Relationships

The Mysteries of Time

lillian1 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.

Pen in hand,
I write as time moves on
faster than my script.

My gait slower, skin thinner
eye sight cloudier,
but joy nurtures me.

Each day is still a gift
for one constant reason.
You are still beside me.

Psychotic Break

lillian39 Comments

And so I wandered. Lonely as a cloud, seeking some break in the darkness you left behind. How did I get to this point?

Your proposal caught me off guard. I craved love for so long, my heart could not believe your words. We spent those next weeks in pure bliss. I asked to meet your family. “Soon enough,” you said. Then one day I came home to an empty apartment. Your clothes were gone. Your side of the bathroom, pristine. You’d stood there that morning, shaving off your beard until a fresh unfamiliar face looked out from the mirror. “I’ll have to get used to that,” I said. Did you want me to? They found me, wandering through the house. Incoherent. The darkness was everywhere.

I’ve spent years in this institution now, wondering if you were real.

Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. EXCEPT, today, we’re not writing poetry. We’re writing PROSERY! This is a form of creative writing, developed at dVerse. The prompter (today it’s me) gives a line or two from a poem of her/his choosing as the prompt. Writers must then write a piece of prose, think flash fiction, that contains the given line(s) word for word, within the body of prose. The punctuation may change….but the word order must be the same and it must be word for word. The prose must not exceed 144 words in length (sans title). As the pub tender/prompter today, I’ve selected the line “I wandered lonely as a cloud” from Wordsworth’s poem I Wander Lonely as a Cloud. The line must be used word for word within the body of prose (punctuation may vary), and the prose must be 144 words or less in length, sans title. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!

A Carroll for the Ages

lillian17 Comments

With walking sticks in hand
golden agers cross the field
all in the golden afternoon.
The aged aged man smiles,
his love beside him today
and all these many years.

Beach house waits patiently
weathered bench outside.
They stop and look and sigh,
then reach slowly to touch
initials carved so deep that day,
when first they fell in love.

They sit, tremored hand in calloused one,
gaze across the lake.
Vision blurred beyond optician’s help,
still they recognize shapes afar.
A boat beneath the sunny sky
prods his memory back in time,

remembering . . .
. . . remembering . . .
he pats her hand and smiles.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Sanaa asks us to consider a Candy Crush Saga! One option we have for our poems is to choose three titles of Lewis Carroll’s poems from a long list she gives us. We do not have to include the titles in our poem, but our poem should be inspired by them and we should give credit to his titles. I was most familiar with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland so this was interesting to see some of the many poems he’s also written! Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!

The Lewis Carroll titles I included word for word within my poem are All in the Golden Afternoon, The Aged Aged Man, and A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky.

First Love

lillian18 Comments

Gardenia laden breeze
flutters lace curtains.
Nightgown clad,
right silk strap slips.
Gentle hands reach slowly
rest lightly on shoulders,
wait patiently.
She sits alert, but melting.
His hazel-flecked eyes ask.
No words. Just asking eyes.
She smiles shyly, nods,
and quietly murmurs yes.

Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Bjorn asks us to include the word “eye” or a form of the word, within our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!

Shinrin-Yoku

lillian18 Comments

Serenity, I walk in bliss.
Trees breeze-whisper, nothing amiss.
Soft ferns hushed, shimmer velvetly.
Moist, fresh forest scent, nature’s kiss.
Your lips come to mind. Ecstasy.
I walk in bliss. Serenity.

Shinrin-Yoku is Japanese for forest bathing: bathing in the forest atmosphere, taking in the forest through our senses.

Grace is hosting Meet-The-Bar Thursday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. She’s asked us to write a Sparrowlet, a poetry form invented by Kathrine Sparrow. Here’s the elements of a Sparrowlet:
1. stanzaic, written in any number of sixtains (6 line stanzas) I wrote 1 sixtain.
2. syllabic: each line must be 8 syllables each (Often written in iambic tetrameter – I didn’t!)
3. Line 1 and Line 6 of the stanza is written in 2 himistichs (I had to look this word up)
4. Rhymed, rhyme scheme is BbabaA.
5. The 2 halves of Line 1 are inverted and repeated as a refrain in Line 6. The lst line MUST be the EXACT SAME as line 1, just switched around. You cannot change any of the words. (Punctuation may be changed to accommodate the meaning.)
RRA, RRB
xxxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxxa
RRB, RRA

Luckily Grace included an example of a poem written in this form within her prompt. The example for me, was much easier to follow than the definition itself! Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us to try this form — or just to see how others wrote with it!

Photo from a trip to see my niece in Ohio a number of years ago.

Journey Gone Askew

lillian35 Comments

She picked one of the two.
Not her roots in rural life,
golden brick road more tempting.
Drove it to wealth,
fancy home in fancy heights
prestige, black tie events.

Ignored the signs.
Exit ramps,
detours available,
this way outs.
Drove and drove,
hard and harder.

Too late she realized,
the road she picked?
Sadly a dead-end street.

I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. I’m asking folks to choose one adage/proverb from a list I provide, and use it as their inspiration for their poem today. The list includes adages from Aesop’s Fables, Adagia, Poor Richard’s Almanack, the Bible. I also provide one line from a movie, which is the line this poem is inspired by: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Forrest Gump, the movie.

Join us at 3 PM Boston time to see the full list. Then write your poem and post it so we can enjoy together! Image from Pixabay.com

Juxtapositioning

lillian20 Comments

Ancient eucalyptus tree.
Pock marked bark-skin,
peeling, barren in places,
adds beauty to greening canyon.

Elderly man in thick glasses,
blue-veined hands hanging limply,
shuffles across street.
Driver sits, hand poised over horn.

Musing, I ponder our value system.
We should learn from nature.

Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse where the word to use (or a form of the word) in our exactly 144 word poem sans title is “muse.”

Photos taken yesterday from our patio, which opens to a beautiful canyon. We’re in an apartment rental in sunny San Diego until early March, escaping Boston’s winter (as in 11.2 inches of snow on Friday!).

Sunburst

lillian18 Comments

She becomes the sun in his world.
Dazed, stunned, smitten. Emotions whirled.
Fierce sunbeam.

Parhelion in mocking sky,
her beauty shines to mystify.
Burned. Sunstruck.

Moist tempting lips smile to ensnare.
Hips beckon, sway in daylight’s glare.
Felled. Sunstroke.

Obsessed he beds her day and night
primal, neurotic appetite.
Sunscalded.

His money spent, he’d been cajoled.
Drugged. Job over, she leaves him cold.
Done. Sunset.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Grace hosts today and introduces us to the Compound Word Verse:

This complex form was created by Margaret R. Smith:
Five 3-line stanzas. Fifteen lines total.
Last line of each stanza must be a compound word.
The compound words must share a common stem: IE sun, sunbeam, sunstruck, sunstroke, sunbathing, sunset.
Rhyme scheme must be aab.
Syllable count must be 8, 8, 3.

Parhelion: a sun dog or mock sun called a parhelion in meteorology, is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that consists of a bright spot to one or both sides of the sun.

Photo from Pixabay.com

Luna

lillian33 Comments

In the night of day
Luna lights the path
over oceans deep.
Vast sea of glistening caps
ever gleaming, beckoning me.
Your visage when last we met,
only that has kept me safely
undone by storms and cloudy skies.

There is no fear, no dread,
nothing vague.
No questioning of time.
Row on, row on, this cursed ship.
My dreams, my thoughts aswirl,
I shall reach you, my everlasting joy.

An Acrostic Plus, written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

I’m hosting and ask folks to either write a poem related to something that puzzles them, use the word “puzzle” in their poem . . . or extra points for writing an Acrostic Plus, a form I created: Read down the first letters in the lines of the first stanza and see what they spell; then read down the last letters of the lines in the second stanza and see what they spell. You should then have a message related to the poem!

In this poem, the message is “I love you deeply.”