And she asked him . . .

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Isn’t what amazing?
Ants tugging five-thousand times their weight?
Fibonacci’s relationship to the nautilus shell?
Humming birds’ wings
beating fifty-three times per second?
Women growing human beings inside their bodies?
Yes. Yes. Yes. And definitely yes.

So what makes you so amazing?
You forcing me to take your name if we wed?
You making laws to govern my body?
You body-shaming me
while you’re lugging around your beer gut?
Yes. Oh please, please tell me, yes.
Exactly what makes you so amazing?

Written for NAPOWRIMO, Day 13. Today’s prompt challenges us to write from the perspective of “everything’s going to be amazing” . . . I admit. I went a little off-kilter with this one!

The Dandelions of Ukraine

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She paints a different scene
different from the devastation of war.
One of deep meaning to her people.

Far from crimson-orange flames,
bomb bursting flares in night skies,
blood-stained rubble covered streets.

She paints a girl with auburn hair
back to us, looking out at sunburst sky
in the midst of dandelion fields.

Beautiful broadleaf perennial weed,
dandelions bloom brightly yellow,
steep in teas and make fine wine.

Notoriously challenging to remove,
ten-inch-long taproots deep in soil
tenaciously hold their place in earth.

Sunflowers may be the national flower,
but this upstart weed personifies her people.
Strength, perseverance, and beauty,
just as she painted, the dandelion field.

Written for Poetics Tuesday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Mish is hosting and gives us an inspiring, beautiful and timely prompt, acquainting us with Ukrainian artist, Vika Muse. We are to select one of her remarkable paintings and be inspired by it. As Mish writes: “During this unfathomable yet very real situation in her homeland, let us bask in the light of her artistry and be a reflection of light with our words.”

The work of Vika Muse can be found on Instagram at @get.muse and is featured on the website http://www.inprnt.com (just do a search on this site for Vika Muse and all her artwork will come up). I selected her piece, The Dandelion Field.

dVerse pub opens at 3 PM Boston time, featuring this prompt.

Point by Point

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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)

Derecho

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They walked through devastated streets. The derecho had its way with this small town. High winds tore off roofs and flattened walls. Had no respect for a newly decorated baby’s room or hi-bred roses clinging to an arched trellis. Twenty minutes of hell.

House gone, the James family sifted through rubble. Faint smiles shared when Betty discovered a shattered glass frame; reunion photo still intact. Down the road, Grampa Hilliard sat on a tree stump in the center of what had been his pristine front yard. Head in hands, he mumbled words of thanks to God for lives spared and green grass below his feet.

Talk what you please of future spring and sun-warm’d sweet tomorrow, this was the day the Lord brought. Grateful to be alive, they would sing His praises in church tomorrow. Monday they would begin the herculean task of rebuilding.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today is Prosery Monday and Sanaa has asked us to insert the line, “Talk what you please of future spring and sun-warm’d sweet tomorrow.” – from the poem A Daughter of Eve by Christina Rossetti into our piece of prose/flash fiction that is no more than 144 words long, sans title.

Iowa was hit by a derecho on August 10, 2020 when widespread, destructive straight line winds hit the central area of the state. Wind gusts measured up to 106 mph near Marshalltown. The story above is fiction.

Perspective

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Here on this observation deck
wind whips around me.
I lean into it, one hand on rail
other on my woolen hat.

I stare at ship so far below.
Placed on Lysefjorden’s glassy sea
like a miniature game board piece,
by someone’s winning hand.

Snow topped mountains
climb into cloudless sapphire sky.
Their massive girth surrounds me,
the sentinels of time

Humbled, I begin to understand,
I am the Lilliputian in their land.

Written for NAPOWRIMO, Day 11, where today, we’re asked to write about something large.
Photo from our cruise through the Norwegian Fjords in 2017.

Greening

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Deep into the woods, therein lies peace.
Surrounded, enveloped in green,
lush emeralds lull my spirit
birdsong’s lilt soothes my mind.
I crave thy beauty.
I bathe in your
dappled jades,
in your
calm.


Written for NAPOWRIMO Day 9. Today we’re asked to write a nonet: first line has 9 syllables, second line has 8 syllables, third line has 7 syllables, etc.

Photo from our time in Ireland a number of years ago.

Provincetown Aubade

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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.

A stitch in time saves nine . . .

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. . . but there’s no Singers in this house!
No sopranos, altos, or tenors either.
Only two spools of thread available here.
One cat-masticated white, the other
a forty-six year old neon orange –
from a pumpkin project
for a Montessori kid.

You wore spectacles, Ben,
so you must know.
Your sage advice here
requires at least one eye.
Needless to say, that needle’s slit
and my cataracted two?
Not exactly a winning bet.

So what nine and what time?
Nearing the end of mine,
I’ve resolutely decided
to wear my holey socks.
Instead, I offer you this adage:
A glass of wine at any time
may alleviate your need to whine.

Written for NAPOWRIMO Day 7 where today the prompt is to “write a poem that argues against, or somehow questions, a proverb or saying. They say that ‘all cats are black at midnight,’ but really? Surely some of them remain striped. And maybe there is an ill wind that blows some good. Perhaps that wind just has some mild dyspepsia.  Whatever phrase you pick, I hope you have fun complicating its simplicity.”

*** By way of explanation: Singers is in reference to the popular brand of sewing machines and Ben Franklin popularized this phrase in his Poor Richard’s Almanac.

Image from Pixabay.com

Relating to Aesop

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Things sometimes manifest themselves in clouds
Are they real shapes, real creatures others see as well?
Not only my machinations, but some unexplainable cumulus creation?
Always I wonder, is my mind crazed or simply too artistic for the mundane?
What occurs to me as perfectly easy to discern, may or may not be for others.
They perhaps simply see white fluffs surrounded by blue and I
seem rather odd to them, as I ogle over a fire-breathing dragon in the sky.

Written for NAPOWRIMO, Day 6. The prompt for today is “write a variation of an acrostic poem. But rather than spelling out a word with the first letters of each line, I’d like you to write a poem that reproduces a phrase with the first words of each line.”

I’ve chosen a line from Aesop’s Fable, the Bee-Keeper and the Bees: Things are not always what they seem.

Image from Pixabay.com