Finding Koi in the Tunnel of Love
Your hand reaches to hold mine,
pulls back as they touch.
Nerves frayed by discomfort,
the pain that sears your wrist
subsides as you turn it
to stroke my arm, reassurance
that no median will separate us.
https://www.osmosis.org/answers/median-nerve
Image source: needpix.com – Here & Here
Shared with Open Link LIVE: May Edition at dVerse ~ Poets Pub.
Forever and Always
Yesterday, today, tomorrow.
All one.
I’m not going anywhere.
I didn’t travel all this way for nothing.
What was born within
notes of jazz and poetry,
beside blue water
beneath the stars,
knows no end.
The truth, yours and mine,
is found in the Nebulous Collection
and all that has followed.
Forever and Always.
This is my response to Day 18 at napowrimo.net, which is to write a poem that provides five answers to the same question – without ever specifically identifying the question that is being answered.
Chalk It up to Love
Moments that were stellar?
Of course.
I have three beautiful souls in my life.
Life without them?
Unimaginable.
Moments that were not?
Unfortunately.
This time, I am getting it right.
Some might chalk it up to experience,
but another beautiful soul is the key.
This poem is my response to Quadrille #150 – Chalk it up to Poetry, the prompt from Lillian at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, which is to use a form of the word chalk in a 44-word poem (excluding title), with no required meter or rhyme.
Image source: peakpx.com
Sweet January
It was on a chilly day in early March that she flew into Buffalo. Two months had passed since we had been together, but it seemed like two years. Within seconds, it seemed as though we had never been apart. After one night at my place, we drove to the Finger Lakes for a romantic weekend. Our stay at a bed and breakfast in Geneva, with all its splendor, was wonderful, as was the scenery as we drove along the snow covered valley of Seneca Lake, touring the area’s wineries. It wouldn’t be until July that I would leave behind snowy winters and move to Missouri to be with her. Talk what you please of future spring and sun-warm’d sweet tomorrow, but, for that wonderful week in March, it might just as well have been July, for all the warmth that filled my heart.
This is my response to Prosery: When it comes to Christina Georgina Rossetti, the prompt from Sanaa at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, where the challenge is to write a prosery, flash fiction or creative nonfiction, with a 144-word limit (here, exactly 144 words). Included in the bit of prose is to be a complete line from a poem. For this prompt, the line is the opening line from A Daughter of Eve, by Christina Rossetti.
Talk what you please of future spring and sun-warm’d sweet tomorrow.
– Christina Georgina Rossetti
astronomers marvel
as my heart swells,
consumes the cosmos,
at the mere thought
of your presence
This ekphrastic poem, inspired by an image from Astronomy Picture of the Day,
is my second response to Day 11 at napowrimo.net,
where we are asked to “write a poem about a very large thing.”
Image source: © Francesco Batistella via Astronomy Picture of the Day
Whispering Wind
Below a white tower beside blue water,
beneath a sky so blue it could hold nothing
but good fortune, blew a breeze that held
within it words of love that would carry
over the land and across the heavens.
Words that cross our minds every time
we look into each other’s eyes to see
the love held there were born that day.
This is my response to Day 10 at napowrimo.net, which is to write a love poem. My wife and I were married at the Presque Isle Lighthouse in Erie, Pennsylvania, on a beautiful June day in 2017. I wrote our wedding vows, as well as a series of poems that were read by my children and my granddaughter.
My collection of love poems can be found here.
Savor the Moment
Given the chance, would I season our time
any differently, remove sweetness
in the quiet moments, or add spice,
raise the heat, in those moments
when two souls are so tightly wound?
Why tamper with a love
as fine as ours with a recipe?
This poem is my response to dVerse – Monday Quadrille #149 – ‘Tis the Season, the prompt from Lisa at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, which is to use a form of the word season in a 44-word poem (excluding title), with no required meter or rhyme.
This is off prompt, but I’m sharing it with Day 5 at napowrimo.net.
Image source: clipartkey.com
Glimpse Inside
From first glisk to last,
last glisk to first.
From sunrise to sunset,
to anticipated return.
The light in this heart
shines only for you.
This poem is my response to Day 2 at napowrimo.net, a prompt to write a poem using an obscure word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks. I’ve chosen glisk, which is defined as a brief glimpse of warm sunshine.
Now and Forever
Will you love me forever?
What is forever
if you are gone,
I am gone, the spark is gone?
I will hold that forever
close to my heart
so long as there is a spark
or burning ember
to remind me of forever,
even when forever might be short.
This poem is my response to One Day to Go and an Early-Bird Prompt, where we are asked to write a poem inspired by one of five lines from Emily Dickinson poems:
• “Forever might be short”
• “The absence of the Witch does not / Invalidate the spell”
• “If to be ‘Elder’ – mean most pain – / I’m old enough, today”
• “The second half of joy / Is shorter than the first”
• “To be a Flower, is profound / Responsibility –
Shared with OLN #313: Spring has sprung!
Image source: merriam-webster.com
The Deepest Pearl
A pearl is held within this shell,
where loneliness a love does quell.
The light of hope for one once felled,
the sound of celebration’s knell.
A hope that our two hearts will meld.
Within this shell a pearl is held.
As you will see, a man made whole
will bare to you his deepest soul.
His one desire, your love the key.
His shell is shed as all extol
before you now, on bended knee,
a man made whole, as you will see.
This poem is my response to Poetry Form: Sparrowlet, the prompt from Grace at dVerse Poets Pub, which is to write a Sparrowlet, an invented stanzaic form created by Kathrine Sparrow.
The elements of the Sparrowlet are:
• stanzaic, written in any number of sixains. (A stanza of 6 lines).
• syllabic, lines of 8 syllables each. (Often written in iambic tetrameter.)
• rhymed, rhyme scheme BbabaA.
• L1 and L6 of each stanza is written in 2 hemistichs.
(Hemistich means a half a line of a verse).
• The 2 halves of L1 are inverted and repeated as a refrain in L6.
The last line MUST be the EXACT SAME as line 1, just switched around,
with a change in punctuation to accommodate the meaning
as the only variable allowed).
The pattern of the 6 line stanza (with bold characters as the repeated syllables):
RRRA, RRRB
xxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxa
RRRB, RRRA
Image source: gia.edu
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