time ebbs and flows like sand sifting through a sieve like advancing waves crashing, rushing furiously to shore.
Emotions ebb and flow as we journey through later years, stopping to dally at sweet spots, speeding through dangerous curves.
Humanity ebbs and flows around us. People progressing forward, while others try desperately to stall and others slip backward to the way it was.
Much as we’d like to take control, place wooden rulers across our lives draw straight lines from point A to point B, we all remain in a fluid path as our lives continue to ebb and flow.
Written for NAPOWRIMO, Day 22. Today we’re asked to write a poem that includes repetition. Photo take some years ago when in Bermuda.
Do not concern yourself. Only twice in a Blue Moon: that’s what the sages say, the peacekeepers, historians, the literati and oracles too.
Only the Harbinger keeps watch, collects viable bodies of evidence. Tracks events pointing backwards to repetition of historical eras, measuring time needed for a Blue Moon.
Adolph Hitler’s evil ran rampant, stacked skeletal remains in godless towers as ashen clouds floated to the skies. It was during the time of the Blood Moon, a horrific sliver of time gone by.
Only the Harbinger understands the Blood Moon is but the crescent stage in the life time of a Blue Moon. It is the beginning soon buried within the tides, too often forgotten in the ebb and flow of time.
Completion of a Blue Moon is near. The Harbinger has placed its warning voice in the human of its choosing. As sunflowers wilt and blood is spilled that chosen voice bids you listen now.
The innocents lie dead in our streets and still this evil invades our land. A different man, but mark my word, he is the evil we face today, many of our people, fighting to their death.
Can you not hear me? How can you not understand? Twice in a Blue Moon is now.
Writing for two prompts today:
It’s Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, where Merril is hosting. She’s created a list of names of actual English country garden roses and asks us to use one or more of them either in the body of our poem or in its title. “Twice in a Blue Moon” is actually the name of an English country garden rose!
NAPOWRIMO, Day 19, asks us to write a poem that begins with a command. Photo is from Pixabay.com
I choose flat dress shoes instead of stiletto heels. My balance isn’t what it used to be. I choose a romance novel or best seller. Headlines raise my blood pressure and I don’t want to take another pill. I choose strolling the well-worn path. Young people can push the boulders up hill. I choose biting into a blushing velvet peach, sectioning an orange takes too long. I choose creating my own sunshine on a cloudy rainy day. I choose to be me. My age, right here, right now, with you by my side.
Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets where today Sarah asks us to consider anaphora: a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending emphasis. She gives us a list of verbs to choose from for the word we’d like to repeat. I selected the word choose.
What spirits roam this earth? Moon gods no longer constant fatigued by cloud-strung battles, wax and wane their beams. Seasons test the sun, warmth succumbs to winter gales.
Spirits gone these many years hover o’er our heads. Their whispers ride the winds. Arise my children, each day sublime, whether warm or cold or dark or light, reach out, touch hands, and dance.
Smile hope upon your neighbors be they far or near. Smile hope upon your loved ones be they on earth, or in the heavenly sphere. All gaze upon the same bright stars.
Love this day together, my children, for I am with you as they are too. Greet each day sublime, hearts flush with gratitude, no fear. Listen for their whispers they are always there to hear.
Friday night and the lights are low. Tinseltown dimmed, marquees dark, Broadway shut down. Performers encased at home, mouths agape. No words. No melodies. No sound escapes their parched lips. Feet stilled, faces bare. They sit, not in the wings, but on couches and chairs. No audience. Just the cat curled up on their feet, surprised to find this comfort in these hours. The night the music died and the curtain fell, subways ground to a halt. This, the night Covid came to town.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics and delving into Sweden’s musical archives. I’m asking folks to include one line, and one line only, from the lyrics of ABBA’s Dancing Queen. The line must be used word for word within the body of the poem. You can find the lyrics to Dancing Queen, as well as some fun information about ABBA, in my prompt at dVerse. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time and full prompt will appear then.Image from Pixabay.com
. . . put on roller skates and careen down the esplanade along the Charles River. Grinning, looking straight ahead. Faster, faster, and faster still. Wind blowing back my hair, tearing my eyes until the real world blurs and I am flying with wheels as my wings.
Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the vitual pub for poets around the globe. I’m hosting today, asking folks to use the word “careen” within their poem of exactly 44 words, sans title.
The esplanade is a wonderful green space in Boston that in part, runs along the Charles River. It has a very long walking/bicycling/rollerskating path along the river itself and is only about 2 city blocks from where we live. It goes for miles and we often take walks there. For those of you who watch the Boston Pops 4th of July concert on television, the hatch where they perform is on the esplanade itself, just off the river. Photo from Pixabay.com
I seldom use it – the full-length mirror. When I do, it makes me wonder, who is that person?
I’ve had fun with crepe paper. That weird webbing you could stretch. Make it wider and longer. Hung it all over the family room for many a birthday party. So I have crepe skin on my arms. Okay, be honest. In other places too. I understand the term’s origins.
How did my mother climb into that frame? Save your clucking tongue, your “you haven’t changed a bit” comments. I prefer to see my value in other ways. In my husband’s eyes. In my daughter’s forty-seven year old smile. In my forty-five year old son’s weekly calls. In the tik toks and quick texts shared with five grandkids.
I’ll wear capri pants, sleeveless tops, sparkly eye shadow below my thinning brows. I love my almost pure white streak in the midst of my grey hair. Save your tears for somebody else. I’m quite content to be a septuagenarian. The mirror be damned!
Today I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. I’ve asked folks to go to the website https://mybirthdayhits.com and plug in their birth date. The site then gives you the musical hit that made #1 on the charts for every birthday you’ve celebrated until 2021. So for example, if your birthday is today, September 28th and you were born in 1952, you plug in that date and the site will give you the #1 hit for every year on September 28th from 1952 until 2021! AND the site gives you a recording you can listen to as well. Such fun! So the prompt today is to take at least one of the #1 hits from your birthdate and include the song title, word for word, in your poem. You can use more than one #1 hit if you wish. My birthday is May 13th: In 2007, my 60th birthday, the #1 hit was Makes Me Wonder by Maroon 5; in 2021, for my 74th birthday, the #1 hit was Save Your Tears by The Weeknd. You’ll find those titles in my poem today.
. . . my to-do-list is much too mundane to do. *Laundry *PT exercises *Vacuum *Clean out drawers
So I sit, pen in hand page waiting to be filled, adorned by words. Words like scintillation fantasia, pomegranate or perhaps persimmon.
Images, dormant in my mind, waiting to appear on the page. Orange sherbet sun flirting with shapeshifter clouds. Raucous carousel horses racing round a blurred world.
Pen over vacuum? Easy choice to clear the cobwebs from my brain.
lillian the home poet 