Poems for years 4 and 5 of the Promptly Poetry Challenge. |
A year's worth of poems, every week for 52 weeks, spanning 2023 and 2024, plus the year following, from August 2024 to August 2025 (provided I live that long, of course). |
Point of View Sand castles in the air and dust storms on the way dreams make weather fair but life will make us pay. Happy endings abound sometimes they really do too often they rebound when all is told and through. Some will hope for colour try always for the best pessimist world’s duller but outlasts all the rest. Line count: 12 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 43 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Sound What is that whistling sound that I hear? Like an electrical hum of machinery; I’m unable to say if it’s distant or near, it might even be part of the scenery. Not a hum or a buzz, a hiss or a tune, it is white noise with no corners or reason - constant and yet shy, it inhabits the room, without crescendo, it wants no completion. The other sounds bleached and cast from my ear while this monotonous sound becomes rife; not conditioning air nor inspiring fear, I know it at last - it’s the rhythm of life. Line count: 12 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 42 Prompt: Listen. What’s the most prominent sound you hear? Write about it. |
Silence Silence waits in the grave. On the mountain peaks the wind whispers of eternity in the deepest abyss the darkness echoes with liquid dreams in the stillness of starless night blood pounds in the ear in the sun-speckled spaces in the wood the cricket saws and sings birds punctuate the drowsy air insects buzz and creak distant highways hum and thrum cities converse in traffic tones microwaves beep and teevees chatter children yell and dogs bark. Silence waits in the grave. Line count: 18 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 41 Prompt: Write a poem about silence. |
Wayfarer Bird of endless summer, I’ve heard the word, word of wisdom but never winter’s bird; fall creeps in and she hears the season’s call, call unto the flock when the leaves do fall - so the gathering leaves before the snow (snow may freeze the land and hunger bite so). Goal of bird’s united aim, the opposite pole, pole of north to southern waste their sole goal, far the journey in pursuit of a star, star recedes at night and day lures afar, turn the world of summer-bent Arctic Tern, tern travels on and back again in turn. Line count: 12 Form: Mirror Sestat For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 40 Prompt: Write a Mirror Sestat. |
May Emptied box upon the bed, clutter on the blanket spread - an open book long half read, notepad, specs, and roses (dead), bottle with some green perfume, forgotten scent fills the room, morning coffee gone stone cold calendar speaks of times now old, a note I thought thrown away, long lost greeting, “Hello, May.” I remember well that day - you smiled before you went away; gone for years and once returned, wrote that note before I learned you were back but left again. Memories I counted slain, ceased for me to dwell upon, stir, and rising with the sun, awoken just to spoil my day, remember me, my name is May. Line count: 20 Rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 39 Prompt: As per illustration. |
Obsession I wanted a slot car set I was given a train set it was amusing enough but far from favourite slot cars came much later in that no-man’s land between child and adult but so fierce my desire it stayed with me always through combined sets with friends afire the same and self made cars correct in smallest detail. Still I watch the races and dream. Line count: 15 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 38 Prompt: Write a poem about your favorite childhood toy. |
![]() A Clipped Conversation 2 The bulldog clip and tiny child on shoulder carried, meek and mild, approached Sir Egg Cup and enquired “Can you help, sir? We’re lost and tired.” Answer Egg Cup gave them none, the spoon inside his head had done such damage when it stirred his brain, and sent his knowledge down the drain. You may have seen these things before I wrote of them in days of yore now much has changed and sad to say Sir Egg Cup’s spoon has gone away. Line count: 12 Rhymed couplets in (mainly) trochaic tetrameter For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 37 Prompt: Pick any object in your room. Now write a poem describing this object. |
Enough Already Old age is content to only sit and dream far from in the stream, without a new intent, old age is still content The young may build and scheme of deeds afire that gleam, but far beyond repent, old age remains content These things were once the cream, perhaps more than they seem, but sometimes called misspent, and old age is content. Line count: 13 Form: Dansa For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 36 Prompt: Write a poem in Dansa form. |
Darkness at Noon “La Dolce Vita” proclaims the sign a voice in protest against the lowering sky the gathering clouds of ill intent and the steps leading downward ever downward into gloom and deep despair far indeed from any sweetness of life the narrow alley squeezed between buildings grown too tall for their ambitions and painted in colours once bright but now dark with age and wear so rarely sunlit in these latter days as though life itself drains slowly fitfully down the grate in the foreground. The sign creaks in the breeze. Line count: 14 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 35 Prompt: As per illustration. |
The Seasons The seasons being the template of so many things in life, the daily round eternal bringing echoes of the the dawn till brightest noonday sun, to be followed by the evening shade with darkest midnight promised, so winter speaks of that misty, dreamlike place, our home, mysterious land of formative, forgotten phantoms from which emerge the first beginnings of the person we are meant to be, growing into the one we know as me. And spring is like those years we find when awareness blooms in full, our arms embracing all that comes enticing within our reach and clear eyes lead plans and schemes of all that can be grasped in reaching what we choose to call maturity. The summer comes with certainty, in greatest confidence, completed child and basking in the heat of summer’s bounty, with life burgeoning with positive assurance, no thought of year’s end, the longest days deceiving. Then the fall in so many ways, as autumn spreads its cloak of golden times as rewards for work, now slower pace invading, the dying leaves reminders all that nothing lasts forever and celebrations muted now in shortened days. Return to winter and those colder times, the bones are aching, breath frosted with the waiting knowledge that life grows thin, the wasted body struggling now, indecision ruling thought, and so, at last, it’s over. Line count: 24 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge, week 34 Prompt: Use the following words in your poem: Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. |