April 2021 – This Jolly Beggar

Jeeves Clairovoyant

Even before these events transpired, my barrista, the summum bonum of my life, divined them in the grinds.

She summoned me (“Bertie”), supplied my ususal combustible concoction, and intoned, “Enjoy.”

It wasn’t what she said but the way she said it.

“Rad, Jeeves, what ho!” said I.

As I blew out the door, winds exceeding 90 mph blew through the Savannah café. I landed down the road on Aunt Agatha’s bulldog, Horatio, who was as pleased to see me as a vulture on resurrection day.

My espresso, as predicted, survived. Extricating myself from Horatio, I took a sip. I enjoyed.

genre: fan fiction; word count: 100; Rochelle Wisoff-Fields kindly invites us to join the Friday Fictioneers in their weekly creative quests of a hundred words or less. Photo prompt © Dale Rogerson Click on the frog and join in!

More Arms to Reach You

If I had more arms to reach You
Would that help? But You say,
Two will do now
To reach my neighbor.

Eyes upward, arms outward: Happy Lord’s Day

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
John 15:12

Check out more flower photography at Cee’s FOTD challenge for April 25, 2021

Garden Retreat

I’ve dotted my ‘i’s
and crossed my ‘t’s
restless
for a spot of afternoon tea
in my garden retreat

Disclaimer: This photo’s from my neighbor’s garden. So many of my neighbors are dedicated gardeners and it’s a pleasure to admire their lovely gardens on my walks. I have no garden, but a lovely balcony. It’s good for a spot of tea too!

For Cee’s Flower of the Day challenge: “Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts leaves and berries as well as flowers.“ And Sammi’s 19-words-only challenge using “restless.”

Moon Dragon

In the sky through the clouds you can see silver haze
Dispersed like the sheen of a dragon of steel
Look too long and you’ll swear that your gaze
Is returned and the dragon above sees its prey.

Do not run, do not hide, or you’ll be her next meal
Say charms, not too loud, dance a jig, maybe two
If the fear in your eyes, it can see, it can feel
Then no magic on earth can save you or save me

As she comes, whisper soft, murmur tales of lost love
Spin dreams of a land where a knight stays true blue
Melt her heart, let her eyes fill with tears, and above
Your bent head she will breathe not her fire, but her cheer.

Then your heart it will swell, you will ask all you will,
Deep lore of the earth, wondrous songs of the sea
All to you she’ll impart, from her lips it will spill
Then she’ll fly to her lair over clouds over moons.

BJÖRN RUDBERG at dVerse challenges us today to write our verse in Anapestic Tetrameter, and so I’ve attempted, with a dropped syllable in each quatrain’s second line. See more dVerse offering and join in by clicking on Mr. Linky.

Doldrums of Diku

The Doldrums of Diku had arrived at the museum
Silently they stood as we gazed open-mouthed at them.
Gifts from advanced space aliens shouldn’t be met with rebuff
So we studied each stony structure with all the right stuff.
From blue to pink they’d change and then back again
Interstellar modern art of singularly useless distraction.
Then came the day the eggs cracked down the middle
But excitement had waned and no one cared a fiddle
As if the Doldrums of Diku had weighed down our spirits
Till what once would have thrilled, now just bored us to pieces.

genre: fantasy; word count: 99; Rochelle Wisoff-Fields very kindly invites us to join the Friday Fictioneers in their weekly creative quests of a hundred words or less prompted by a photo. Click on the frog and join in!

Poetics and Wang Wei

Laura at dVerse asks us to reinterpret one of several Chinese poems. I’ve chosen to reimagine “Stopping at Incense Storing Temple” by Wang Wei.

When in the concatenation of bells that toll
I stop at dusty pools of ghost-bearing scents
The rains having come and gone, ashes remain
The acrid smoke of the dead stings my eyes
Choking the young, ridiculing the old
I turn away to the bowers of forest glades
Where You await storing love’s incense
And I like a wanderer home at last
Stand strong in Your warm embrace
Escaping the dragon of the past
To rise with You to eternal joy.

Green Grows My Garden

Green grows my garden
Where beds of daffodils dance
Nodding merry heads

For Cee’s Flower of the Day challenge: “Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts leaves and berries as well as flowers.“

Seeing Sunday

I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what C.S. Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.
Clyde Kilby, “Ten Resolutions”

For Cee’s Flower of the Day challenge: “Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts leaves and berries as well as flowers.“

Song in the Rain

raindrops in millions
falling on petals
in thirsty gardens
collecting in puddles
for children to play in
drenching the sidewalks
and a lone walker
without umbrella
dancing and singing
a tune so uncanny
it chases a rainbow
through clouds