Sweet Beets

Young and sweet

pick a beet

so tasty

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dVerse prompt to use a line from the lyrics of Dancing Queen by ABBA

Crown

I wore it on my head

delirious from its weight

wanting to stay upright

posed and productive

ruling my thoughts

with more thoughts

demanding right words

to subjugate my subjects

learning to turn glistening crown

of diamonds and pearls

to a crown of thorns

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dVerse quadrille prompt with the word crown

On the Death of Robert Bly

I wanted him to live to be one hundred even though his readings had stopped years ago. Who am I to judge how long a man should live? Or how his living, his writing, his teaching helped my life. I was just a woman in his workshop at Centrum learning as much as I could.

He would take his class on writing walks. One day on a beach hike, we stood together and watched a fish die in the sand. Another day, we sat with an old stump that had once held up something magnificent. We translated Francis Ponge, “the poet of things”, and looked deeply into an orange.

seasons come and go

left alone to find my way

sad hearing the rain

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dVerse prompt to write a haibun on something or someone to be thankful for

Dog Dream

The dog sleeps tonight

laying his head at my knee

in a dream he is running

muffled barking is heard

as a remembrance of his day

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dVerse prompt to write a wayra (5 lines, syllable count 5-7-7-6-8 and no rhyme)

What’s Fair?

While working in a classroom

I will never forget this

dark-haired little boy

who had a substitute teacher

that day—

he watched as she wrote

a cursive name on the chalkboard—

Miss Fair

so he replied

Miss Fair—

will you be fair to me?

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dVerse quadrille prompt using the word fair

Memory

It’s just me collecting words from memory to bring forth a future.

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dVerse prompt on memory combined with writing my first American sentence.

My Father’s Gun

My father’s gun is black

long muzzle

loaded

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dVerse prompt to write a concrete poem (missed the deadline so going with the next prompt of a conceit.). This is a new stanza to my spoken word poem of the same title which the metaphor of the gun is expanded to meaning many things.

Little Colorado River

Turquoise water—

God or weather had made the way

for what could have been brown with silt

but not on this day—

clear was the Little Colorado River

as it careened past quick sand

past boulders

and sacred places

into the confluence

of rivers

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dVerse prompt to write a quadrille using the word careen, Learn more about this sacred place

https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/blog/grand-canyon-little-colorado-river-native-voices