Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Ancient stone
Not disowned
By old time’s
Marching on.
Newer walls
Chaperone
To contain
Buddha’s throne,
And only the peak’s
Crumbling bones
Tell of years
Now long
Gone.
For the Wits-End Weekly Photo Challenge: Decay
Peak’s Bones
Life and love
We’re Ducky!
Photo: Atara Katz
We’re no ducks but still wish
To get
In a row.
There is no law against it.
So there,
Now you know.
For Nancy Merrill’s Photo a week: ducks in a row
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The Place
Photo prompt: Sue Vincent
“I’ll take you to the place,” she promised.
“The place where you came from?” the boy pressed. “Your before home?”
“If it is still there,” she nodded, her eyes clouding over with something between wistfulness and worry.
She watched his eyelids flutter as he curled onto his side and into sleep. There was much to do and little time for it, and still she couldn’t bring herself to rise from his cot. It wasn’t how she thought it would be. It felt too soon. He didn’t know a thing.
Not that she really had a choice, anyhow.
The place. She wasn’t sure exactly what would happen when they got there, or what it would mean to her or to the boy she was entrusted to protect. What would her protection of him entail now that she’d been discovered?
She gazed at the child. He was hers. At least as far as one could belong to someone else, he was.
Most people thought they could not look more different than each other. Her translucent skin to his ebony, her pale eyes to his endless pools of black, her sprinkling of wispy flaxen hair to his rich dark mane. She’d kept his hair in cornrows for tidiness and practicality, but often enough she coaxed him to let her undo them so his hair rose in a magnificent halo about his head. Her princely lion of a child. They didn’t have such locks where she’d come from. He truly was one of a kind.
“Adopted?” nosier people would ask what many others thought but didn’t dare to verbalize.
“In a way,” she’d respond, knowing full well that the answer raised more questions, yet she refused to lie. For he wasn’t. Adopted. Not in the way they’d think.
He was. Just. Hers. Seeded in her before she even understood what he was or would become.
And they were as alike as any, anyhow, considering where she was really from.
A noise jarred her and she looked up to see a mouse scurry across the cabin floor. It reminded her of other footsteps: dangerous and inevitable and far less welcome.
She got up and as the night deepened she did what had to be done. Finally she secured a small bag to her bike and hoisted the still sleeping child into her lap. She wrapped a strip of sheet around them so he could remain snug against her while she pedaled.
She rode through the woods till morning lit the trees and the birds fleeted ahead of her wheels and small living things skittered into the bushes to avoid her.
They knew, she thought, that she was not of them, and neither was the boy who nestled, oblivious, with a head atop her breast.
There would be no hiding who they were. Not anymore.
The light intensified to shine beyond the sun.
There it was. The place. The bright beam.
She dismounted and her legs shook not from hours of pedaling, but from knowing.
And from failure.
She let herself be found out before he was adult enough to continue. She did not protect him long enough to fulfill the promise he held for their kind.
The ship’s beam wavered and the gears in her heart thudded as the light shimmered sorrow through her skin.
They’ll take only him.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto Challenge
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The Tour
Photo prompt: Sandra Crook
“We’ve come a long way from small children crawling under looms,” the proprietor boomed, arm sweeping proudly across the antique refurbished mill.
The group of portly men nodded sagely.
One of them patted a balding pate, florid face sweating in tailored wool. He was gratified to see another man masking a yawn.
The two-hour Textile Investors Tour satisfied requirements for business expenses, but the real draw of the area was a manicured golf course, good wine cellars, and a particularly discreet hotel concierge.
Too bad, the balding man thought to himself. A few crawling kids would’ve been right fine.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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Rocking It
Photo: Jim Moore
It’s a steep climb
For sure
But he feels
The allure.
This rock face,
This cliff,
He can’t help think,
“What if?”
It’s a very high
Wall,
And he’s a penguin
And small,
But he’ll attempt
Still
To scale,
And he intends
To not fail!
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Rock
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Worn, Not Weary
Photo: Amitai Asif
I am worn,
But not weary.
I’ve weathered many
A winter,
Warmed multiple
Frozen hands,
Filled long lines
Of empty
Stomachs
With stews and soups of
All kinds.
I’ve seen good times
And not so,
Heard voices
Soft
And too loud.
I’ve dried the wet
Off of feet,
The tears off
Of cheeks,
Eased the sorrow of
Broken hearts.
I am worn,
But not weary.
Grab a spoon,
Find a bowl,
And take a seat
By my side.
For the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Weathered or worn
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Springing Time
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
They push up
Through cold ground
Where morning frost
Still abounds
And color
The park
So a new spring
Can spark.
(Not quite this year’s spring photo … yet – this one being from early spring in 2017 – but it nonetheless infuses hope for soon-to-be cousins of these blooms enlivening the park!)
For Terri’s Sunday Stills: Spring
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The Toll
Photo: Alabaster canopic jar (Wikimedia)
She was impervious to their taunting.
To the words
That meant to hurt
But found no inlet
No crack
In what seemed her
Flawless control.
She was impervious to others’ love
As well.
The doors of her alabaster soul
Had slammed shut
After her spirit had peeked
Out
Only to find more harm
Than she knew she would be able
To endure if she were to
Somehow
Remain whole.
She was impervious to much,
But not to beauty.
She could not give up
That
Without crumbling.
And so she lived
In stoic
Understanding
Of the world,
And its toll.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Impervious in 99 words
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The Colonists
Photo: Sue Vincent
They would come out when dark was complete under a moon that was yet to be reborn.
First a scout would be sent. One not quite old enough to have their wisdom be missed, but not quite so young that they’d be careless or uninformed. It was an honor and a worry, both. For not all scouts returned, and laws dictated that no one is to follow and the outing abandoned until the next dark comes. The safety of the colony outweighed any singular life, no matter how heartbroken they were over losing one of their own or how many nightmares wracked the communal dreams for many sleeps afterwards.
Most times, blessed be the hidden stars, the scout would return safely. If they confirmed that all was as it should be, any who could walk would funnel topside through the tunnels that honeycombed their underground world, and out into the rocky canyon which was formed a million years ago by a whip of light from the stars.
The colony would climb over hills of leaves and navigate the muddy ponds at the bottom of the canyon, all in silence that only the heartbeats in their collective chests would pierce. For the predators were many and the colonists were small and peaceable. They lacked fangs or claws and were opposed to weaponry. The universe that sprawled beyond the walls of their rock canyon provided the provisions they required. They took the danger with the blessings.
Once beyond the relative shelter of the canyon walls, they’d fan out to forage and gather: edible leaves, stalks of grass for feed and weave and bedding, acorns, nuts, seeds, berries, and the occasional fallen fruit or discovered tuber that required many hands to trundle back into the tunnels where they lived.
They’d work until the elder who tracked the darkness passed the whisper to return, and they would fall in line to carry the final batches home.
The last to enter the canyon would pull a broom of leaves behind them – a gesture of traditional thanks for the sustenance, and a practical act for sweeping away many footsteps. The ancients had tunneled pathways for them to emerge into the night from, but there was no need to make those very pathways highways to decimation. They took care to not be known.
With all returned, the elders would seal the rocky door and bless it closed, and the colony would sigh relief as the rock itself would seem to whisper as it settled into slumber til the next unborn moon darkened the sky.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto Challenge
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Shimmer’s Glimmer
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Evening gathers to call
Flocks to watering hole
And to glimmers of fish
In the sparkling bowl.
Palm to palm
Whispers calm,
As the pond
Drained but bright
Refracts sun’s glinting light
From silvery fins
‘Til a good night.
For Nancy Merrill’s A Photo a Week Challenge: Shimmer
Na'ama Yehuda 
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