Houses for sale in the Algarve
follow the cobblestone to the yellow one
imagine myself speaking Portuguese
eu escrevo em poesia
nadar no Mediterrâneo
cultivar vegetais
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dVerse prompt concerning an imagined house — I’ll take one in the Algarve of Portugal. Translation:
I write in poetry/ swim in the Mediterranean/grow vegetables
I stand
I stood
I am standing
I have stood
I will stand
I will have stood
I was standing
I had stood
I will be standing
I have been standing
I had been standing
I will have been standing
Stand
Let’s stand
Stood
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dVerse prompt to write a quadrille with the word stand. Thus, here is a found poem from research on trying to understand the word stand and not to be misunderstood.
Standing on Navajo Bridge
I see two condors
on the cliff face they look small
great wings tucked and resting
Colorado River moves below
takes rafters through the Grand Canyon
hoping to see a condor
maybe a peregrine falcon
Our guide tells of the time
high on the rock ledge
temperatures so hot
fledglings died in their nest
Still I want to see a condor take flight
I want to watch it soar
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Nesting condors have been observed at Zion National Park and I am hoping that global warming doesn’t push them out of their nests too early. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9814501/amp/Two-critically-endangered-California-condors-spotted-near-Zion-National-Park.html
The oyster knife fit perfectly in her hand, its old wooden handle smooth and darkened with a century of use; how it pried open the barnacled shell (shell after shell) until there was a pile resting at her feet and the soft flesh of the oysters filled a bowl, their delicate lace edges curling outward away from the green sack of their being. She slipped one into her mouth— oysters on the half shell always her favorite. Always a top shell and a bottom shell. Never a pearl. Someday, she said to herself— someday she will find a pearl, but until then she promised herself, she would keep on eating oysters.
When the blade goes dull, I will think of Zora Neale Hurston who wrote
“No, I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
Sharpen your knife.
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dVerse prompt to write prosey using the words of Zora Neale Hurston from 1928 in World Tomorrow —How It Feels to be Colored Me.
Also using Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft Exercise 3, using long and short sentences.
Real old oyster knife pictured found at a thrift shop San Juan Island.
Walking my dog into the labyrinth
he has no sense of following the path
(marked with stone and showing the way)
he prefers random ins and outs
sniffs along breaking the barriers
(set by man to keep us in line)
smudge on his nose
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dVerse prompt to write a quadrille and use the word smudge. I actually know a dog named Smudge but this is not about him. This is about my dog who always has his nose in just about everything.
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Rhododendron
blooming
purple in its splendor
risk taken
after a flower
the fade
no longer the showcase
of the garden
fertilize
mulch the ground
prepare it for
another bloom
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dVerse prompt on risk and remodel— garden is beautiful and then it isn’t
crucial to finding the way is this there is no beginning or end only a lingering in the middle caught in the middle of nothing and nothing with no end marks and capital letters no space whiteness on a paper where a word isn’t and silence takes over just a blob of words on a page of middleness
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dVerse prompt on prosy using Jo Harjo’s line Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end. combined exercise with Ursula K. Lê Guin’s Steering the Craft Exercise 2 to write with no punctuation
Why are sharpies so permanent?
Somethings just leave their mark
like when I can’t sleep and it’s
three am and
the dog wakes me up at six and
I know that’s not enough
there are so many answers
just give me coffee
Start with a word
not just any word
Word moist with truth
revealing my truth
Truth hard to find
seek til you find
Find its purpose
aware of purpose
Purpose to write
so hope to write
Write now
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NaPoWriMo Day 30 prompt to give directions. I hope this will help me keep writing after today.
my words travel
out into a void of hearing
wanting to stop the flow
to see if you are listening
I do that all the time
just stop in mid-sentence
or in a poem when
suddenly the words stop
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NaPoWriMo prompt for day 27. My choice
