September 2020 – This Jolly Beggar

When summer’s twilight warmed the Moongate Garden, soft breezes lit twin fires, feldspar and quartz, in rose granite, and my hand trembled as you entered through the gate of half-moons. Water circled, a calm pool, and the soft blush of the lotus laid bare my heart.

Nothing was yet forbidden. The trees shielded us even to their own gaze, their leafy whispers mingling with ours, their shadows lengthening over ours. Darkness, insatiate, spun round the breathless earth.

came the harvest moon
trapped in the water’s cold eye
ever by your tomb

A haibun written for Dverse's Haibun Monday 9/28/20: to the Moon!
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Share Your World/FOTD 9-28-2020

We’re back to Melanie‘s solo muggle-some questions à la carte, and these are short and sweet this week. Check them out and join in! Also under “Gratitude” are photos for Cee’s FOTD.

Continue reading “Share Your World/FOTD 9-28-2020”

Through It All: Fruit

Prostrated by the summer’s heat, we cannot always see the fruit that is being produced on a vine. Just so, cast down by our sufferings, it’s hard to see the fruit God is producing in us. Even so, Lord God, we pray, let it all be to your glory! Amen.

[Christ Jesus said:] “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
John 15: 1-6

Color Me Zany

Y’all know there’s red, white, blue
Violet, purple and cerulean too
Jazzberry jam, purple mountains’ majesty
Canary, cornflower and fuzzy wuzzy
But strike me dumb if ever you see
A spectrum as mind-blowing as ZANY
Not even a Crayola box can contain
The uncanniness like an outrageous grin
For when you happen to chance upon it
Everything’s a subject for merry wit!

Power Ritual

The senex stared at the garlic, the little cast-iron pot. Should she summon the Old One? What would it demand this time? But half her staff had been taken, the other half, turned. The chorus-women deserted. Once again the child zealots had led them astray.

She removed the pot, chanting:

The Outsider’s here, siddle-siddle, hiss
Lay the garlic in the pan, make yourself a wish
Round about it go, dance in despair
I’m the one who betrays with a siddle-siddle, kiss.

If only there were some other way to be re-elected.

But at what cost? At what cost??

word count: 100  
written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers  
click on Rochelle Wisoff-Fields's hand-drawing of the frog  
for more tales of a hundred words or less. And join the fun!

Sky-verse To You

I’m skating it, free-wheeling it
Somersaulted skyward by the infinite jest of it
That I could be winging it, barrel-rolling
Like Icarus to the very summit of it
Unburned by it, cascading liberating fall of it
Caught in it, unbound through it, Your love.

For dVerse's Quadrille #112: The Sky’s the Limit (in 44 words)
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A Nonet to “Baby Yoda”

Jude’s Saturday Symphony 9-19-2020

“Mythical Creatures”

I’m
Insta-
Born to be
A myth of long-
Gevity, but you
Recognize in me more
Than a curiosity
A gravitar of hope and peace
Beyond worldly mediocrity.

“Baby Yoda,” aka “The Child,” on episode four of “The Mandalorian”

What's a nonet? This one's written in its syllabic reverse.

Coaster to Coaster

For Carol’s Cheerful Selfie Challenge #4

Getting my coasters all lined up for a reading break.

Yesterday I was privileged to read Candace Owens’s Blackout and was impressed by this young woman’s sagacity and determination to break out of the collective mold she had been forced into by virtue of the color of her skin through the demagoguery of political leaders and educators. Her personal story was well worth reading in and of itself, apart from the views she now holds as to how best her fellow black Americans can advance their communities and enhance their lives individually.

Today, back to British historian Tom Holland’s Dominion, his most recent offering, much more of a slow read given the breadth of his subject but now that I’m more than half-way through, enjoying his take on the world-changing nature of Judaeo-Christian values which have raised the conditions of the marginalized, the poor and the helpless to a status they would never have enjoyed otherwise. By dint of his being an agnostic, Holland’s objectivity is especially impressive for its unfiltered look at the now universally-touted values of individuality, freedom, civil rights and tolerance that Christians helped advance throughout the world by their belief in the dignity of every human being made in the image of God.

All this by way of saying I’ll be on a blogging break for an indefinite time but will catch y’all back here as soon as may be.

Take care, my friends.