Photo: Stephen Forte
In the slight pause between
Flapping up,
Flapping down,
Live the breath
And the lift
That propel
To carry on.
For the Photo for the Week challenge: Birds
In Flight
Persevere
Faded Charm
Photo: Philip Coons
If you’re broken by worry
Hanging by a thread
Filled with dread,
There are links
That can hold
Even the weary and old,
Who then ride
The hard time
Till restored faded charm.
For the Thursday Doors challenge
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It’ll Do
Photo: Nathan Wright via Unsplash
Never mind the mildew and dirt, the echoes in corridors of sad stories they knew.
There’ll be roof over heads and a shelter for those who lost all yet pulled through.
We will clean it all up. Make a home for these kids. It’ll do.
For Three Line Tales, Week 137
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Tempestuous Times
Photo: cmurrey, Flickr
“These are tempestuous times,” she said
And her strong hands wrung the laundered sheets
To squeeze out suds
As she would want
To push out infiltrated evil.
“I’ve seen hardship before,” she stirred
The linens
In the boiling vat,
Simmering the despair
Till it foamed and evaporated
Into bleached hope.
“Wrong does not last,” she rinsed
And wrung
And shook
And hung
The wash
Till it fluttered
Free
To dry,
Only the barest of stains
Still visible
In the sun.
Merriam-Webster’s word for July 30, 2018:
Tempestuous
This post continues the blogging challenge in which Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day, serves as inspiration a-la the “Daily Prompt.”
Want to join me? Feel free to link to this post on your blog, and/or post a link to your blogpost in the comment section below so others can enjoy it, too. Poetry, photography, short stories, anecdotes: Go for it!
For more visibility, tag your post with #WordOfDayNY, so your post can be searchable.
“Follow” me if you want to receive future prompts, or just pop in when you’re looking for inspiration. Here’s to the fun of writing and our ever-evolving blogging community!
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Incubate Hope
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Hold on close
To the hope
Even if
It is a bit
Tired.
So no matter the noise
Distraction desires,
Hope remains warmed
In soul
Where truth never
Expires.
For The Daily Post
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No Underdog!
Little Roo. Photo: Marnie Russ
The runt of the litter. The smallest of smalls.
A birth’s afterthought. The last of the lot.
She was given some frowns.
She was given less hope.
She was not much to look at.
A long shot, underdog.
Yet inside her she had something fierce
At her core
She was never the winner
But she was something more:
She worked harder than hard
She learned patience from woe
She grew up,
She believed
She perceived and she saw,
She found footholds in smiles
She made steps from each praise
She climbed up rungs of hardship
Found her stride
Found her ways
To amaze.
Click her for more about Little Roo’s story
For The Daily Post
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Do It Anyway
He has stage fright. The real deal.
Social phobia with all the trimmings.
Speaking in front of anyone renders him paralyzed with irrational but no less numbing terror.
Talking to a store clerk makes him sweat.
Let alone giving a speech in front of assembly.
The whole school. Faculty, too.
He trembles at the thought.
“You don’t have to do this.” His mother. She is distressed by his distress. Protective.
“But I do,” he says.
He’s scared.
Determined, too.
He asks me to teach him how “to speak even when my throat gets stuck.”
We work on it. On breath, on visualizing, on rhythm and on parsing and on tone and pitch and breath again. He practices. With me, at the mirror, with family, with a good friend.
He knows the words by heart. He wrote them. A speech about things that oh-so-matter and are so very needing-to-be-said.
“The words come into my dreams,” he tells me. “Is that weird?”
I shrug. I don’t think so. “What do you think?”
He smiles shyly. “I think they want me not to be afraid. The words. Like we are friends now, words and me.”
The day comes.
He calls me in the evening.
“I threw up twice and I trembled like crazy,” he says, but his voice is giddy. “Then I thought about the words. My words … like friends. The beads on the necklace like we practiced … and I could breathe … I was still scared but I did it anyway!”
