The Sunday Muse

AJ

Self-Potrait

For The Sunday Muse Prompt # 173: Self Portrait with Accordion, (original image by Guido Vedovato) and How To Paint A Self Portrait by Nicole Tinkham.

**

First form the silhouette,
press the mound of wet earth thin
till it yields, pliant, to the probing
of the finger and the thumb.

Place the eyes, in the space
between the first and the middle third,
let the ears and the eyes align: 
two eyes, two ears, one mouth

Because Light must fill the inward parts,
and breath is the flimsy thing
that turns earth to feeling flesh;
and the shadows too can be beautiful
in their strange, shifting symmetry

.

AJ

Un(caged): A Note to Self

For the Sunday Muse prompt #172:

**
When the rain comes
breathe in the clarity it brings-
savour the stillness you remember
from the times it came before,
the delights the memories of
past days and gone weeks
and seasons long disappeared,
bring you. Cherish the muscle memory
of the steps that draw you along this path
to the days of innocence, because
drop by drop, the sorrows
of the far country are dissolving
in the rain.

AJ

Roots

“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.

AJ

The Light in her Tears

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.

AJ

The Sunday Muse: Times and Season

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.

AJ

Awe

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… 😦

AJ

One

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #124:

**
The King surveys his
realm, from his perch high atop
a dry, wizened tree.

This is what freedom
is, to roam without a care
and be one with the
earth.

AJ

Light

For The Sunday Muse prompt #123:

**

Even in the darkness
the beauty of lent light
shines through, the golden
petals of the sunflowers
magnificent as they follow
the sun. Beauty, hitherto
hidden, is called out
by the sharing of the light,
the sum of its parts
many times more brilliant
than when it hides alone.

AJ

Prodigality

For The Sunday Muse prompt #122:

**
We have carried
our bodies to a far country,
the weight of the burden
of the duty of sons
driving us like a ship
heave-hoing in a stormy gale
to the place where our kin
were brought before.

Each day we toil
amongst the living
to save the ones
we hurt by leaving,
the labour of our bent backs
a libation poured on dry earth,
to appease the spirits
of the old ones. This
is our penance, a prayer
sung to the tune
of the songs handed down.

We the born, and those
who were borne
will someday shake
the shackles of shiny things
and like prodigals
find our way home.

AJ

Hope

For The Sunday Muse prompt #121. After Emily Dickinson.

**
Hope is the thing
that shimmers
in the distance
the faint light
flickering in the
brooding stillness
of the afternoon heat,
the persistent promise
that this thirst, this
longing for restoring
will be sated by rain.
It is the pulse
quickening with the
lengthening shadows
of evening and the
return of familiar
sights to the eyes.
It is home
calling the lost son
to return to the
dangerous duty
of tending.