lillian the home poet

Choices

April 5, 2022lillian15 Comments

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.

Also posted, off prompt, to NAPOWRIMO, Day 5.

Photo from Pixabay.com

Provincetown Palette

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022lillian29 Comments

Savor Cape Cod sunsets.
Some seasoned with paprika,
cayenne, tumeric red-oranges.

Others like Monet’s garden scenes
bloom in pale lavender and rose pinks,
scattered through buttercup yellow.

Hot summer days wane at oceans’ edge.
Luminescent full moon slowly rises,
cools down dark ebony sky.

Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Lisa asks us to use the word “season” or a form of the word in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Photos taken over the years at our annual two weeks in Provincetown, MA, at the very tip of Cape Cod

Prompt for Sojourn in Provincetown

April 4, 2022lillian1 Comment

Brew strong rich dark coffee. Inhale deeply to awaken muse.
Take journal, pen, and mug outside on deck.
Contemplate gulls, shapeshifting clouds, dark wet seaweed blown to shore.
Sip coffee, tasting words that come to mind.
Let ideas ebb and flow like rhythmic tides.
Look to horizon then back to shore, reeling in wayward words.
Let them tumble like sea glass sculpted by waves, smoothing thoughts into poetic lines.
Put pen to journal page. Curved script like ripples etched in sand.
Edit between sips as nouns and verbs wrestle like squawking gulls over luscious scraps of food.
When mug is drained and poem complete, stand by water’s edge and read aloud, your gift to the sea.

Written for NAPOWRIMO Day 4. Our prompt today: “write a poem . . . in the form of a poetry prompt. If that sounds silly, well, maybe it is! But it’s not without precedent. The poet Mathias Svalina has been writing surrealist prompt-poems for quite a while, posting them to Instagram. You can find examples here, and here, and here.“

Photo from one of our annual two week sojourns at the Watermark Inn in Provincetown, MA.

This I Promise

April 3, 2022lillian3 Comments

nocturnal goddess I am
not of human form
shaped like sliver moon
my candle burns at both ends

headdress gleaned from stars
burning blazing they produce light
beauty etched in darkened scrim
it will not last the night

wars desecrate my vision
some of you defile my spirit
create hell in falling sky
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends

acts of kindness, innocence of babes
good will shall overcome cruelty
and like the warmth of rising sun
it gives a lovely light

Written for NAPOWRIMO Day 3 where the prompt is to write a Spanish form of poertry called a glosa – a form new to me. “Take a quatrain from a poem that you like, and then write a four-stanza poem that explains or responds to each line of the quatrain, with each of the quatrain’s four lines in turn forming the last line of each stanza.”

My glosa references Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, which is one quatrain in length, First Fig:
My candle burns at both ends;
it will not last the night;
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –
it gives a lovely light!

Sudoku Days

April 2, 2022lillianLeave a comment

Mind wanders unable to cogitate.
Winds play havoc with light weight detritus.
Headlines condense happenings,
news by topic only. Sometimes old.
Eyes skim paper while draining coffee cup.
Aprosexia. Sound enticing?
Not.
Day dawns choppy and jumbled.
My sorting hat’s lost.

*NAPOWRIMO (National Poetry Writing Month) Day 2. The challenge is to write a poem every day in the month of April.*

Today’s optional prompt: write a poem based on a word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account devoted to obscure and interesting English words. I chose the word “aprosexia” which means an inability to concentrate.

Who is the Predator?

April 1, 2022lillian4 Comments

They leave the body. Bloody pile of corpuscles dragged to Lake Manyara’s shore. Young zebra, quiet since teeth first gouged neck. Decimated.

Jowls dripping, appetite sated, his eyes bid her follow. Series of slow guttural growls signal acquiescence. Lioness follows beside. Slowly they retreat into maze of acacia trees. Unseen by approaching safari truck.

High power rifles catch glaring sun. Two men peer quietly into distance. Cheetah carcass, day’s first kill, hangs over vehicle’s hood. Not enough, they seek more.

NAPOWRIMO 2022: and so it begins with a prompt to write a prose poem that is somehow about a body, includes dialogue and at least one vivid image. Here, the dialogue is implied in the second paragraph/stanza.
*Image from Pixabay.com*

Haiku to ponder

March 31, 2022lillian18 Comments

The second half of joy is shorter than the first.
Emily Dickinson

everyday a gift
wildflowers along the road –
snow falls silently

Written for the NAPOWRIMO prompt given the day before National Poetry Writing Month begins. We are to respond to one of Emily Dickinson’s lines of poetry. Several are provided or we may choose our own.

Also will appear at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today is OLN: Open Link Night. Ingrid is hosting and we may post any one poem of our choosing. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time.

NAPOWRIMO begins officially tomorrow. April is National Poetry Writing Month and the challenge is to write a poem every day of the month.
Photo is from our trip to Ireland a number of years ago.

Renewal

March 28, 2022lillian11 Comments

During the season of cherry blossoms, after more than fifty years of being separated by more than six-thousand miles, we met again. This gentle man, Kenji, who I knew only for one year, all those years ago. So many changes in the world since last we’d seen each other. Kenji was a foreign exchange student from Japan, during our senior year at my Illinois high school. And now I was a visitor in his home country. There for a few days to experience his beautiful culture. In his hometown of Tokyo for one day. How would it be to see him again?

We sat in a small restaurant over a pot of fresh brewed tea. Shared news about our lives, careers and family. Reminisced too. And somehow, the years melted away and friendship bloomed again.

cold brings frost, stunts growth
trees remain rooted in earth –
blossoms come again

Written for Haibun Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Frank asks us to consider cherry blossoms. A haibun combines prose and haiku.
Photo is from our cruise to China, South Korea and Japan in 2019. Such a wonderful reunion with Kenji Kojima! And how appropriate that our friendship bloomed once again exactly during cherry blossom season in Japan.

The Mysteries of Time

March 27, 2022lillian1 Comment

Time slips away, disappears.
Those years of youth,
ours and theirs.

I had a firm grasp on reality.
Even so, the mundane simmered,
repetition melded, numbed time.

Infinitesimal changes crept in,
unnoticed until too late.
What was, was gone.

Those everyday moments . . .
in hindsight I know
were anything but mundane.

Sweet viscous memories
fragments, rarely continuous,
slip and slide in my mind.

I sit, smiling gently,
my head in the past
then force myself into the now.