Early Morning Cape Cod View

lillian39 Comments

Lone gull at dawn
sits calmly in repose.
Papaya stained sky,
mirrored hue on ocean tide.

Lone gull at dawn
anticipates promise of new day.
Spreads wings to full span,
ready for flight.

Pauses only moments
in rippled sand by lapping waves.
I breathe in the silence,
a beautiful hushed scene.

Lone gull runs gracefully
barely touching span of sea
then lifts, gloriously,
soars toward the unknown.

Poem written in response to Laura Bloomsbury’s prompt, Flights of Fancy, which appeared on July 28 at dVerse.  Posting it today as I host dVerse’s Open Link Night. We are a virtual pub where writers from around the world share their poetry.  Come join us!
Photo taken September 2019 at Provincetown, Cape Cod.

Always with us . . .

lillian28 Comments

are the sun,
the moon, the sky
and the stars.

Sometimes harder to see
are filaments of joy.
They always hover near.

If we open our hearts
look up, look about,
we will find them.

As this morning dawns
and hope rises,
let us seek at least one.

Let us live today
with the incandescence of joy.

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Previously posted and then shared on OLN at dVerse where Mish is hosting today.
Photo: dawn in Provincetown, 2019.

Flower Child of Old

lillian16 Comments

Wilting daisies crown her head. 
Twined in double-chain necklace 
wilted more, they weep happiness
like old mood-rings on blue-veined hands.

Bare knees peek out
beneath tie-dyed ruffled skirt.
Tire-tread sandals grace her feet,
big toes polished in fireworks.

She seeks nothing now,
mind enveloped in hazy blur.
Nothing but a return to youth
before the savagery of time.

Love IS. Love the world.
Love everyone as your kin. 
Crooked sloppy words
painted on torn off shingle.

She holds it high for no one to see,
proud of its weathered look.
Blotched spots drip from letters
like tears shed in her dementia world.

At seventy-one, determined to return,
she roams these Woodstock fields
empty now, save her memories.
In her mind, she is there,
back in her revolutionary days.

2020-07-21 (2)
Merril is hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Today she asks us to consider the idea of revolution. We can write about it in any way: revolution of the planets, a spinning top, a political revolution, new ideas and inventions, medical discoveries. You get the idea.

The Hunt

lillian40 Comments

Love is primal, fiercely protective. She understands that. Why doesn’t he?

Listening with a keen ear, she stands on rocky ledge, exhausted but alert. Will he find them? Her little ones are quiet now. Appetites sated, they sleep so sweetly. Their limbs tangled together, lying so close to each other. A red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills, illuminating the only path he can take to reach them now. Bramble burs prickle her scalp, tangled in her hair. Days on the run, she is more than disheveled. His bullet only grazed her, but the wound is beginning to fester. He will still want her. Will he continue the hunt? He covets her little ones. Their young fox pelts will bring a good sum. She hopes this new den will escape his site and he will turn to other prey.

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Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, where today I am hosting PROSERY MONDAY.

The prompt is to include either the line “a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills” OR the line “moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops” in a piece of prose (not poetry) that is 144 words or less.  The two lines are from Carl Sandburg’s poem JAZZ FANTASIA – you’ll find his full poem here. 

PROSERY: inclusion of a particular line (word for word) from a poem, in a piece of prose – can be flash fiction, memoir, or nonfiction. A form unique to dVerse where we usually write poetry! The PROSE must be 144 words or less.  

Photo from Pixabay.com

Catharsis 1906

lillian20 Comments

Ship of dreamers
homeland left behind.
We cross vast seas,
anxiety churned by pitching waves.

Land nears.
Hope rekindled,
we stand tall,
crane to see her torch.

Hands clasped, excitement peaks.
Grinning widely we circle round,
dance exuberantly
as she comes into view.

We are joyful Swedes,
ready to begin anew.

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Brian Miller, founder of dVerse, helps us celebrate the pub’s 8th anniversary today by providing the prompt. He wants us to capture a moment in our poem, reminding us that moments come with a context. The happenings before and after the moment. Today I write motivated by a Hallberg family photo, taken in 1906, at the moment Hjalmer Hallberg and friends saw the Statue of Liberty, when coming to this country from Sweden. I write in the first person, trying to imagine this moment.

Three Chord, Twelve-Bar Blues

lillian23 Comments

You loved me Joe
braggadocio
impresario,
only to go.

I’m singin’ these blues,
you still my muse.
But I remember  long ago
I pleaded, don’t go.

But you left me alone
strummin’ the twelve-bar blues.
My spirit so damn low,
heart’s dyin’  like indigo.

I had fun with this one…..tried to write a poem as a 12-bar blues composition.
The chord progress of a 12-bar blues is I – I – I – I – IV – IV – I – I – V – IV – I – I
Translated to a rhyme scheme, I used AAAA-BBAA-CBAA.

The video is a short description of how to create and play the 12-bar blues chord progression. Fun to listen to.

Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Kim hosts and asks us to include the word BLUE or a form of the word in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title.

Portrait Poem

lillian6 Comments

Neighborhood eccentric
a bit askew,
dressed for the decades
always strutted her stuff.

Peered out on the sixties
in tortoise cats-eye glasses,
black beret rakishly tipped
atop henna dyed hair.

Artistic in the seventies,
she embroidered purple zigzag
on turquoise gaucho pants.
Donned gaily colored tie-dyed tops.

Now ninety-four,
spiffy on her daily walks.
White gauzy lace gloves
firmly grasp walker handlebars.

Feet move deliberately.
Frilly laced anklets,
inside patent leather
Mary Janes.

Everyone smiles
as she lights up the street,
battery operated bulbs
on her Christmas wreath hat.

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Written for Misky’s Twiglet prompt #184.