Their Bag End

August 17, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, dVerse, End, Fate, Flash Fiction, life-path, Micro-fiction, Poetry prompt, Prosery, The Hobbit, time, Writing Challenge 29 Comments

Photo: Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash

They never did make it back from their destination. Not for lack of trying. Not for lack of plans. Not even for lack of courage or stamina or all the things that make a journey circular. There and back again. Like Bilbo Baggins looking for an adventure and finding more than he had bargained for (or perhaps precisely what he needed); they, too, found more along the way than they had intended.

The path slowed everything. Time turned to stone.

And when it was over, said and done, it was a time and there was never enough of it.

They took too long.

So much that life passed by before it could lead them back to where they had come from.

Perhaps where they ended was precisely where they needed to go.

Only that unlike Bilbo, they did not return to their Bag End.

(Prompt: from “A Time” by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke)

For the dVerse Prosery Challenge: A Time

Garden Muse

August 10, 2020August 10, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Calm, Creative writing, dVerse, Food, Garden, Just for fun, Poetry, Quadrille, Salad, Take a moment, Vegetables, Writing prompt 31 Comments

Photo by Stella de Smit on Unsplash

She walked along the beds,

Hands trailing over stakes

Heavy with vines

And sugar snaps.

Orange peeked

From underneath green hats

Far too wild for small heads.

Blushing tomatoes danced

Cheek to cheek

With peppers.

She smiled.

The garden will make

Good salad

Tonight.

For the dVerse quadrille challenge

A Thorny Issue

July 27, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Bramble, Courage, Difficult times, dVerse, Finding a way, Lies, Poetry, Quadrille, Repair, Solutions, Tenacity, Truth 37 Comments

Photo: Andrey Grinkevich on Unsplash

There would be no smooth solutions

No easy way to extract

Themselves

From the tangle

They had let grow

All around them.

Only one way out was left:

Through the bramble,

Through the sorrow

Through the scars that would

Need nursing

Back to truth.

For the dVerse quadrille challenge: Bramble

Paused Revolution

July 21, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Blended families, Compromise, dVerse, Family, Finding peace, New Beginnings, New Day, Poetics, Poetry, Relationships, Revolution, Siblings 30 Comments

Photo by Adam Cain on Unsplash

The sun rose bright

In the horizon

Spilling gold on

Ebbing tide.

They woke with

Tangled limbs still weighted

And lids that wrinkled

In the light.

It dawned to be

The day of changes,

When revolution would be

Put aside.

They’ll find their breath,

And mend their fences.

They’re family now.

They will not

Fight.

For the dVerse Poetics challenge: revolution

Red Moon Riding

July 20, 2020July 20, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Carl Sandburg, Creative writing, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Jazz Fantasia, Longing, Memory, Micro-fiction, Night sky, Prosery, Quote, Relationships, Vista 21 Comments

Photo: Niklas Priddat on Unsplash

She let the shudder travel from the roots of her hair to the nape of her neck and down her spine to the place where the calving of her body started. The skin on the small of her back awoke. She sighed.

It wasn’t the chill in the air that had her trembling, even though the breeze could explain the raised goosebumps on her skin. It was the vista that had shaken her. And the memories it sought.

Oh, this was a different place. A different time. Yet somehow these still were the same sky where a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills spreading below it. Transporting her. The earth roiled under a tapestry of dark and starlight, of shade and voids and hidden stars. Her breath drowned in wonder and sorrow: for lost beginnings, for hopes come dawn.

Prosery Prompt: “a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills” (Carl Sandburg’s Jazz Fantasia)

For the dVerse Prosery challenge

Revisiting

July 14, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Childhood memories, Creative writing, dVerse, Memory, Photo, Poetry, Revisiting, school, Transported, Writing prompt 20 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

She could still hear

The sound of children.

The thunk of balls

Against the chain link fence

Where the big kids

Played.

The smell of dust

From the yard

By the old concrete

Stage.

See the tiny kiosk

Near the gate,

And the ancient seller

Who was always

There.

Feel the coolness of

The main building

As you walked in from

The bottom of the outside

Stairs.

The smell of paint

And cardboard.

The metal-legged

Chairs.

And the hopeful

Cacophony

Of children on recorders

In the music room

Elsewhere.

Oh, she knew that

The yard was empty.

No hubbub actually

Filled the evening

Air.

Still the decades tumbled

As memory bloomed,

Transporting

Now to then

With an unexpected

Flare.

So much has

Stayed

The same,

Even as so much has

Changed

In her.

For the dVerse poetry challenge

Note: This photo was taken last year in my elementary school, which I had occasion to visit one early evening after not seeing the place for decades. It was a magical, if complicated, revisiting.

Due For Blue

July 13, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Bipolar Disorder, Blue, Creative writing, dVerse, Mental Health, Mood, Opposites, Poetry, Quadrille, Realizations, Self-awareness, Transition 36 Comments

Photo: Sean Stratton on Unsplash

She knew

She was due

For some blue.

She felt the tug,

The subtle hue,

Sliding her joy askew.

A clue

For what the next step

Would do.

The polar opposites

That made her into

Two.

Her mood on queue

For an internal coup.

For the dVerse Quadrille challenge: Blue

Note: Dedicated to my friends who walk the tightrope of bipolar disorder. I don’t know what it is like to be you or what you go through, but I see you and hear you. You matter, complete with the ups and downs within you.

In Their Skin

June 23, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, dVerse, Empowerment, Folklore, Irish, Making do, Past and Future, Poetry, Rhyme, Seal, Selkie, Stolen, Women 23 Comments

Photo: Keith Luke on Unsplash

Eons had passed

Since when they had

Their skins

Stolen

By man.

They learned to love

The life they had

Yet dreams

Cried hope

Aground.

Till secrets told

By men at night

Got heard

And sang

Around.

And off they went

The selkie all

Safe in

Their skin,

Unbound.

For the dVerse poetry challenge: Selkie

Hearts’ Hum

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: better future, Black Lives Matter, change the world, Current events, dVerse, equality, Have a voice, Human Rights, Poetry prompt, Protest, Quadrille, Society 28 Comments

Photo: Koshu Kunii on unsplash

No humdrum moment.

No silent pause

Or rest.

The tempo of the chanting

Rises

As crowds flow

And crest.

They march to call

The winds

Of change

To come,

And heed the soul

As hearts’ pain

Hums

And drums

The need for

Better times.

For the dVerse quadrille poetry challenge: drum

The Street

June 9, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Danger, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Going home, Micro-fiction, Mystery, Night, Poetry prompt, Prosery, Teenagers, Writing Challenge 22 Comments

Photo: Robert Almonte on Unsplash

The night is not as I’d expected it to be.

The sirens are silent. The windows dark. The very air seems still.

It had been a close call. Too close, almost.

I glance at Malachi. He returns a tremulous shrug.

“Will we be alright?” I ask. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but the words could not stay in. The sound — although barely above a whisper — boomerangs in my chest.

“We might be,” he mouths.

At least I think he does. I cannot hear much above my heartbeat thundering in my ears. Everything inside me feels tight. I don’t remember being so unnerved. Not since. You know. The other time.

“Will they return?” Fear dries my mouth.

“Who knows.”

We reach the corner and separate. The night breaths as I hurry home and we go in different directions down the imperturbable street.

For the dVerse prosery challenge

Prosery prompt: “We go in different directions down the imperturbable street” (from the poem “An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire” by Gwendolyn Brooks)