Winterland for Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings posts: This week, tell us a story about wintertime. What's winter like where you live? What's the harshest winter you've ever endured? Like it, love it, hate it? (Or, you can write about "A Winter's Tale" by Shakespeare if the mood strikes you!)

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Winter? No thanks.
It wouldn't be so bad if it were warm and sunny.
If trees didn't fall from the weight of snow and ice.
The beauty of winter is a paradox that comes once a year and often stays for three seasons.

Winterland

Winter wet
froze hard upon the trees
a fairyland even Disney
could not replicate.
Cracking smashing limbs
glistened as they fell
reflections shot the dusk
before the day was done.
Colors of Joseph’s coat
on tails of wintry light
ricocheted thru town
to spread a magic mantle
upon the ice-clad ground.


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poems and digital photos

Tacoma Bridge of Light

as dawn scumbles the night
universal colors rise
worked by heat, blown by pipe
Chihuly's artistry of bold

a thousand dyes blend
waxy strands of primaries
hug rounds of gossamer glass
Chihuly's artistry of bold

a thousand scrambled facets
low empty bowls upended
akin to jellyfish suspended
Chihuly's artistry of bold

like Bellagio's decor
kaleidoscopes of gold
cast glitter on the floor
Chihuly's artistry of bold




Fractal created in Fractal Explorer by Sue.

Glass has fascinated me for eons, or maybe a little less than that. Dale Chihuly is one of my favorite artisans - it amazes me to watch glassblowers work from his rapidly sketched charcoal lines to create a diaphonous and exquisitely colored object. Follow the link if you'd like to see art of Chihuly.


Totally Optional Prompt: And what is a kyrielle? Briefly, a poem made up of four-line stanzas (any number of such stanzas) where the last line of each stanza is the same. Suggestion: write a free-verse kyrielle that retains the four-line stanza structure and the repetition.

fractals

Amanita Phalloides

Thankful that she felt no fury and harbored only a flicker of guilt, Lisbon recited affirmations for a rich and single life while she stirred a second measure of finely ground Amanita Phalloides into her philandering husband's Metamucil.



A stab at a story in a sentence, this is Post #500 on my blog. Watercolor sketch by Sue.

From prompt words, thankful, fury and guilt posted today by ThomG, Surface Tension on Three Word Wednesday.

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poetry watercolor

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Childhood Memories in Senryu

♥

hoarded rocks
tumbled in a can
sparkling gems

♥

Sky King
seeps through pin and quartz
crystal radio

♥

paper rolls of songs
respite from chopsticks and scales
player piano

♥



One Single Impression posts: Childhood Memories Prompt courtesy of Geraldine at Poetic Path


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Grateful

This link will take you to the Feast of Thankfuls which I wrote before I became mostly serious.

How many ways can I say grateful and for how many things? Each day I give thanks for family, first, followed by a current list which doesn't always fall in an orderly fashion.

Today, I was grateful to have reached the NaNoWriMo word count.

Today I was grateful for blogs and bloggers, for readers and writers, for a peek at the sunset, for not falling off my treadmill, for a spider slow enough to be captured and sent outside to spin.

Grateful to be sheltered, not hungry, with a bed to sleep in and with the luck that keeps me from being on the street.

Grateful that some of us are physically removed from war. I'm grateful to those who serve and those who care. For those who learn and those who dare. Always, I'm grateful that the worst hasn't happened. And then I fear it may have happened to someone, somewhere today.

♥

May I wish you all a long list of gratefuls and a delightfully warm and generous holiday.

♥

The above is in response to: Sunday Scribblings prompt: Grateful

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Fused Glass

seeds ripe for theshing
hang on thick cedar trees
ringing the secluded kiln

plication of aromatic pits
with primed cullet
creates fused glass formula

she huddles around designs
fired with mabe textures
known to mimic handblown

while images artfully shot
are transferred online
to her busy Etsy site

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Michelle at Poefusion Friday 5 offers these words for prompt: thresh (separate seed mechanically), plication (fold), cullet (broken or refuse glass usually added to new material to facilitate melting in making glass), secluded, mimic

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Sounds for TOP

Totally Optional Prompts is looking for Sound this week.

For several years, I read at local venues and created audio CD's to accompany each of my poetry chapbooks. After a lengthy bout with a respirator for pneumonia, I'm sure I sound too scratchy to read in public.

I found Wendy Videlock on the Poetry Foundation website and listened to North of Mist several times before I Googled and read any number of her poems. This one remains my favorite. Ms. Videlock is a Colorado poet and has received numerous awards and accolades.

North of Mist

This image is a digital watercolor created in Adobe Elements 5 and with Bamboo Fun.
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poetry watercolor

Golden Goose

the chosen golden goose
drops a leadfilled clunker

the corrupt spin off tension
parachute to offshore digs

to nests of loopholes
free from extradition

doesn't take big intellect
to know riches dwindle

when that special goose
is steamed and rudely plucked



Fractal created in Fractal Explorer.

Thanks, ThomG at Surface Tension for the Three Word Wednesday prompt: corrupt, tension, intellect.

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Courage Haiku

One Single Impression posts: Courage is this week's prompt, thanks to Barb's Haiku.


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strutting down the street,
like shark bait she trolls for threat
...one mother pheasant

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racing like the wind
tail upright as a tall mast
chipmunk crosses road


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Fractal created in Fractal Explorer.

fractals

Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings offers 'Stranger' as the prompt word.



The prompt immediately brought to mind this poem, written a year or so ago and published in Right Hand Pointing early in 2008.



Stranger

hard yellow daylight
dropped in her window
harsh wind barked at the roof
tones of irritants rang bells
buzzed out their warning ~
each man she conjures
out of the morning glow
becomes a midnight stranger




Watercolor by Sue.


poetry watercolor

Lustre Creme Shampoo

downpour of rain
fills the cistern resting
on a rusted tiller wheel

she ladles its fresh water
into the kitchen teapot
brings it to a rolling boil

phones her friends
offers warm soft water
poured into sky blue jars

for rich shampoo lather
unlike suds from hard water
that tumbles from their taps

Michelle at Poefusion Friday 5 offers these words for prompt:
cistern
Lustre Creme Shampoo
rusted tiller wheel
teapot
blue jar

Feel free to read what others wrote and to play along with this unusual meme!

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Bring It On

autumn boils
bring-it-on
the shifting soil
opens wide
spits
all that was
a gray X-ray
tumorous
with failure
autumn roils
presents the past
in smoldered ash
her eyes slam shut
comforter masks her nose
visions of might-have-beens
recant bold cry of bring-it-on

Watercolor by Sue

Totally Optional Prompt for today: write a poem that creates expectations. Feel free to read what others wrote and to play along with this Thursday Meme.

poetry watercolor

Change

...blush of dawn
reclaims the sky

bare aspen quiver
in the early breeze

...tenderness adrift
acrimony thrives

pundits repeating
old air overheats



Blush, Quiver, Tenderness were the prompt words from ThomG at Three Word Wednesday. Follow the links to see what others wrote and to play along!

Image created in Adobe Elements and Bamboo Fun

Tuesday Haiku

Skittles at Heads or Tails offers this prompt:


HEADS - Wear *or* TAILS - Where

My response, which is both an Occidental senyru and an American Sentence:

♥

no where is wear more
evident than on the head
where I wear my face

♥

Fractal created in Fractal Explorer.

fractals

Paradox Haiku

♥

promise in autumn
distant row of brown garden
tufts of brilliant green

♥

bald eagle
grasps post-spawn salmon
... lake gleaner

♥

street sweepers
too late for fall leaves
winter soup

♥

choice reluctant
which wish should he want
gray shiftless day

♥



Digital Photo by Sue.

One Single Impression posts: Paradox, prompt from Edward Gault Forest River Journal


poems and digital photos

Dog Day News

a waving index finger
waggles the dog and
Barney takes a bite

now he officiates from
an oval vivarium
rising on its golden plinth

chuff hears him crying
aims to dry his tears
warn him about unfairness

the lame chuff
wintles down the hall
to locate a wiping sponge

the newsman's still bleeding
~ gawd, the ranch looks good

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Digital Photo by Sue.

Michelle at Poefusion Friday 5 offers the five words and I've added the definitions I used:
wintle - stagger, reel
vivarium - a terrarium for small animals
sponge - piece of cellulose or a dead sea thing :)
chuff - boor
plinth - square block serving as a base


poems and digital photos

Two-Hour Market

bright lights halo
the poet with a book
smiling behind barriers
tabling her qualms

...bookshop patrons, stern
as if passing an open coffin
reluctant to pause
lest the poet turns vocal

like a TV car saleman and
feeds them something
they can't afford or use
with terms they don't cotton to...

sharing words and thoughts
with the sullen and the leery
is not as easy as receiving
part-time publication credits

This piece is written in response to the Totally Optional Prompt post: Marketplace

Second Wind

early spring fervor
welcomes the winter weary
bearing gravity chilled bones,

nuance crosses the heart of hope
and bends the sword of fear
to release seeds of bittersweet

into the dawning air while
prickly thorns of a rose
struggle to defeat its scent

and in turmoil of change
man renews his faith
gains his second wind

Another Bamboo Fun, computer generated watercolor.

Hope, Gravity, Nuance are the prompt words posted by Three Word Wednesday...Follow the link to read and play along -

poetry watercolor

Midnight Shift

sounds of lonesome
underscored by
menacing tones
intermittent songs
to the rising moon
he heard the howls
his neck hair rose,
quivered in the dark
the old guard whistled

Pen and Ink Sketch by Sue.

Skittles at Heads or Tails prompts: Heads. Guard

poetry watercolor

Disguise Haiku

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outsize eye tattoos
warn off nearing predators
wings of jezebel

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black nose, spots of pink
white fur glistens in the snow
hungry polar bear

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brown river creates
ripples around a faux log
cranky crocodile

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One Single Impression posts this prompt: Disguise

Digital photo post processed.

poetry and photos