Photo: Amitai Asif
One man.
One sail.
One boat.
One day.
The rock of waves
Holding a sway,
He grasps the bar
Through misty spray,
As mountains loom
In white and gray.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: One
Headway
Life and love
Wagon Trail
Photo: Philip Coons
Hitch the horses to the carriage,
Pack the trunk
(Or wagon) full.
There’s a lot yet to discover,
As we hit the road.
Now pull!
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Road
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The Look
“It is looking at me.”
“What is?” I was dozing off in the delicious sun on the first dry weekend we’d had in a while. The lush grass under me felt springy.
I thought the word was so apt. Springy. The double meaning of the season and the bouncy vivaciousness of it all.
“It is looking at me.”
I inhaled slowly with more resignation than irritation. I might’ve known this would not go as I had envisioned. While I was content to lie still and let the sounds of the birds and the hiss of the breeze and the faraway whir of a tractor in someone’s field fill and nourish me, Marlee had been tugging on grass-blades and clucking her tongue and shifting positions every three seconds.
She’s always been flighty. A flit-bit full of frown and furrow, forever on the edge of tumbling from one thing to another.
I loved it about her. She was the counter-weight to my molasses and the engine to my stasis. Her hypervigilance also made my idea of a relaxing afternoon where we do nothing, an utterly foreign thing.
Perhaps an even frightening one.
I opened my eyes. “What’s looking at you?”
“That.”
I raised myself on an elbow and scanned the field. There was no one there.
Marlee sat, violin-string-tight, eyes glued ahead.
I followed her line of sight. Nothing. Not even a bunny. Just a tractor that most likely belongs to the farmer whose land we might be trespassing on. I squinted against the glare – the cab was empty – there was no one there.
Marlee did not move.
Resigned now, I sat up and stared harder. A caterpillar undulated up a flower’s stem by my knee. A bird dove at the tractor, perched momentarily on a mirror, and flew away.
“The bird?” I chanced.
Marlee shook her head but her eyes remained trained on the vehicle. “The tractor,” she said. “That thing has eyes. I swear it blinked at me.”
For Crimson’s Creative Challenge
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Sized History
Tel Zafit, Israel (Photo: Atara Katz)
Take a measure
Of history,
Held in hand
Like a gift
From time.
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Home Idyll
Photo: Inbar Asif
She leaned against the painted wall and exhaled a sigh of relief.
She was finally home. Hardship over. She was free. All was going to be as she needed it to be.
The freshly laundered whites fluttered in the sea breeze and the rush of waves sang in her ears. A dun puppy yipped at a bird. The baby slept at her feet.
“Have you eaten?” Grandmama called, a loving voice on the wind.
“I’m coming,” she smiled and bent to lift the bassinet.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Idyll in 84 words
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Emperor’s New Clothes
Nata Silina at Supercoloring.com
“I expect loyalty,” he stated.
A silence followed.
Shock or perhaps because
There was
No honorable way to respond.
“I need loyalty,” he repeated
With the implication clear:
You bend the knee
Or you are gone,
Swear fealty to the man
Or you’re a traitor
And an enemy to be scorned.
“You will always get honesty from me,”
Came the measured return.
“That’s what I want,” twisted the retort,
“An honest loyalty.”
As if there was such thing
As honest loyalty
To one who deemed acceptable
Only what offers
Praise and supplication,
And allows no room
For truth,
Let alone for the calling out of
The Emperor’s bare bottom
Of the barrel
Governing
Or his disregard for honor
As he dons repeated sets of
Non-existent,
Yet much lauded by him,
‘New Clothes.’
Note: As it happens, the book I’m reading and which was right by my elbow as I read the prompt … is “The Mueller Report” (w/ commentary by the Washington Post; page 296 of the book, page 35 of volume II in the report). … And the rest, well, is history. And what will be …? We shall yet see.
For Linda Gill’s SoCS: open book, point, write
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Blooming White
Photo: Amitai Asif
It cracks the rock and pushes forth
To skies that swirl in
Matching froth.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Flower
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The Apprentice
Photo prompt: Sue Vincent
“It requires one step through.”
She squinted at the trunk. “I can see the other side.”
“So it would seem.”
She circled the tree and peeked through the opening. “It is as I said. I can see your legs.”
“I’m sure you believe you can.”
His calm voice infuriated her, but she knew that getting riled up will only lead to another long lesson in teaching her self-control.
She breathed.
He nodded.
She turned away from him and breathed again and then counted to ten for good measure. She could almost imagine him chuckling, though she knew he probably would not give her the satisfaction of seeing him react that way. Still, she could feel his amusement. It had been the hardest thing for her. His mild dismissing mockery. It was a constant reminder that she was a mere neophyte swimming furiously upstream in hope of getting even the smallest measure of trust, let alone recognition.
Why did he take her on when he had so little regard for her?
She circled the tree one more time. In part to move some of her agitation, but also to use the trunk as some shelter from her mentor’s scrutiny. She knew what her eyes told her: A hole in a tree, a gap she could toss a pebble through (not that she’d dare, now that he told her what it was), certainly of no size to fit a person.
She also knew that eyes can lie.
Still she resisted.
“Perhaps you aren’t ready.”
In spite of herself she felt her fingers clench. She hated when he did that. It made her feel like a child to be goaded.
Perhaps I am not, she retorted in her mind.
“Indeed, perhaps you’re not.”
Her eyes flew to meet his. She had suspected for some time that he could read her mind, and it felt like someone’s wandering hands rifling through her underwear drawer.
“I could read it in your eyes,” he noted, confirming rather than reassuring.
“What if I go through with it?” she sighed. She felt not so much resigned as she did defeated. He always got his way in the end. She could flail about and delay and prolong the path and belabor the process, but inevitably he got her to do things as he’d wanted. Half the time she thought his goal was to get her to where she would no longer resist him, while half the time she felt that the day she ceased rebelling would be the day he tell her that she’d failed completely.
Even now he did not answer till she asked again.
“You will see what there is for you to see.” He lifted his hand to indicate it was time for her to suspend all judgement, ignore her perceptions, and walk through the tree that he said was a portal.
“Is this the last test?” she fretted.
At that he chuckled. “It is never the last test …”
As she turned toward the tree she heard him add in a small voice that perhaps was made with mind, not larynx, “not for you, not for me.”
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What If?
Photo prompt © Ceayr
“Are you sure this is the house?”
“It says 345.”
“What if it’s the wrong number?”
“It’s not.” She unfurled a sweaty fist to show him the piece of paper and its slightly smudged pen marks. “It says right here.”
“What if you wrote it down wrong?” His eyes met hers, mirroring her apprehension and amplifying the seeds of doubt that tightened shoots of worry in her stomach.
She shook her head, courage evaporated.
It was one thing to flee their miserable surroundings. Another entirely to knock on the door of the father who’d rejected them even before they were born.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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Give Us A Smile!
Photo: Ofir Asif
There are none here more pleased
Than this moth
At her ease.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Smiles
Na'ama Yehuda 
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