A setting sun
makes faces glow
it reflects
on the passing day
sparkles sand
makes sea shine
lingers on the surface
of earth
makes it golden or pink
before it disappears
leaves colors
temporarily
dangling on clouds
brilliant
in its display
worthy of audience
____________________
dVerse prompt to write a quadrille using the word glow
Photo on the beach Pine Cliffs in the Algarve, Portugal
I have heard a cow grunt before giving birth. Sometime for days, I have heard a cow bellow when their calf is taken away. Many times I have heard the moo when the feed truck comes but never did I imagine that I would hear a cow scream. It happened last summer when fierce rains gathered and swelled the dry gulch with fast, moving water, getting deeper and deeper. I could hear it sounding from over the ridge. “A cow is screaming across the arroyo,” I said to myself.
I drove to the ridge top and there was the tragedy unfolding; the cow bring swept away by the new-formed current, its footing gone and moving downstream on its flank side, no hoofs on the ground. No matter how much effort was observed, it could not right itself. I watched until I couldn’t see it.
_________________
dVerse prompt flash fiction using the quote by James Harrison
There are still wild horses
in Nevada and Wyoming
mustangs from Spanish bloodlines
their hoofs strong
never shod
herd following a stallion
who is leader and protector
a spirit
hard to be broken
easy to break it off
young ones
brought into the pen
______________
dVerse prompt on spirit. The wild horses roam on BLM land and the herds are managed by the BLM. To control the population, every year some are caught and brought to holding areas where they are tamed of their wild spirit and sold at auction.
I want to write like Dali painted
disjointed
everything capable
of fluidity whether a horse
or time
or an elephant and rhino on stilts
elongate the llllllls
create more holes in the OOOOOOs
put a whole world inside just one
put a landscape on the table
a seascape in knees
find paragraphs
that grow trees
________________
dVerse prompt on surrealism
It is late and I am going to bed. There is a scratching sound then it stops. Could it be a bug or a mouse trying to get out of this basket? I shake the basket. No sound. The sound comes again. I look around and there it is. A gecko is half in and half out of my writing book. It has clawed its way out of the pages of paper. Bright green with little eyes, tail and hind legs still in the book. I carry the book outside and free it like a poem into the night air.
a little satire comparing kudzu to racism
It’s called the front porch vine
grows over everything
makes for comfort with its shade
easy to propagate when you get tools
roots are huge and spreading
deep rotted
hard to pull out
just when you think you’re rid of it
here it is again
it can bring folks together
like a festival
a klan or a government
some use it for their own advantage
cultivate it
profit from its invasiveness
stir it in a drink
feels warm and good
when drinking kudzu tea
__________________________
dVerse prompt on an invasive plant— this was a prose poem which I reformatted into short Plath lines
When the earth quakes, it could take half of a day to hear the news that people are buried in rubble of collapsed buildings. Others are more fortunate and come out at 4am trying to escape the 35 seconds of earth plates moving. Expecting more to follow, they wait in the streets of Tirana.
Back home we wait for the big one. Engineer stronger buildings, take down viaducts and go underground. The last one swayed trees and road as I drove towards Gazzam Lake. An hour later, the water in a huge tank off the trail was still sloshing.
somewhere a rogue wave
or volcanic eruption
thankful not today
___________________________
a haibun following the Albanian earthquake
