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). |
| Looking Ahead Heads up concentrate vision pinpointed to the distance one headlight focused at extreme range pool of light in the darkness on we hurtle. Shapes flash peripherally today glimpsed formless in the night and in the mirror yesterday piles its dreams forsaken. Line count: 14 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 20 Prompt: Looking Ahead as the title. Write a poem inspired by it. A minimum of 12 lines is required. |
Invitation Life’s red carpet unfolding and unrolling eternal entrance to the celebration. Line count: 5 Form: Cinquain For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 19 Prompt: Write a cinquain - 5-line poem, Line 1: one word, Line 2: two words, Line 3: three words, Line 4: four words, Line 5: one word. The poet chooses the topic. |
| McVitie’s Chocolate Hobnobs My kingdom, my kingdom for a cookie, and thus I assign, with desperation akin to the third Richard’s, a last flicker of hope that a deal might be struck, a final exit from a stage grown inhospitable. And though cookies are poor mounts for vacating abandoned causes, there is satisfaction at least in the rough honesty of the McVitie’s Hobnob and its solid assertion of good health, while the dipping in chocolate be oxymoron enough - ‘tis worth a last hurrah! Line count: 16 Free verse For Promptly Poetry Challenge 6, Week 18 Prompt: Write a poem about your favorite cookie. The title of your poem should be the name of the cookie. |
| 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. |