Friday commute

For the dVerse Monday quadrille prompt” “TGIF”, 44 words including Friday.

Fridays I join the stream of red tail-lights,
the exodus down the M5.

I am impatient to leave,
but not to arrive.

The highway is a breathing space,
a liminal place
where I am neither worker
nor wife.

Nothing is required
but to drive.

 

I used to do the weekend commute from Sydney to near-Canberra. I quite miss it sometimes. 

prosery – turnsole and belladonna

For today’s dVerse prosey prompt, to use the line “To be pretty for you I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes.”  from the poem garden  “Garden” by Isabel Duarte Gray in a short piece of prose, no more than 144 words.     

 

All night I waited for you. I plucked up my courage as I plucked the rose petals to scent this bed for you. I have whitened my face with lily root to be pretty for you. I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes to hide the red from my tears, and two drops of belladonna to give you dark pools to gaze into. And I have waited for you, as you asked of me, to prove my love. Although I am afraid. But now the dawn is reaching her arms across the sky and the night is turning from her. And these white sheets are reddened only with crushed petals.

I am not ready for September

For the dVerse prompt “August transitions‘:

I am not ready for September,
for another Spring.

I would be satisfied to stay curled into myself,
fat and white as a cockchafer
burrowed into the soil
and sleeping snug in the earth,
inhaling only the exhalations of decay,
of the slow composting of last season’s growth.

Surely it is too soon for Spring,
for blossom scent and the lengthening of days
and the bursting forth of new life?
I am not ready.

But somehow August is half done.
The wattles are shouting
their golden threats of spring
and even the photocopier
meeps for more paper like a baby bird.

I am not ready to leave the snug of winter.
I am not ready for another Spring.

remember when the drought broke?

For the dVerse Monday quadrille prompt “pouring out our poems“. A quadrille is exactly 44 words, and for this prompt had to contain the word water.  

 

Remember when the drought broke?
How we followed the gully
down from the house to the waterfall place
overflowing with the laughter, relief –
the dry years’ strain and restraint
discarded with our clothes
in the recklessness of water,
the profligacy of the flood?

 

February 2022, between the bushfires and COVID. 

Imayo: stones

Down by the edge of the stream, my son looks for stones
to put in our pockets and, when forgotten, to
be found again and tumbled – rolled in our hands like
the water rolls them here, in this mountain stream.
I point to one that I like, matt grey and rounded
as a miniature boulder, he brings it to me
where I wait on the pathway, then clambers back down
to choose a stone for himself, and send it skipping.

For the dVerse prompt “MTB Rocking the Imayo“, which Laura explain as:

“–The Imayo* – and this is its structure:

• 4 lines (8 lines permissible)
• 12 syllables per line divided as7/5
• make a pause space between the 7 and 5 syllables
• use comma, caesura or kireji (cutting word) as the pause
• no rhymes
• no meter
• no end of line pauses – the whole should flow together as though one long sentence”

The prompt also required the poem to be about a stone or rock, and a literal one – no metaphors! 

3 things / what colour is hope?

For the dVerse prompt “what colour is hope“, to write a poem about 3 things that make you happy:

 

Hope is blue –
the blue of sky
mirrored in every puddle,
and in every full dam
when the drought has broken.

Hope is russet brown –
the brown-paper skin
on a tulip bulb
ready to be nestled
into rich black soil.

Hope is yellow –
the yellow of the leaping flames
of this sympathetic magic
with which we call back the sun
on this shortest day of the year.

 

 

mirror, mirror

I tell the woman in the mirror:
“You’re not who I set out to be.”
She looks at me, somewhat askance
and then she whispers back at me
“Nor are you”
then goes on to say
“but if we stick together we’ll be okay.”

 

Written for the dVerse quadrille “mirror, mirror on the wall” prompt. 

mezza luna

For the dVerse Monday haibun prompt, to write about the half-moon or “Mezza Luna”:

 

I hardly noticed the change. Just a few days ago there was a thin finger-nail clipping of a moon, hanging above the horizon at sunset, gleaming white against a purple velvet sky. Now on my evening walk she is overhead, a neat half-circle, the terminator drawn with a sharp pencil. And in another week I will see her rise, plump and full, climbing above the ridge to the east as the sun drops below the ridge to the west.
They run in circles, chasing each other above this still Earth. But you can see that she wants to be caught, because she runs a little slower than the sun to let him catch up. But, oh… every time, every time… he runs past her.

Mezza Luna points,
her sunlit face an arrow
aiming at her love

thank you for cleaning the bathroom sink

For the dVerse Valentine’s day prompt “come and state it plainly“, and for D.  

I don’t love you every day.
You know as well I do
that if I said so I would be lying.
There are days when the irritation
from brushing against each other
day after day
year after year
is like contact dermatitis,
that is never allowed to heal
but just gets more annoying,
until I have to scratch it.
But this constant abrasion
has carved us into shapes
that fit together.
Most days.
 

 

hare turned tortoise

A haibun for the dVerse Monday haibun prompt, “heart“:

 

Ba-doonk-a-doonk, Ba-doonk-a-doonk. Eight-thirty p.m. and my phone alarm is flashing “take meds”.
The tablet snaps in the cutter, and the two halves fall neatly apart: two 25mg doses of atenolol. There is a satisfying definiteness to that snap, a decisive counting out and finalising of the days with this miniature guillotine. (I am always tempted to run my thumb along the little razor blade to test its sharpness, but I do not. At least, I have not so far.) It clicks down SNAP! and another day is gone, decapitated, and dropped into the little plastic box below the blade.
I am no longer measuring out my life with coffee spoons – I am not allowed caffeine anymore – but with half-tablets of heart medication.

The rabbit is tamed:
it twitches rather than kicks
and plods tortoise-paced.

(or:

My heart no longer
skips a beat when I see you
(if I take my meds).
)