More poems for Promptly Poetry, stuffed into this book because I have reached my limit. |
Prompt: (verb) to move to action Promptly: (adverb) : very quickly or immediately Poetry: a form of writing that no one ever reads |
As night falls, snowflakes swirl under lampposts stealthily building banks and drifts in the shadows. They lay where they fell, and no measurements taken. There’s nothing to do but sleep while they silently blanket the motionless street. At four a.m., the snowplow hazards a warning. It rumbles along, scrapes it jaw along the rough road, squawks a retreat, then repeats it. Morning lights are flashing, twinkling like a holiday display. The DPW trucks grumble in a salty way. And when the sun rises the blue tinge of night has gone. The sunshine is golden the snow glistens like diamonds. Neighbors with masked faces set snowblowers to growl, or clang shovels against the sidewalk. It’s going to be a white Christmas |
I could never make plans, surely they’d all go awry. With my head in my hands, I’d just sit down and cry. The good that happens to me may be coincidental. It may be serendipity or even accidental. I believe that God leads me and what seems serendipitous, is really His hand that keeps me and that is miraculous. Written for "Promptly Poetry Challenge (2024-2025)" Week 18 Prompt = Serendipity |
I see the Christmas lights, twinkling at night, And suddenly ev’ry memory bright, Rushes over me like a stream of love, Then am I lost in the nostalgic flood. And all who have left me are here in my heart, They inhabit Christmas, will not depart. A reverie of laughter, voices swell, Songs ring out and in the distance, church bells. These happy times in my memory stay, Though ev’ry year they slip further away . I am ever thankful that they haunt me still, And pray that old age will never distill, These precious people from my remembrance, Nor block the path of my soul’s transcendence. Though many loved ones from this world are gone, At Christmas-time, in my heart, they live on. 14 Lines Sonnet For "Promptly Poetry Challenge (2024-2025)" Prompt - Thankfulness |
Snowflake The wind wanders, how it blows! Blew a snowflake on my nose. I crossed my eyes, prayed it stay, But it melted straightaway. Written for "Promptly Poetry Challenge (2024-2025)" Week 16 Form: TANAGA It is a poem of four lines (quatrain) It is usually a rhyming poem Each line contains seven syllables (7-7-7-7) AABB is the traditional rhyme scheme |
When the dirty dishes pile up in the sink, You interrupt my grumbling and make me think, of how blessed I am to have food to eat, instead of clean plates in cupboards, stacked and neat. When the mailman brings me a handful of bills, that leave nothing left over for fun or frills, You remind me of the howling wind and storm, and I give thanks for the walls that keep me warm. In times of famine and in times of feast, You reach out to bless, not the best, but the least. And so, I say on this day of thanksgiving, Thank you, God, for the blessings I am living. WRitten for "Promptly Poetry Challenge (2024-2025)" Week 15 Prompt - image of a thank you note |
Maine Autumn draws the peepers - those foliage seekers, whose shutters open and close on nature’s last colorful spree. Summer has withdrawn, stunning onlookers in her fiery demise. But other, more patient eyes, wait for the beauty of nuance. Pennsylvania Winter is a quiet grace. It is the peace of a soft snowfall that covers our sins, but traces our footsteps in shadows. Written for "Promptly Poetry Challenge (2024-2025)" Prompt/Week # 14 Use at least three of the following words in your poem: stunning, nuance, colorful, last, first Inspired by: February 2nd 1942 by Andrew Wyeth https://www.arkellmuseum.org/content/andrew-wyeth-1917-2009-february-2nd-1942-19... |
In the corner of a well-groomed lawn one renegade wildflower takes root. She readies her seeds for the world. She cannot tuck them safely into beds to secure their future, but she knows the ants, foraging deep beneath the green blades they will carry them to richer soil. It may be that her progeny will fly with the birds, or be scattered to the wind by the mower and elsewhere become, a field of resplendent color. The quiet chaos of life goes unseen. In the immediacy of our lives, the busy-ness of insignificance we regard as fateful circumstance the order of the universe - blown into existence by chance, as if a monkey randomly typing for an infinite time would produce Hamlet. https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/science/monkeys-cannot-type-shakespeare-study-int... https://www.science.org/content/article/don-t-crush-ant-it-could-plant-wildflowe... Written for "Promptly Poetry Challenge (2024-2025)" TOPIC - WEEK 13 "quiet chaos" |
Now November, air perfumed with sweet decay Fruit fermenting under a carpet of leaves, There’s still time to prepare for Winter today. Bird feeders turn squirrels into clever thieves, Bluejays squawk at the unwelcome intrusion, What keeps one through the dearth, another aggrieves. The trees now cleared of their color infusion, Stand like prophets of dire desolation. Wildlife prepare for the coming reclusion. November strips the world of green temptation, So it may slumber in hushed hibernation. Written for "Promptly Poetry Challenge (2024-2025)" Week 12 Form: Terza Rima A Terza Rima is a poem with an eleven-syllable count in each line and a rhyming scheme of aba, bcb, cdc, dd. Poem should be inspired by the prompt/image in some way This form is eleven lines. |
I don’t know if it’s an art, or just a craft sometimes it feels like hard labor stitching in colors, one upon another until the vision begins to appear. Suddenly, the lines and blocks of color become the symbols of joy. Snowflakes fall, reindeer dance, trees take shape one branch at a time. It’s heavy and cumbersome not like a painting that rests on an easel or a jigsaw on a table, it’s weight is accomplishment. A struggle for weary shoulders to lift, a burden for arms to carry, yet there’s deep and satisfying warmth when laid upon my lap. This tapestry of woven yarn built one stitch at a time, drives me line upon line until the joy of knotting the last end. But there’s still hanks of yarn that ask to be entwined and raveled into stories and pictures that travel from my heart to my hands. |