2024 - day fourteen

 The prompt is anaphora.

Another Orkney Anthem.

Still the wind tugs and tosses the grass back and forth,

Still the waves carry words and tales from the north.

Still the rain patterns windows with mysterious words

Still in runes long forgotten in these harsh modern worlds.

Still the dusk creeps its fingery shadows long and long

Still the seals in the night share their ghostly sad song.

Still the cold of the spring says that winter has won

Still the heralds of summer are born in by the sun.

Still this land that is history, that is sea, sand and stone

Still this land gives a birth to blood, flesh and bone.

(c)2ndwitch

Day the twenty-second

The prompt is a phrase from another language.

Freedom.

He lives in a house without furniture
His bed is the earth where he stands
And the sky is his guide and shelter

He travels across oceans to new lands
And flies with the birds on rain wings
And time is a took in his hands

No walls hold him in, he is serf to no kings
And the wind is his voice and its music he sings.

Day the twenty-first

The prompt today is meant to be a homophonic translation - but I am interpreting this a little loosely . . .

When the weather talks . . .

The rain cloud tells us to shelter, and pitter patter
Is not a matter to be considered sufficient
To ditch the um-ber-ella and forget the galoshes
That protect your immortal soul . . .
The blue sky whistles memories into mind now knowing
And echoes the shouts of a beach and sandcastle
Playing of days in the past and promises, perhaps,
Of sun kissed moon washed life again . . .
The howling wind is retching and hurling abuse
At violent misfortune, armed with a bludgeon and
Knife, smashing and slashing the flimsy barriers
Mankind has erected.

Day the eighteenth

Today the prompt is to consider life's small pleasures.


Recharge

To sit
To sit and stare across the water
Watching the light
Playing hide and seek with the hills
And the rain clouds
Teasing the trees
And dancing across the loch
To sit
Is to recharge.

Day the fourteenth

Today the prompt is a poem, poet or person that is your inspiration. My thoughts turn straightway to Edwin Muir . . .

The horses

The day the horses returned was the first day of normal rain.
That morning the clouds had foregathered in massed ranks
Of steel grey cushions, sky bound in wind-driven train,
A storm of nature's making, and we could give thanks.

Until this day the world had rained poison and dripped death,
Echoes of armageddon reverberated in each thunder clap,
And fear laced the raindrops, the wind's ice-sharded breath
Seemed to us, cowered in shelter, to be one more killing trap.

But once the radios were silent, and the ships had sailed on,
The skies slowly lightened, night brought the moon out and stars,
We slowly emerged in the tentative light of a revisiting sun
To walk once again on the land that in healing was ours.

And this day the clouds brought us rain and a promise
And in the evening the horses to join us in harness.

Day the thirteenth

On this the the thirteenth day the prompt is a non-apology, the discourse so beloved of politicians and confidence tricksters . . .

I am (not) sorry

a thief I am, and I feel no regret,
whilst still I utter anodyne and
pointless phrases, my apology is
conditional for what have I done?

I stole the day and danced with the teasing breeze,
I stole the time to walk beside the taunting seas,
I stole the hours of rain to linger long,
I stole the moments in the wild birds' song.

For all these things I took and knew no shame,
For all these things I'd steal again and again.

Day the twelfth

Today the prompt is to write a triolet.

One day


This day was born in the silver grey of rain
And grew wise from the added soft of sun;
It danced to keening windsong over and again;
This day was born in the silver grey of rain
And battled man's insane tyranny of pain
And lived through all the hours 'til it was done;
This day was born in the silver grey of rain
And grew wise from the added soft of sun.

Day the eleventh

Today the prompt is the meaning of flowers.

On the third day

Each year you return,
Swallow-like,
And stand strong
Against the storm,
The wind, the rain.
Daffodil.
The real resurrection.

Day the tenth

Today the prompt is to write a hay(na)ku - I have decided to expand the form into a pseudo sonnet for our times:

Easter


long
hours of
holiday weekend traffic

today
we expect
no-one to come
but there are cars

sunshine
bathes the
landscape in soft
and rainless light and
tempts the hibernating into life

but there are less cars today
so perhaps people will stay away

Day the ninth

Today the challenge is a concrete poem, where the physical shape reflects the subject, or tries to!

Dripping


when
it is
raining
the
water
runs off
my hat
and
drips
into
my boots.

Day the eighth

Today the prompt is to use a line from another poem - plagiarise in fact!


If . . .

To shiver like a root in the rain
To tremble like a wind-struck leaf
To venture one tentative step once again
To challenge the end with belief.

To dance like the storm in her eyes
To float as though eagled with wings
To cast a blanket of fear on the skies
Is to wait for the pain future brings.