THE MARCH WRITING CHALLENGE: Poetry
Write a poem in any style about anything. We’d like to see how you can cleverly compose words and phrases so the reader laughs, cries, sighs, growls, jumps in surprise, or feels wonderment.
800 words or less
We had 10 poems sent this month that cover a multiplicity of genres. We hope you enjoy the submissions
ZEN
Appears the fog.
From nowhere
to now here.
Her silky silence
slinks, hovers.
Like ancient voices,
she beckons from
deep wells, bounces
off canyon walls –
touches each soul
she encounters
with fragile nature.
Her tongues of ice
chill, delight,
until the sunrise
glides over these
desert hills,
freezes everything
in motion.
Stops the things
that worry still;
calms until she disappears.
—Wanda Whittlesby
******************
Whispers of the Dying Year
The wind laments with silver tongue,
A song of days now lost, unsung.
Leaves burn bright in embered flight,
Then wither, frail, and fade from sight.
A ghostly mist on river deep,
The trees lean close, their roots asleep.
The golden dusk, the crimson morn,
All wane as winter’s breath is born.
The summer’s laughter, long forgot,
Now lingers only as a thought.
Its roses drown in frost’s embrace,
A memory etched on nature’s face.
The autumn moon, so cold, so high,
Watches time slip silent by.
The harvest reaped, the fields are bare,
The hollow branches scratch the air.
Yet in the hush of bitter snow,
A seed of something soft will grow.
The death of one, the birth of new,
The cycle turns in endless hue.
For spring will wake on tender wing,
With thawing tears, the robins sing.
And life, once lost in sorrow deep,
Will rise again from winter’s sleep.
—-Dita Dow
***********************
A Marriage
A Contrapuntal Poem*
* Contrapuntal is a poetic form that interweaves two or more poems to create a single poem that can be
read in multiple ways, depending on how the poem is designed on the page
ă Marri age
His love, her
life’s bounty lavish expressions
ample and retiring are
supporting the remnants of
a graceful quiet musing
compeer creations spawned by
singular passions
swirls painted with
the residues of tears and laughter
carefree yet complex reflections on endless
pas de deux concepts formed from
the body’s instincts creating
bursts of overwhelming release, climaxes of
breathless energy undulating currents feeding
a rivering of our cascading
love beyond tomorrows
time …together
—–Mike Whelan
******************
Behind The Wall
Feelings stored up from secret hurts and fears
Incurred long ago are held back by a stone wall
Built by a child’s hands over the years.
Entrenched now in paths and patterns that lead nowhere
Simply laid out to keep the wall in place, the child paces.
The body, grown old, is tethered to the barricade.
Solid and impenetrable, the wall hods back stores
Of accumulated energy, neither letting in fresh air and new life
Nor letting out old smoldering embers and ashes.
A dead air space insulates against other entities,
Those who come and would love, then in despair or indifference
Leave the tearless child behind to add more stones…
Stones that fuse together with the passage of time
Reinforcing the barrier that isolates the child from
The here and now and the security of love always there.
——Carolyn Hardisty Ruiz
*******************
Steeped in Steps
At five,
what intended enticing
was apprehended dread…
Dad’s offer to again after supper
assist me in mastering the two-wheeler.
Near dusk, that copper-flake, gas pipe behemoth
would be trundled to the schoolyard
diametrically—
geographically & attitudinally
—opposed
to our verdant corner-lot yard;
turfless turf of the big kids.
Dad behind, one hand on the bar, other on seat,
would sprint, catapulting an incidental
and indecorous Icarus into the either [sic]
at an escape velocity my toothpick
pistons could no way sustain.
In deep sand defying even those balloon tires’s buoyancy,
momentum’s momentary hope would falter;
exhilaration exhausted with inevitability’s inhaling.
The dying sky would slide sideways
and my grimace gain grit, again, again,
until evident me mastering
not the gyroscopic but the stoic,
and we’d slink home to our
separate same places.
Age seven,
tow-planed by pull of older brother’s rarified company,
I hobby-horsed that juggernaut over slabs of sidewalk
tectonic-ed by tree roots of towering pin oaks.
And at evening’s end, no longer pin-feathered,
was surprised to find Dad not contagioned with delight
on hearing Jim had taught me to ride a bike.
Seventeen
was stutter-stepping across a lot of parking lot
in the blue Toyota pick-up, Dad beside,
it time to learn to drive with four limbs.
Finesse giving way at mutual frustration,
every stall was punctuated by, “More gas, less clutch!”
and met with my insistence, “I have the concept,
just not the muscle memory.”
Fifty-seven, and
back with one now betrayed
by muscle and memory,
I realize just how devoted the man
to his lesson plan.
As he negotiates a shuffle,
a showing which is telling,
he continues conveying
conveyance—I having graduated
to instruction on navigating days;
Dad, now before, affording me
chances to be for.
Thank you,
for being faithful to your syllabus,
teaching me—now as then—how
to fall without being felled…
to not stop starting; seeking mastery
of every loco motion…
to ply momentum by layering up
moments, all prime and indivisible…
take wing by taking root,
in times together
of every timbre.
—— Dan Wetmore
***************
New Mexico Spring
April squalls, dark days
snow pellets cascade sideways—
shrieks high desert spring.
By Kathleen A. Hessler
******************
On the occasion of Daylight Saving Time:
GONE TIME
I wake up with a yawn, watching the light over the hills
Push the dark away, and pull a curtain over the stars
Seconds, hopscotching around the face of the clock
Remind us that another day is here, time to do the chores
Just ten more minutes, please? Pulling the covers over my head
I think of all the gone times. The times of growing
The teenage years, when only the girl next door
Who smiled at every encounter, mattered.
The college years and being a medic in the Air Force
Took a big chunk, adding more to gone times.
But what is time, I wonder? The earth turns, day to night
Then turns again. It’s been doing so for eons
I bet the world, animals and plants don’t keep time.
Now, seems irrelevant compared to all other times
To where I’ve been. People I loved, those who loved me back
And others.
The clock demands I should get up
Just two minutes more. It’s the morning of another day
Like the many mornings I spent getting up around the world.
I’ve been awakened by the sound of traffic, sirens, war, prayers
In many languages and church bells.
Even the Big Ben’s vibrating echoes over
The smoke covered brown houses of London added pages
To Gone Times Journal. But even then, gone times were better.
Now the merry-go-round of history announces turbulence ahead
And all I can think about are gone times.
Getup!
I am coming!
— Reza Ghadimi
*********************
Paper Trail
I admit an addiction to the
weekend crossword puzzle
whose acrosses and downs
I attack with a black pen
in a show of confidence or
arrogance – perhaps both
I am fine with the sports section
though limited to a single page
almost always containing
the wry dry wit of its columnist
all too often on target when
he skewers the skewerable
I am forever grateful
to the creative arts critic
he of the alliterative name
now sadly deceased whose
finely tuned ear and trained
eye show me the way
We built a relationship,
developed strong bonds
through the years before
I realized such ties often
have an undetermined
but finite shelf life
Our divorce came gradually
like a drip from a leaky roof
when the paper’s editorial
positions eventually veered
from previously sensible stances
to places far from my views
I had to give them the gate,
switching to a rival whose
crossword was equally challenging;
whose commentary meshed nicely
with mine; whose multi-paged
sports section kept me occupied
Yes, I admit, the arts section
of my new morning paper
often came with a patina
of snobbishness and elitism,
qualities I could easily set
aside by merely turning the page
—-by Mark Fleisher
********************
Forlornication
Shall I forgive you and just let you go?
What made you think you really did know?
Is this, your silence, my last karmic debt?
Why must I end up all soaking wet?
Shall too many daydreams slide right by?
What do I do right? Do right or die?
Is this, your silence, my last karmic debt?
Why must I end up all soaking wet?
Shall we be forlorn once the fat lady sings?
What will we manage without any wings?
Is this, your silence, my last karmic debt?
Why must I end up all soaking wet?
Shall there be moments now we have to miss?
What is survival when no longer we kiss?
Is this, your silence, my last karmic debt?
Why must I end up all soaking wet?
The evening storms subside.
Your silence speaks. You lied.
—Wanda Whittlesby
****************
NATURE’S EMBRACE
Bathe me, nature, in the morning sun.
Hold me close in your gentle arms
so I may surrender myself to you.
Let me kiss the rivers and the mountains
and every night make me yours again.
——– Larry Kilham
*******************
Petrichor
Heat, dry heat, the soil
Binds all its elements tightly
Enduring torture from
Its distant ally
Which reigns unrestricted
Over the day
I take pity on the small
Green things.
Cascading cooling fluid
Across drooping limbs,
And cracked brown
Surfaces.
Gaia’s breath exhales
And her skin relaxes
The scent released
Touches my soul
Which then inhales
Her gratitude.
—–Rose Marie Kern
Stranger
A stranger came to town today.
I know cause it was I.
A stranger walked the streets
that once I felt were mine.
But being gone for several years
the town has changed without me.
Awash with memories that love
to float and haunt around me.
Nothing remains the same as old
not even I, who’ve grown.
It all has changed as time ticked by
to morph into unknown.
A town still cheery and alive
but different for the ages.
As I walk down strange streets
passing even stranger faces.
It’s bittersweet and filled with grief
all I cherished now replaced.
And I no longer belong here.
Farewell, farewell I leave in haste.
A stranger left town today.
I know cause it was I.
Let go the past and start anew.
The future is all that’s mine.
—-Mary Therese Ellingwood