to me
again and again in a vision of the night,
its lingering like a thread tethering me
in my seasons of incertitude.
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash. For The Poetic Asides prompt #554
**
Sometimes I think
For The Sunday Muse prompt #141:
**
Each whirl of the earth around the Sun’s well of power and of light brings us back here.
Like a boat dragged inexorably by the rising tide to shore, the swell of the sea brings us peace, to a season of reflecting, of contemplating and of pause.
Time’s rhythm like the faint echo of a distant drumbeat is welcome whisper in our ear. Yesterday left the things we held dear cracked. Today is a reminder to rebuild better.
Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash. For Day 4 of the November Poem-A-Day Challenge.
**
Learn
which voices
to let escape
the guards
around your
ears. Accept
the things
which return,
their hold
unyielding.
Breathe, because
the things the
heart beats for
are the things
which leave
it raw.
Photo by Lea Böhm on Unsplash. For Day 2 of the November Poem A Day Challenge. A Poem for when the unexpected triggers memories of home.
**
It hangs heavy
on the heart, its heft
never ever far away it seems,
always lurking, always waiting
always ready to spring to life
to the lines of a song suddenly
borne on the wind, or the whiff
of mothballs, unlocking the memory
of the gathering, and of ritual.
Hers is a name that lingers
on your tongue, sometimes forgotten
but then remembered
in the things we least expect.
For the November Poem-A-Day challenge. A poem about Entering, but mainly about leaving…
**
On the days when I wake
to a haze hiding the lushness
of the valley below, its shadow
hanging heavy like a shroud
on limbs shrivelled by the ravages
of time, I ponder the bland bleakness
of air heavy with water, how it smothers
life, and the beauty of things.
Each day where the light yields
to the pressure of collapsing space,
and time seems stilled, when the
tenacity of hope is tested
by the roiling reality of the things
which seem certain, I reach
for the small light of the things
that I remember, a thin thread, a tether,
somehow holding out against
the testing threats of the present,
guiding me home.
For The Sunday Muse Prompt # 128:
**
When Neil and Buzz
reached the top of the world
their feet ensconced
in the very dust
from whence they came
they left in awe
at the fragility of things,
at how the pale blue dot
they left behind hung
as though by an invisible thread,
shimmering with the ethereal beauty
of the light lent it by the sun.
Butterflies fluttered
on their insides, their hearts
set free by the joy of seeing
in that place where gravity fades.
** Finally posted after hours of fiddling about with WordPress’ new block editor.. Fair to say I deeply resent being forced to use it… 😦
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