Inspiration

Gazing at the Universe

lillian15 Comments

Look upward with me,
magnify the solar system.
Marvel at what is light years away.

Now stand in still of night,
look up with naked eye.
Millions of tiny shining lights,
star specks in ebony sky.

No matter our egos,
we are simply small creatures
alive for a millisecond of time.

All the more reason
to be humbled by the universe,
to live and love,
thankful for every day.


Posting to dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe, and noting it is day 2 of NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month.

I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics, introducing folks to John McKaveney. John is a friend from San Diego who has an undergraduate degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics, is a lawyer, and has an amazing telescope! For today’s prompt, I’ve provided four of John’s amazing photos and asked folks to use at least one as inspiration for their poem today. See information below, about the photo I’ve used here.

Photo by John McKaveney. The Orion Nebula: “This is an active star forming region about 1400 light years away, of condensing gas and dust, illuminated by newly forming stars. Our solar system formed in a region much like this about 5 billion years ago. The photons that were observed when this picture was taken, left the nebula in 624 AD.  At that time, Mohamed had just won the Battle of Badr, in Saudi Arabia, the classical period in Europe was ending and the middle ages beginning, the Mayas were just beginning to build their largest pyramids, and Europeans had not yet set foot in North America.  Throughout this entire time, those photons of light were traveling through space to be captured to form this photograph, where their journey finally ended.”

Landscape Resolved

lillian39 Comments

Recessed window’s wide ledge
holds spirits for drinker’s escape.
Time out desperately needed
from hatred, tyranny,
spewed vindictiveness,
misogyny, racism, and lies.
Broad brushstrokes have not,
cannot hide, underlying malevolence.

Clean canvass craved,
painted in meaningful hues.
Foundation layer of iridescent justice.
Calm cerulean waters
governed by tides of crimsoned love.
Emerald-kindness speckled shores of honesty.
Sun-flowered happiness rollicking
beneath cobalt cloudless skies.

Is there a bard to create this script?
A Dali, Miro, or Kahlo
to produce this surrealism?
Who among us
will ensure it becomes reality?
Human dignity bathed in light,
tinted with opalescent caring,
glowing in a patina of hope.


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today I’m hosting Open Link Night where folks are invited to post any one poem of their choice, no form, rhyme scheme etc. required OR use Van Gogh’s painting, Studio Window, to motivate their creative juices.

AND you are invited to join us LIVE (with audio and video), on Saturday, March 16th from 10 to 11 AM New York time. Simply click here, and then click on the link you’ll find for dVerse LIVE. You’re invited to read a poem of your choosing, or simply come sit in and listen. Drop in for a few minutes or come and stay the hour. Although we’re an international group, all readings and conversations are in English. We’ve had folks from Sweden, the UK, Trinidad Tobago, Finland, Pakistan, the US, Kenya, Australia, and India. I do hope you’ll join us – the more the merrier!

Can you picture it?

lillian32 Comments

Boxes full of joy and laughter.
Clouds ready to burst,
rain happiness upon the earth.
See-through containers
brimming with peace.
Seed catalogues with special sales:
flowers that bloom understanding,
guaranteed to produce gargantuous yields.
Imagine with me, all these possibilities.
Which would you choose?


Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today I’m hosting, asking folks to include the word “imagine” in their poem of exactly 44 words, sans title.
Image created at Bing Create.

Quit Complaining!

lillian56 Comments

Oh . . . let it go!
Quit complaining about growing old.
I’m half-way through my septuagenarian years,
big deal!
If you divide life into seasons,
I’m probably long past autumn,
well into winter.  
Things I have on my must-do list,
goals to achieve,
to make my “mark” on the world?
 
So what if some of them don’t get done.
I’m happy I can bend over to pull on my galoshes!
Carless in Boston,
I leave footprints in the snow
walking to the store or to the doctor’s office.
Shows me I’m still here,
above ground.
I’ll bet I can still make snow angels.
I know I can –
you’d just have to help me get up.

Think of life as a merry-go-round,
concentrate on the merry part.
So we can’t climb up
to sit on the tallest horse anymore.
Let’s just sit in the carriage
the one with benches on both sides.
It goes around just as fast as the horse.
It just doesn’t go up and down anymore.
That’s us you know . . .
leveled out to enjoy the ride.


I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse today, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. I’ve provided a list of song titles about winter and cold weather. Writers must include at least two of the song titles from the list, within their poem, word for word. They can add punctuation between the words of the song title; or split the words over two lines (enjambment); but the titles must clearly be included in the body of the poem, word for word.

I’ve included three titles from the list in my poem: Let It Go, Winter Things, and Footprints in the Snow. Pub opens at 3 PM EST. Come join us!

Photo from Pixabay.com

A Little Ditty for a Gray November Day

lillian17 Comments

Did you know
the sun is always shining,
even if behind a cloud?
Frowns can be turned upside down
into a smile, just by remembering that.
There is no distance looking blue,
when we walk barefoot
in dew kissed grass that tickles our feet.

Call me Pollyanna, many do,
because I choose to believe
there is no top to any steeple
if I make up my mind to climb.
Be it with strong legs
or, at my age,
a little blusher, mascara,
a pen, and a plethora of words.


Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Sarah hosts and asks us to consider the poem November by Thomas Hood. One option in today’s prompt is to use a line from his poem and include it in our poem. I’ve chosen two lines from his poem: “No distance looking blue” and “No top to any steeple”. Image from Pixabay.com

Some Days

lillian14 Comments

Some days
I’d like to be in the midst of fog.
Where mountains,
yesterday tall and imposing,
disappear today.
Where ethereal moist clouds
descend to earth,
enveloping her in softness.
Bring me serenity,
as mist hovers over land,
hides imposing granite walls
too difficult to climb.
Soften my being
with the lightest of rain  that pours not,
rather drifts in swirls round my head,
my eyes, my limbs.
Take me to that weathered landscape
where nature cajoles hatred into oblivion,
and we simply marvel at beauty
we did not recognize before.
Take me there, if not in reality,
then in dense dreams of solace,
just for a little while.
I crave escape.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, from 3 to 4 PM Boston time, we shall gather face-to-face via GoogleMeet at OLN LIVE! Link to join can be found here at 3 PM or shortly thereafter. Just click and come join us! You’re invited to read a poem of your own…or simply sit in and listen…we’re a friendly bunch and it’s quite fun!

Photo from trip a number of years ago to Alaska.

Pestilence can be eradicated . . .

lillian12 Comments

Tales told over and over
take hold in one’s memory.
Lies told over and over,
still lies.

Oft heard lies ferment.
Fester in one’s brain,
in one’s psyche.
Foment unrest, distrust.
Rattle rational thought
into rationalization.

Beware the frequent liar,
the pseudo Pied Piper.
Rats follow in legions.
Sewers clog with muck.
Rotten smells waft high,
putrify the air.

Rise up ye voices!
Shout facts! Blow forth truths
from the mountain top.
Topple the house of cards.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Lisa asks us to consider fermentation. We are to “write a poem that uses any of the definitions, examples, images, or applications of fermentation that inspires” our Muse.
Images from Pixabay.com

A Voice from Ukraine

lillian3 Comments

I promise you, there is beauty somewhere.
Stand quietly outside to hear birdsong.
See stars shine in the ebony of night.
Hear the innocence of a small child’s prayer.
Marvel at harmony in evensong.
Your freedom as a right, shines ever bright.

In our war, even as lives are taken
there is pride, resolve, purpose in the fight.
One newborn who survives shines hope ‘ere long.
The world’s sense of justice shall awaken.

Help us.

First and foremost, the illustration is titled Freedom and is painted by Ukranian artist, Vika Muse. This past Tuesday, she gave permission for dVerse Poets to feature her artwork and write poems inspired by them.

Vika Muse wrote about another of her paintings, The Air of Freedom, “I wish I could have manta rays in the sky…instead of Russian bombs and military airplanes. I’ve noticed that my disturbing paintings didn’t make me happier. They cause even deeper depression. So I’ve tried to draw my future. It is bright and sunny. There are no bombs and war…Only beautiful landscapes and dreamlike sky. I hope I’ll meet such a future some day.”

Vika Muse says this about Freedom, the painting that inspired my poem today: “This artwork was made due to the hope, that we have the light at the end and the name of this light – is the Victory. That we will survive and rebuild our country.”

You can find artwork by Vika Muse at @get.muse and http://www.inprnt.com

And a thank-you to Mish at dVerse for discovering this artist so we can all see and marvel at her wonderful work.

Today’s post was specifically written for NAPOWRIMO, Day 16. We are asked to write a Curtal Sonnet, a poetry form invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

A Curtal Sonnet is 11 lines (actually 10.5) which is precisely 3/4 of the structure of a Petrachan sonnet which is 14 lines in length. That is, it is shrunk proportionally. The rhyme scheme is abcabc dcbdc The final line is a tail or half line. Another, what I call, sudoku prompt!
I’ve taken poetic license because of the intensity of the poem, to ignore the final line’s “c” rhyme requirement, but it is the requisite 2 syllables. The other lines are all the requisite 10 syllables.

Point by Point

lillian12 Comments

Easel, palette, brushes,
good light, steady arm
and patience.

Brush dabbed in paint,
he taps dots one by one
as blank canvas slowly disappears.

Dots of different hues.
Some just slightly darker
than the twenty-three before.

Some paler
than the two after those.
Dot after dot after dot.

Millions of dots.
Each insignificant by itself
until parasols start to appear.

And finally,
two years after that first tap
he taps the last.

Standing back, he wipes his brow,
sees years of work represented there
in just one Sunday afternoon.

Written for NAPOWRIMO, Day 12 where today we’re to write about something tiny.

I’ve always been enthralled by the Pointillism Movement in art. George Seurat began A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte during the summer of 1884. “The tiny juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint allow the viewer’s eye to blend colors optically, rather than having the colors physically blended on the canvas.” The 10 feet wide masterpiece is in the permanent collection of The Art Institute of Chicago. (quotation and image from rawpixel.com)

Provincetown Aubade

lillian7 Comments

I stand at water’s edge
on the precipice of new day
as darkness surrounds me.
Cold damp salted air clings
and coats my upper lip.

Cinnamon colored strips
jut their way through ebony sky.
Monotone scrim begins to fluctuate
as dark clouds differentiate themselves,
shades of grey against paling black.

There, there in front of me
hints of red-orange light.
Shards of yellow tinted crimson
elongate, stretch, and slowly shift
until my chill is forgotten.

Glorious golden orb begins to rise.
Sole cormorant on jetty stone
shadowed now in rising dawn,
my only company as I smile.
Today is indeed, a new day.


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets and for NAPOWRIMO, Day 8.

Laura is hosting dVerse and shares with us the background and meaning of aubade. It is a serenade to dawn. She asks us to write a melodious poem evoking day break and using either the word “morning” or “aubade” in our title.

Photo is from one of our annual two-week stays in Provincetown, at the very tip of Cape Cod, where dawn never ceases to amaze.