Poetry in Prayer: Badger Hexastitch #1

A Badger Hexastitch is six lines of the following syllables in each: 2-4-6-6-4-2

Father,

Your love stays fresh

in my heart, cascading,

unfailing, quenching deep

my yearning for

You.

Lavender Asters
Photo for Cee’s Flower of the Day (FOTD)

Life in You

When I feel blue
I think of You

*

As Shadows fall
I hear Your Call

*

Fears clutter the Night
I keep You in Sight

*

Pain on each Side
I in You Abide

*

Christ is for me, my Life.

Do you know what this flowering plant is?

Sammi's WWP #236: This weekend your challenge is to write a poem or a piece of prose in exactly 38 words using the word “Blue”.
Punam's Ragtag Daily Prompt: "Clutter"
Eugi's Weekly Prompt: "Shadows"
Fandango's FOWC: "Life"
Photo for Cee's FOTD challenge, November 21, 2021:
Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD): "Please feel free to post 
every day or when you you feel like it.  
Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts 
gardens, leaves and berries as well as flowers."

Poetry in Prayer: An Elfchen #1

Blogger friend Richard introduced me to the Elfchen or Elevenie form, which is a German-inspired poem of eleven words in five lines, with 1, 2, 3, 4 words, then 1 word again for the fifth and last line.

LORD,

Help me

Be as Christ

Seeking You in prayer

Always

Then

Shall I

Walk with You

In trust, in communion

Eternal

Bee feeding on Salvia
Photos for Cee's FOTD challenge, November 20, 2021: Tulip Fields
Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD): "Please feel free to post 
every day or when you you feel like it.  
Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts 
gardens, leaves and berries as well as flowers."

Don’t Look at Me!

Don’t look at me
the woman said who rolled her eyes
at the old man’s head bent over the counter
while she waited behind just out of church,
in line and ready to be served.

Don’t look at me
the elder said who managed sales
to the seminarian needing a job in town
his hands too clean for wheelin’ and deceivin’
in the business of car dealerships.

Don’t look at me
the pastor said, and the mother, the father,
the guy who got caught with his hand in the jar,
“I’m just a sinner, no perfection here, just doing my best,
and you’re no better.”

Don’t look at me
the little girl said, who knew how it was done
from watching her betters, to believe just enough,
her tongue so glib with all the Bible verses she was sure
like them she’d get by.

When it all comes down
to sheep and goats, to wheat and tares,
how many will be saying to the Lord of all,
“Let the mountains fall upon us to cover and to hide:
just don’t look, oh God, at me!”


Luke 23:30-31
Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’
For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

James 1:21-27, 2: 18-26
Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.
For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.
But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world….
But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!

Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;
and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”–and he was called a friend of God.
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?
For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

image credit: istock via pexels.com

Lanterns & Goblins (Tanka)

don’t rue the last days

of October’s calendar

when little goblins

seeking candies door-to-door

run, as parent lanterns glow

I remember taking our kids to Halloween parties hosted by people we knew, but only once or twice taking them trick or treating in our neighborhood, always hovering in the background, half-trepidatiously (is that a word?).


For Carrie's The Sunday Muse #184 -Join in!

Not Homeless

A penny shiny from the gutter
she stoops to pick
places auspice in her pocket
passing people on the pavement
like a ghostly apparition
passing through an open door
escapes into the vellichor*
of shadowed selves in memory’s mist
who greet her on Halloween
at Harry’s Magic bookshop.


*vellichor: The wistfulness of a second-hand bookshop.

Eugi's Weekly Prompt - "Halloween"
Punam's RDP Saturday - "Apparition"
Sammi's WWP #233 - 48 words exactly, ""Vellichor"
Top Image credit: sergio omassi from Pexels
Bottom Image Credit: RDP Saturday

Witches, Warlocks, and Political Consultants (A Duodora)

Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas from Pexels

He’s got no heart
that’s plain for us to see
yet adamantine
chains of our own greed
mocking bind our flesh
permission securing to multiply
lies that his desires ours would circumscribe

She’s got no heart
that we all clearly know
obscure it we must
the voters to con
paid consultants we
diabolical masters creating
sly illusions to blind our client’s tribe

Lisa at dVerse: Poetics -- "Halloweeny Humans" asks us to 
write about a dislikable human trait. 
She also introduces us to a new poetic form, the Duodora, 
which we can choose to use. 
Duodora Form
a quatorzain made up of 2 septets.
syllabic,  4/6/5/5/5/10/10 syllables per line.
rhymed Axxxxxb Axxxxxb L1 is repeated as a refrain that begins the 2nd stanza. x is unrhymed.
Enjoy more at Mr. Linky.

Autumnal Severance

Wallpaper Safari

Autumnal severance

season’s flashing tonality

present past present future

the shin hurt of childhood quarrel

aging fruit and jarring tumbler

last year’s fashion muffler, tomorrow’s cinder

moth-eaten “do my bones look big in this?” sweater

witch’s brew of prescription medicines

growing old is time’s obscurer

a flash of autumnal red

like twinkling stars

fade and fall


For Sammi's Day 6 ("witches brew") and Day 7 ("Do my bones look big in this?")

A-Souling

Photo by Ján Jakub Naništa on Unsplash

A-Souling

“Hey ho, nobody home . . . ?”

His sing-song question fell on no ears but hers,
deaf all others to its celebratory tones
the night of All Hallow’s Eve.

Tenor voice attuned to hearth,
lights in hands they enter
to find soul cakes laid on barrels,
beer and apples.

None heard him but her,
would never leave her
till her heart stopped, like his:
a toast before departing,
as midnight strikes.

“I will come and sing no more
’til this time next year.”


Soul cakes? A-souling? Unfamiliar with these terms are you, like I was? According to wikipedia, soul cakes are spicy shortbread-like biscuits given out to “soulers” who come round during the days of Allhallowtide singing and saying prayers, a’souling, in fact.

One traditional song, “A-Souling,” was made familiar to us by Peter, Paul, and Mary who sung it as a Christmas song, which for most parts of England it has become. The group Lothlorien sings it in the traditional mood of Allhallowtide.

Click here for the lyrics.

Sammi's Weekend Writing Prompt: "question," exactly 84 words
Sammi's 13 Days of Samhain -- Day 4: "soul cakes"
Punam's RagTag Daily Prompt: "celebration"

Wind Elf (A Compound Word Verse)

Image by zanagab from Pixabay

Along the rolling hills I hear
your mournful singing haunting clear
yet windblown.

Under the moon’s vapid eye
how can I, elf, to you deny
your windsongs?

I’ll keep you under lock and key
lest you flee and escape from me
as windstorm.

The elvish king shall have you back
when he returns the one I lack
now windbound.

On Hallow’s Eve we’ll make a swap
my child returned, you with your harp,
— home windward.

Grace at dVerse challenges us today to write a Compound Word Verse, an unfamiliar form to most ous I daresay. She writes: "The Compound Word Verse is a poetry form invented by Margaret R. Smith that consists of five 3-line stanzas, for a total of 15 lines. The last line of each stanza ends in a compound word and these compound words share a common stem word which is taken from the title. (In the first example below the stem word is “moon” from the title “Moonlighting”; the compound words related to the title are moondust, moonbeams, moonsongs, etc.)

The Compound Word Verse (3 lines) has a set rhyme scheme and meter as follows:

Rhyme Scheme: a,a,b
Syllable/Meter: 8, 8, 3

Click on Mr. Linky to read more and join in!