A poem a week for a year. |
Anything to break the drought... |
Nomad Song Three Rubicons crossed, a pair of bridges burned, a single soul sedentary spurred beyond settling, takes the open road, a new horizon opens, the unknown beckons, miles pass by like years, the familiar fades, change becomes the norm. Roots torn from moorings entwine with alien soil the heart embraces faces, friends on other shores. Until the next bridge looms, home flourishes again. Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 46 Prompt: Photograph of a bridge. |
Reflections on If and Only If, only seventy-two years ago, I’d been born someone else, you’d not be reading these words. If only I’d been as rich as Croesus, the bills wouldn’t be as flocks of birds. iPhone-ly they wander, in strange conversations, asunder. I phone, lie my head off, hoping that this will be enough and yes, I’m fine, thank you, while trusting that you are too. Somewhere, someone else is talking, expounding on wooden ship caulking, a subject I never could love, which, for me, would really be tough if my first “if only” were granted, making me a humbug and phony. “If only” is only desirable if reality remains on the table. Line count: 19 Weird rhymes unpredictable For Promptly Poetry, Week 45 Prompt: Write a poem that starts or ends with "if only..." |
Reverie Like the Beagle that carried Darwin to discovery, full-sailed for the Pacific, and the Galapagos, there to find the creatures that fed the seed of imagination, or the beagle hound, on the trail of the fox, red-coated hunters following on, he raises the haloo cry, runs with the pack of adventurers, and so to the goal, and as Peter Beagle says, we wander from vision to daydream, searching for the culmination of our secret desires. Without a dream, we perish. Line count: 18 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 44 Prompt: Write a poem inspired by this quote: "But I'm always dreaming, even when I'm awake; it is never finished." ~ Peter S. Beagle. |
An Unforgettable Tale A book that begins in near despair, a sad situation, unwanted companion, relieved only by a painting on the wall, a harbinger of hope and remembrance. Then comes the magic to rescue all, as fantasy grips and transports elsewhere, first in the sea and then on a voyage in a new world with dream islands to find. Adventure sails from one isle to the next and makes a friend of an enemy, stars fall to earth, the lost are retrieved, and in the end a glimpse of heaven perceived. The Narnian tales are famed and regaled, even today the young relish these books, but the one that held me then and still now is the one titled The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 43 Prompt: Write a poem based on a classic children’s story. I chose The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. |
A Paean to Change The pills, the day is coming when I’ll no longer need ‘em. The pills, the tablets, capsules, constant companions for so long, some day they’ll fall away and I’ll be free for eternity. The stream winds its way down from Inyangani, brooding horizon hulk. Chattering in youthful glee, the water runs and plays, clawing at the rocks and gone in a moment, hurrying down to the gorge, mighty Pungwe, where it will leap into space, a sudden bridal veil draped to the valley below, lost in blue forests of distance. Line count: 20 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 42 Prompt: Write a poem in two sections about two completely different things. Have the title link both items today in a surprising way. |
Emigration The flight from Africa to the land of my birth on a cut-price, elusive itinerary, Eight hundred miles in the wrong direction, Johannesburg on the first day, and a plane, Belgian in colours, Afrikaans inside, so to Nairobi in Kenya, midnight concourse, sleeping Asians, benches filled and none waking. Then to the upper air, dawn breaking over the endless Sahara, and landfall in Athens but stay in the plane before the sideways step, islands speckling the blue Mediterranean, and Madrid airport, a bite to eat, with grim-faced policemen attending. Here the plane empties, most of the passengers, protesting but ignored, their luggage strewn upon the tarmac, off in some coach to Portugal, maybe, and we remnant ensconced in space, aloft and bound for fog-laden Belgium as night falls over Europe. Diverted to Luxembourg, disembarked into frozen air and piled snow in corners, bussed to the station and a train through the darkness, countryside racing past the windows, Frenchmen breathing in the smoke and an underground station in Brussels. A brief sleep in a tatty hotel, a stale sandwich in haste, and so to the airport and a wait with the sparrows under the glass dome of patience brings us to the home comforts of British Airways and Heathrow, city of the dazed and jet-lagged to find the right bus flying over the chimneys of the horizon of an ancient and tired capital. Thus to a vast and echoing station, a brief train ride to Kent, a taxi and final arrival in the frost and snow before Christmas. Three days and nights of relentless journey, we suffered for our need for home but, like most things, it was all for the best. Line count: 54 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 41 Prompt: Write a poem about a physical journey you have been on. |
Recognition A voice from the crowd addressed to you and turning, you know the face, an old old friend, the companion of such youthful times of fun. You smile and greet with joyful words turning to dribble on your chin. Oh no, it’s happened again, you can’t remember their name. Line count: 11 Free verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 40 Prompt: Write a poem about a time you forgot something. |
Vengeance Angarad the Forsaken sharpens the knife of his ambition on the whetstone of his ills. Abandoned by all in the moment of need, alone in the wilderness of Grym, he practises the ritual of memory, counting the score of betrayals and focused only on revenge, enthroned now in his purpose. So fills his life with the bitter gall of hate, his friends now his enemies, prisoner to whatever may befall. Line Count: 12 Free Verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 39 Prompt: Include as many of the following words (or variations on these words) as you like: knife, ritual, throne, befall. |
Surreal Café Dream vision of geometric café, I do not trust you. That harsh, clear light, pinpointing your precise walls and corners, glowing colours reflecting your face, the regimented tables and chairs arranged as linear defence at your feet, doors and windows closed against the possibility of custom. No, I don’t believe you. Line Count: 8 Free Verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 38 Prompt: Illustration of brightly lit exterior of a café. |
The Brit Secret On the playing fields of Eton? Nah, that’s where the donkeys are bred. It was what the lions were fed in the teeming crowds of Asia, the sun-hazed African plains, remote fastness of the antipodes, forgotten islands far from home. That burning in the belly fired the heart that stood its ground at Rorke’s Drift, and drove the Light Brigade to charge, held Gordon steadfast in Khartoum, while Captain Oates went out in the white waste. In all of these, the heat that kept them true came from inside, the food of the cubs so soon to form those unbending ranks that marched where ordered and fought as one in foreign fields of empire accidental and died with not a word of protest, controlled by asses, yes, but raised on Marmite. Line Count: 20 Free Verse For Promptly Poetry, Week 37 Prompt: Write a poem inspired by your favorite food or beverage. Note: This is a Brit poem containing Brit references and Brit quotations. If others are interested, I can explain its various allusions. |