(A retelling of the story of Abraham and Isaac)
A weary journey, a wakeful night,
They left their camp before daylight
An old man carrying the weight of years
Wrinkled cheeks wet with tears
At hearing the young boy at his side
Prattle on with childish pride
That he alone had been chosen
To help his father on this mission.
Lisa at dVerse Poetics: One True Sentence writes: “Your challenge today, should you choose to accept it, is to pick ONE of Hemingway’s quotes to be inspired by and write a poem. Do NOT use the quote in your poem, but please do include the quote on your post page somewhere, with Hemingway’s name as the source of inspiration. For bonus points, please say a few words about the experience of writing to an idea from the mind of Papa Hemingway.” Channeling Hemingway was a fun challenge for dVerse: his abbreviated diction, especially in dialogue, the unsaid reflected in the landscape as much as in the pools of silence surrounding a character. Click on Mr. Linky and join in!
‘It’s gone the way the mist is burned off the hollows in broken ground when the sun comes out,’ the Colonel said. ‘And you’re the sun.’
– Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
the teapot boiled
the cat began to whistle
the man bolted out
the world began to tremble
the cat began to whistle
the pot was just a thought
it was never really there
the man bolted out
he was missing his body
he left his coat and hat
the world began to tremble
we turned the music up
nothing was hard to hear
I thought I’d try my hand at some absurdist poetry of the type popularized in the middle of the twentieth century as Grace at dVerse challenges us with a new poetry form: “Today’s poetry form is Trimeric (Trimeric \tri-(meh)-rik), which was invented by Charles A. Stone.
1. Trimeric has 4 stanzas
2. The first stanza has 4 lines
3. The other three stanzas have 3 lines each
4. The first line of each stanza is a refrain of the corresponding line in the first stanza (so 2nd stanza starts with the second line, third stanza starts with the third line, etc.).
5. The sequence of lines, then, is abcd, b – -, c – -, d – -.
Note: No other rules on line length, meter, or rhyme.
Click on Mr. Linky & join in!
Genre: Fiction
Word Count: 100
Fear
I’ve heard it said that a woman should never be afraid of her own life. Yet I am. Every day the crowd multiplies. I grow old. The room grows smaller. Am I to be buried alive? Not with grave dirt, but with ghosts. The more confined I, the more rampant they. What diabolical art is this, that the dead suck life out of those they abhor? My nights are theirs to engorge upon in hopeless pain, my days spit out remnants of their celebration. For as vines strangle and overgrown briars encroach, my ghosts encircle me. And I am afraid.
Come along and join in with Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers and Eugi’s Weekly Prompt. Eugi asks us to use any variation on the word prompt (“celebration”).
Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (above, © Alicia Jamtaas) and limit our words to 100 or less. Click on the frog to read more stories and participate. 
Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember
Richard Baxter was a 17th-century English theologian and Reformed pastor whose fruitfulness in ministry continues to inspire the church today. Most quoted is this advice to those in ministry which, given recent high-profile scandals, can use another dusting off:
Take heed to yourselves, lest you be void of that saving grace of God which you offer to others, and be strangers to the effectual working of that gospel which you preach . . . and lest you famish yourselves while you prepare food for them.
Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor
Also a poet, Baxter summarized the manner of his preaching this way:
I preach’d, as never sure to preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men!
O how should preachers men’s repenting crave,
Who see how near the church is to the grave?
Psalm 104: 10-13
You make springs gush forth in the valleys;
they flow between the hills;
they give drink to every beast of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell;
they sing among the branches.
From your lofty abode you water the mountains;
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
For Cee's FOTD, July 13, 2021
Sorry, folks, but this week’s 92-word Weekend Writing Prompt led me to the dark side. Be forewarned!
Peony Shangri-La
Igg! Take a look! These flowers are beautiful.
Biggest I’ve seen in any galaxy, Jaka.
Oh smell! I love the scent, Igg. The leaves are so shiny and green.
Multiple buds too, Jaka.
The gardeners must be very fine aliens, Igg.
Nothing less than perfect, Jaka.
Like angels, Igg, cultivating beauty instead of hatred, greed or deception.
Have we found Shangri-La then, Jaka, after all these years of searching?
**sound of bug spray**
[gasping] Alas, Igg. Here lies . . . our resting . . . place . . . .Good . . . bye.
For Cee's FOTD, June 12, 2021and Sammi's WWP #213, prompt "galaxy", exactly 92 words
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.And fare thee well, my only Luve
Robert Burns (1759–1796)
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.
For Cee’s Flower of the Day, June 11, 2021
silent butterfly
in cicada currents crash
still quietly thrives
its wings in speckled ease chides
my nature’s turbulent state
From Wikipedia, some facts about the cicadas assaulting out ears in some portions of America:
Continue reading “Nature (tanka)”
Seeing a rose, I once said that we stand out like that, red on green, and you reply, tongue-in-cheek, you mean like an ambulance at 3 AM in a Mississippi swamp and I shut up, crushed, like you’d said we were an accident that had been waiting to happen, as if crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end, just a screeching of brakes, a clang of metal, the jolting of bones, and then the long drawn out police report and insurance claims, a ledger of rights and wrongs, and the spindrift pages in the moonlit night where my heart spills and the nightingale vies with a shrike impaled on a thorny bush that ought to have a bloom, a rose, while someone, no one, looks for a medic to resuscitate the dead in an ambulance at 3 AM.
For Cee's FOTD
If
one day
you are told
this was an accident,
caused by your increasing crescendo
of scorn, my darling,
don’t
spill
precious ink
tracking why?
in (what your sort) calls poetry.
Poetry is simply
breaking through walls.
[Addendum for Friday Fictioneers:]
United World Chronicle, 6/5/2100: Missing Woman.
Christina Lightfoot left this note and photograph for her fiancé, Lord Ettlesworth. After multiple crashes, she successfully flew her automobile into outer space. The vehicle reportedly runs on a nuclear-powered, zero-gravity generator. The World Authorities Commission Force (WACF) is requesting information in return for zero lifetime taxes on sales, income, property, and travel.
For Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers (100 words or less; click frog for more)and Sammi's Weekend Writing Prompt, 37 words, "Crescendo."
