Photo: Philip Coons
Take the trail
Up the path
To where spring
Flows through minds,
And where fairies
Inspect
Those whose feet
Trail behind.
Listen on
To the leaves
Speaking tales
To the trees,
And to elves’
Rustling limbs
As they flit
In the breeze.
Dedicated with love to Dee, whose trail now flows wholly through realms beyond this physical one.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Trail
Photo: Amitai Asif
He will carve mountains
For them.
Slow but steady
In his pressure.
Relentless
In the calculated cold of his
Convictions,
That curl like tight fists
Under an unquestioning love.
He has carved himself
In the process,
Into valleys of sacrifice.
Carved them, too,
Into mirror images
To reflect the truths he holds.
He will carve mountains
For them,
Heavy-handed and doggedly
Protective.
Glacial with volcanic undertones.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Glacial in 66 words
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
The weight of the world
On his shoulders.
His heart thumps a fatigue
In his chest.
Eons stretch
Since certain with brawn
He sought
With his strength
To impress.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: open topic
She’d never have believed the vastness had she not been there to see it.
In person.
On the edge of endlessness.
The breath of eons crashing at her feet.
The spray of ancient rhythms that had been there
All along.
Through war and storm and hope and flood and cold and warm and days like this when no one but herself was there to witness it.
She’d never have believed the power that it held, contained within each curl of wave, in every roll of whitecap licking sand.
It filled her.
With awe and ache and gnawing yearning to something that went beyond her words and into thoughts unformed, or perhaps ones made of memories in utero: the hiss, the beat, the drums of hearts.
And this.
Another memory
To merge into
In endless harmony.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto (2nd week)
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
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
Tel Zafit, Israel (Photo: Atara Katz)
Take a measure
Of history,
Held in hand
Like a gift
From time.
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
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
Photo: Amitai Asif
You’ve seen nations
Rise
And fall,
Felt oil
Extracted
From trees’ toil.
You’ve seen
The farmers
Tend the soil,
Bread dipped
To nourish
Heart and soul,
As children laughed
And played
And lived
And died
Through centuries of
War and spoil,
While you remained
Above the boil,
Till peace returns
For olives’ roil.
Note: The photo is of an ancient base stone (called “Yam” in Hebrew) of the grinding stones that are used for the first step of extracting oil from olives. A current-day olive grove can be seen in the background to the left. Olives were first domesticated about 6,000 years ago, likely in the Mediterranean basin. Documented history of deliberate oil pressing can be found as early as 4,500 years ago (around 2,500BCE).
To this day, making olive oil involves several stages of crushing and rinsing to extract the oil. In many places, olives are still harvested by hand or by beating the fruit off of the trees. The olives are then washed, and crushed by milling stones (traditionally between a bottom stone like the one in the photo and one or two mill stone that stand perpendicular to it and roll around the base stone). The millstone/s were historically moved by use of man-power or animal power, and in some places still are. The pulp is placed in woven bags or baskets, then the baskets themselves are pressed. The liquid from the press bags gets drawn into a reservoir where oil is left to settle and separate. Oil is then skimmed off and allowed to settle again, sometimes repeatedly, to remove impurities.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Ancient
original fiction, rhyme and photography
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