Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Sunshine above
Tasty gold below.
A horse in a city field
Is contentment aglow.
Photographed worlds away
And a mere year ago.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Animals
Tasty Gold
travel
Almost
Photo: Sue Vincent
“I wonder how many had spent a night in this place through the centuries.”
Dennis looked up from his walking boots. The laces had knotted and he was adamant about untangling them without cutting, even though he had a spare. Mirna’s chin rested on a palm propped on an elbow, the remainder of her body already cocooned in her puffy neon orange sleeping bag.
“You look like a giant orange slug,” he smiled.
“Oh, but thank you!” she giggled, wriggling playfully. “I’ve always wanted to achieve slug proportions.”
“I bet thousands upon thousands,” Dennis added.
“Of what?”
He gestured with his head at the space that sheltered them. The ancient stones still fitting together after multitudes of years.
“Yeah,” Mirna sighed. She turned onto her belly and peered out through the mossy rectangular opening. The moors stretched, bleak, to the horizon. As the day waned, the vista appeared increasingly forbidding. “I wonder who they were.”
“Shepherds. War refugees. Travelers. Hunters. Peddlers. Serfs. Messengers. Families seeking safety from the elements,” Dennis tugged on the knots gently as he spoke, and for some reason the controlled movement reminded him of the concentration involved in getting embers out of fire-sticks. He’d tried that once, out of sheer boredom, and the effort had left him out of breath, sweaty, and highly appreciative of the convenience of flint, not to mention lighters and water-proof matches.
“And now, more travelers,” Mirna noted. She rolled over and sat up in her sleeping bag, feeling very slug-like. “Here, let me.” She reached for one of Dennis’s boots, pulled out a hair pin and used it to loosen a knot, releasing one long loop of shoelace, then another.
Dennis shook his head and handed her the other boot. “So much for my skills,” he grinned sheepishly. “At least I know I’ll manage to light the field stove and make tea. Then we can watch the sunset, snug as bugs in a rug in our matching sleeping bags, and can be almost like all those who’d rested here before us …”
A whiff of wind puffed into the shelter and a straggling ray of light licked the mossy stone above Mirna’s head. A late-day cloud raced across the bog. A bird called.
A shudder traveled down Mirna’s spine.
It felt like a hello.
Almost.
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Travel Home
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Travel home
To where the shadow
Replicates
What your heart knows:
The lives
The parks
The bustling city
That seems so quiet
And yet flows,
Even when appearing
To hold its breath
In forced repose.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Travel
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Cupped
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
If you’re looking for a cuppa’
Look no furtha’
Than this shop’s
Myriad options for a drop!
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Glasses, Cups, etc
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Readied
Photo: Nicolas Lobos on Unsplash
They donned the new suits
Of exploration
White and fluid for
The deep cold of space
And the vast darkness
Of the Universe.
They filed into the
Craft readied to blast
Toward a red Mars
Carrying hope for
Yet another home
In which to draw breath.
For the dVerse Haibun poetry challenge: Mars
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Yards of Yard
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
They looked outside the window into
Yards and yards of yard,
And knew this house will be one where
All play will thrive unmarred.
The world that spread
For miles ahead
A guard for
Childhood’s boulevard.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Yard
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Incoming
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
The light on blue-gray water
Waves a landing strip
To bless an incoming flight.
For Becky’s January Squares: Flight
For Terri’s Sunday Stills: Gray
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Last Course
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
“So nice of them to give us ice-cream!” Sheri grinned. It was her favorite brand, too. On a plane! How fun!
“Even people on death row get a last meal.”
She elbowed him. Her friends said Robert was a party-popper. A fuddy-duddy, spoil sport, malcontent. Sometimes she wondered if they were right. Her husband did have a way of deflating. She felt bad for him. Life must be so gray, to experience life his way.
“Well, I’m going to enjoy mine,” she announced, infusing extra-cheer into her voice. “If it’s my last course, I’ll be halfway up to heaven already.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
(Note: Thank you, Rochelle for using my potentially boring 16 hour direct flight photo from JFK to Hong-Kong from the summer before last … While this is not an ad, the ice-cream sure was a comfort … 🙂 )
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Sardines
Photo prompt © Fatima Fakier Deria
“We’ll never all fit,” Sultana groaned.
“Lots of room!” the driver boomed encouragement even as he tightened screws underneath the van.
“C’mon!” Mariam elbowed past her cousin and climbed onto the vehicle, parcels and a flapping hen in hand. “Next one isn’t till dawn.”
Sultana looked around as if better conveyance would miraculously manifest. None did. She sighed, grabbed her packages and hoisted the bleating kid under an arm. She squeezed aboard, the last one on, with barely room enough to sit down.
The door slammed. The goat peed, soaking her lap.
It’ll be a long ride to Jaddati’s farm.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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Temple Textures
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
The gray marble
Supports
With leisured rich
Array
The carved squares
And the luxuriating
Pebbled
Head in
Golden display.
Note: The photo was taken at Wat Pho, The Temple of the Reclining Buddha, in Bangkok, Thailand. The pebbled bits represent a small part of the ‘hair’ of the massive Buddha statue. The textures and contrasts of the surfaces were what caught my eye and so the angle of the photo is deliberately ambiguous.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Textures
