%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 Poems for years 4, 5 and 6 of the Promptly Poetry Challenge. |
| A year's worth of poems, every week for 52 weeks, spanning 2023 and 2024, plus the years following, from August 2024 to August 2025, 2025 to 2026 (provided I live that long, of course). |
| Ode to Winter And if cold be not emotion still it concentrates the mind more powerful than any potion of attention-grabbing kind. When hands are surely frozen and shivers wrack my frame be certain I’ll not have chosen to ponder passion’s fame. When bound in winter’s spell with ice inside my veins you may guarantee full well my mind is pure chilblains. Line count: 12 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 17 Prompt: Write a poem personifying whichever emotion you’re predominantly feeling right now. |
| If I Were a Snowflake (Eternity in the Round) Oh, to live forever, my plastic form enshrined in global ecstasy, inspiration I shall find. You’ll not think me pretty, no fancy shape for me, a thousand just the same, no differences you’ll see. But melt I will not ever, my teeming horde aspire, to ride the storm always, a silent gleaming choir. And though my world is tiny, the snow just my pretence, I’ll see the end of time itself, through ages beyond sense. Line count: 16 Rhymed abcb For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 16 Prompt: Use the following title for this week's poem: "If I Were a Snowflake." |
Shoreline Two words setting the scene, with each line adding two, aiming at the total of eight, before the wave retreats by two each time to two. Two too, the wave grows from two to six and eight, spreading on the sands of meter, this constant flow and ebb the breath of seas in twos. Line count: 14 Form: Eintou, seven lines with syllables counting 2-4-6-8-6-4-2, repeated to total 32 syllables in all. For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 15 Prompt: Write an eintou. |
| Tiny Trio A tiny sprig of moss etched against the darkness and a drop of water at its foot, bold outlier of the fetid forest behind, it leans a bending branch to peer at its reflection. That first raindrop after drought, silent explosion of dust scattered in the thirsty air and the damp drawn down in the heated earth, a dark patch on the parched patina of dirt. The antlion’s conical trap, innocent in the sand, with one grain falling, footing lost at last, rolls down into the depth to the miniature jaws awaiting, drama beneath notice. Line count: 21 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 14 Prompt: Write a poem about at least three ‘little’ things that make you happy. |
| Old Crow Old crow survivor always comes out top, both passenger and driver when searching for his crop. “Carrion’s my bag,” he says “and that can mean whate’er I find or steal or possess it doesn’t really matter. “What counts is I am fed, the easier the better, and so to rest my head when sun becomes a setter.” And so with many a caw, he shouts triumphantly - “Go feed behind your door, and I’ll master what I see.” Line count: 16 Rhymed abab For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 13 Prompt: Write a poem about a bird! Any bird, any color, your choice! Note: This not all I have to say about crows but it’s all he cares about. Some day I may write more on my perspective. |
| NPO Nil Per Os or Nil By Mouth, Strict instruction laid upon the morning, the salt upon the pain of dread as the operation plods its time diffusing. And its not the hunger spikes the moment nor thirst scraping at the throat, but habit strides about the room, demands routine return. He pokes the mind with insistent finger, manufactures glance at clock, “It’s breakfast time and take a sip,” he points to beaten path. Determination grits the teeth, wards off forgetful moment, “You’ll not catch me in thoughtless move,” I plot the coming journey. Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 12 Prompt: Poet's Choice! Write a poem about anything. |
| Fog Fine for Eliot with his yellow fog, infused with smoke and spattered with soot, that falls asleep embracing the house. Not so easy for me who never knew fog until, returning to England and snow, I met the soft grey mantle of atmosphere gone thick with dew and cold, as silent as a cat’s paws padding down the passage in the dark. Oh I’ve grown to love this swaddling in a dim world with restricted view and sounds muffled to extinction. Never thick enough for me, avid of privacy as I am and singular, the fog feels like home, a place where secrets hide and thoughts run free. Yes, I’ll take this friend of new acquaintance, though I never knew it yellow as Eliot’s in those chimney days before Clean Air and, if I cannot sing as eloquent as he, I offer at least this pumpkin of a poem. Line count: 21 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 11 Prompt: Use these words in your poem - pumpkin, cat, fog. |
| An Old Friend I know him well, Old Father Time, his stamp is hard upon me now each morning from the bed I climb how slow and painful that I bow beneath the weight of passing years these burdens that he casts on me and yes, the aches and burning tears they all conspire to make me be this shrunken frail and worn out thing that once was young and hopeful so now memories cold comfort bring upon my soul before I go though grey and lined this body be there’s sunlight still within my mind Old Father Time, he lets us see the days were good and often kind. Line count: 16 Form: It’s rhymed abab and each line has eight syllables. It’s meant to be what I call a chant - read without expression and entirely ruled by the beat. Hence the sparsity of punctuation. I thought it fairly apt for the subject of time and its relentless progression. For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 10 Prompt: Time. |
 Bedtime Blues A nursery rhyme’s a dangerous place to be there’s no comfort in the message to me the hunter may help out Red Riding Hood that hardly does poor Grandma any good. Hansel and Gretel may enjoy gingerbread yet they ruin the witch’s wee homestead though the witch’s intent may be too bad the kids responses are murderous a tad. The three piggies are variously lazy and their architectural ideas quite hazy but the wolf is doing only what wolves do and it’s true that pork makes a fine stew. So consider the villain in these tales they’re not always deserving to fail there’s two sides to every bedtime story and the ending does not have to be gory. Line count: 16 Rhymed aabb For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 9 Prompt: As per illustration. |
| For Jonathan My friend he lives in old Cape Town, far off in southern hemisphere, and so, for us, he’s upside down. As kids we grew in Africa - savanna heat don’t turn him brown, too blond and pink to ever tan. So now it really makes me frown that he’s down there and I am here, toes all iced in a northern town. Line count: 9 Form: Magic 9 For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 8 Prompt: Magic 9 - Nine lines with the last word of each line rhyming with the scheme abacadaba. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
Puzzle Hub
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
You should check out "
