“Where can a blind man go who is pursued by bees?” Pablo Neruda
He knows not to go in the clover patch. He can smell its sweetness and cannot enter. His forgotten place he longs for— along the shore of the Mediterranean with wind moving in his hair.
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dVerse prompt on questioning in poetry. Answering Neruda.
Plumes of ash
hot rocks under foot
we climb up to Mt Etna
no earthquake today
the air quivers with sound
of explosions underground
vent and spew on your own time
change can come quickly
expect the expectable
in a world of the predictable
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dVerse prompt to write a quadrille using the word quiver. Went to Mt Etna, an active volcano in Sicily.
Bell towers all chiming at the same time
noontime
terra cotta rooftops
Ionian Sea in the distance
chime of 12– pause then 1
it is 12:15 now
my children took a last walk
to the elephant square
and I am writing poetry about Catania
earthquakes and volcanoes
can’t stop her
she pulls the good from the destruction
“Black City” where the bricks and tiles
are made from lava stone
everyone waits for the next big eruption
“Not today,” they say, “not today.”
In Sicily
smoking volcano
remember the day
we walked Pompeii’s narrow streets
souvenir of what happened
nature unleashed
Waves of the Mediterranean
are breaking at my lap
people have risen early
to run on her shores
Orion is fading
Gulls go back to sea
I want only to find
an albatross feeding
on the waters
These are the ants that I read about in school and finally see them in Ghana.
I am in Ghana, searching for a mosquito which I have prepared to encounter. The yellow fever vaccine has prepared me against this fever which can be fatal. I take my malaria tabs everyday and still I have not seen a mosquito.
On my way up Prayer Mountain, I wear my insect repellent scarf and no mosquito comes to me. All my precautions come forth in the shower of my host family whose son has malaria. I swat that mosquito dead.
out in the jungle
tropical vegetation
yet no mosquito
