My daughter questions me about her birth. Did you rip or tear? The color of hair? What did daddy do? The memories are vague and conflicting, compromised with age but still the stories are told.
How the milk came hard, filling the tit and your little lips found the nipple. You were a happy baby, puffed cheeks and budgy legs. Not a crier. A perfect gift!
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dVerse prompt on receiving a gift.
This is how the end comes.
It is wrapped in silver like a gift.
The gift is most welcome,
eager to see what is inside.
Inside was not what I wanted.
It was full of memory.
Each memory had a story.
They played inside my head.
The head was filled with irrelevance,
as I sought for the divine.
What could be more sought after
than a life of heartfelt love?
In love with the only One—
this is how the end comes.
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NaPoWriMo Day 27 prompt to write a duplex sonnet.
It all began when the king and queen had, not
an ordinary child, but an exceedingly ugly child,
a boy with welts that covered his body. So many
welts, in fact, that the local wiseman brought a gift
of skin to mend the baby’s body, but the blood
in the boy would not flow to the new skin, so the man
was killed. It was seven years before an old man
who had heard of the ugliness (news of ugliness, not
beauty, traveled slow) decided to risk his blood
and bone in a humanitarian attempt to save the child
from the welted fate. He thought of a different gift
and the tale of a better cure. He set off and for many
days he traveled to the palace and after many, many
nights he pondered the result of failure, until this man
knew that he must succeed. He took a violin as his gift
and a story of how the boy would cure himself and not
be welted for life if the boy learned, while a child,
to play better than any other. The king, whose blood
ran cold, swore at his wife’s bedside, that all blood
would flow of those who threatened the cure. Many
years passed and much practice and scales for the child
until it was obvious that the boy (soon to be a man)
had, not only welts, but he had no musical ability. Not
only did he hold the fiddle wrong, he even dropped the gift.
One day the king declared a purge of the kingdom so gift
and prophecy would come true. If any violin was heard, blood
of the fiddler was shed. The killing continued until not
a person was left who could play any tune but the boy. Many
more years passed and it seemed that the cure of the old man
was false for the welts that were once the welts of a child
were now the welts full grown and the noise that a child
makes on a fiddle had never improved at all. The gift
was a source of embarrassment to the king for the old man
had died long ago. Then one night while all was still, blood
of the king ceased to flow. The queen cried. The son of many
bumps became king. A new crown of gold was forged so as not
to cramp the king’s welted head. Not a man, woman, or child
gossiped about the many hours the king played on his gift
for better to have no blood shed and the hope of a patient man.
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My one and only sestina, written in Centrum poetry workshop 1978
wordshophop 