Category: challenges

Hi! Here is Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge No. 282. This week is a theme prompt selected by Harmony, “The Longest Day.”

I went with a haibun but also used this picture for inspiration or an ekphrastic.

.

Point of View

I started this journey so long ago. Every corner turned, I’d find another identical rocky path. It’s been day after day of the same. Each day is longer than the one before it. Although there is food, water, and a place to rest, there are also unpleasant reminders that others have made the same trek. Having no choice, I have only added to that. Occasionally, I’d see a golden light off in the distance shimmering through the open-top tunnel. Encouraged, I quickened my pace toward it. Finally, when I got there, the light would disappear, and I’d be back in the darkness. It’s been a cruel game that has gone on for too long. The promise of finding the meaning of life no longer held my interest. I didn’t care anymore. The problem was, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find my way out of this torture chamber. When I realized I had been looking at this from the wrong perspective. I climbed the wall.

a different view

exposes life’s labyrinth

journey continues

Here’s Colleen Chesebro’s Weekly Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge No. 280. This week Lisa, the VerseSmith selected the lanturne or lanterne format. Its pattern is 1/2/3/4/1 and has a shape like a Japanese lantern.

rock

heart-shaped

my journey

time’s collection

love

Here is Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday Weekly Poetry Challenge No. 278. This is a Taste the Rainbow theme with color/weather as the subject.

This is a haibun which is a prose paragraph combined with haiku or senryu. I enjoy offering stories or even insights in this format.

Personal Paradise Lost

In a burst of color, the last of the day falls into night’s waiting hands. I sit on the rocky ledge bathed in the purple, orange, gold, and gray of the event. Although it happens every day above the vast azure water, it still offers me the hope that I’ll need as the moment fades away into darkness. Someday I will venture outside my guarded world, where the gentle waves and salty breeze are the only movements in this paradise. Here, a storm brings gentle rain, and the sunbeams provide growth around me, yet nothing changes. The sameness has become my personal prison in a place that some consider perfection. I long to captain my boat into those beautiful colors and see what is beyond my horizon.

nature’s artistry
awakens my stagnant soul
inspiration flows

Here is this week’s Colleen Chesebro Tanka Tuesday Weekly Poetry Challenge #276. This week we are challenged to share our day.

I’ve been feeling life a little too intensely lately. When I start to feel overwhelmed, the best thing I can do is step outside and walk in the forest. Here, I can do some walking meditation, write poetry surrounded by trees, or simply be. I may not accomplish all I need to, but these moments provide the peace my mind, body, and soul needs.

exhaustion heavy

another yawn claims my breath

I enter the woods

wind’s breeze carries the trees song

nature’s healing bathes my soul

Here is Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge #275 Theme Prompt. The theme “useful” was choosen by Kerfe.

I’ve been quiet lately, barely time to visit blogs or get one posted. Releasing a new book is always so time consuming, plus putting out new covers and tidying the books up. Not sure why I did both at once. But I made sure to make that little extra time to write some poetry today.

I put the word useful into Canva’s search and came up with this picture.

wrinkled, gray or bald

slower gait, feeble and frail

family’s burden

society’s arrogance

essential wisdom dismissed

Here’s Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge No. 271. This week is a theme prompt.Yvette M. Calleiro provided this month’s theme: Beginnings & Endings.

I’m right in the middle of replacing my very old computer. I reflected on that day many years ago when I opened the box, carefully unpacked it, and set my computer up. Our time together had just started. Now, I’m moving all its information to its replacement and look forward to working without the computer freezing up every few moments or the long periods of waiting. But after all the good years we had together, I needed to say my final goodbye as our partnership ended.

Once shiny and new
towering grace held the world
you were everything
but time downloaded your essence
you’re efficiently replaced

Here is Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge #270. This week’s theme is a photo prompt which is an ekphrastic poem.

You may have guessed I picked the picture this week 🙂 I decided on haibun which is a connected combination of a prose paragraph and a  haiku.

A NEW BEGINNING

The pod took their final dive off the coast of Kauai, as the place of their birth was leveled. No land location survived the barrage of bombs, but sections of the ocean were untouched. Their pod was alive and unharmed, but they heard many dolphin families silenced along with all the humans. Right after the final explosion, a beautiful perfect-pitched dolphin song began. Directions were weaved into this beacon of hope, guiding them to where dolphins could start over. A paradise where fish are plentiful, and nothing would hurt them. They swam over the wrecked ships and under the floating tombs that used to net their kind. It was their time now when the gentle creatures of the ocean rule the earth’s new world.

under the surface

kelp becomes the new forest

life begins again.

Here’s Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday #269. It’s a specific form or Tanka Prose.

THE OCEAN SIGHTING

Last December, as we reached our Hawaiian destination, Kauai, I glanced out the plane window to see the approaching shore. Right below the plane, there was a pod of humpback whales. It was one of those moments in life where all I could do was to be part of it, but I couldn’t record it to share. I spotted another whale that day as soon as we got to our room. There was a gray spume of water shooting up that I first thought—ghost ship. Looking again, I realized it was a whale blowing air through its blowhole. Although I kept looking; I didn’t see another whale until the very last day. I stood on our balcony to take one last look before we left and there it was, that burst of air exiting the whale. Then the whale breached and dove. I didn’t see it again. The whales had greeted me the first day and then said goodbye, until the next time.

above paradise

a pod of whales welcomes me

awakens my heart

soothing my discouraged soul

a magical moment heals

Here is Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday Weekly Poetry Challenge No. 268. We are challenged to taste the rainbow or write about color.

Last week, I went to the bank driving through a small downpour when saw the sun peeking through the clouds. I knew there had to be a rainbow somewhere and there was. It was the most beautiful one I’d ever seen. The main one was double the colors and then another one framed it. I could almost touch them. Of course, in my hurry to get to the bank, I forgot my phone and any chance of getting a picture of it. Yet, at that moment I got a strong message that everything was going to be okay.

the day dull and gray
heavily laden with fear
until light breaks through
coloring my opaque soul
in a rainbow of hushed hope