Category: poetry

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

Here’s Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday Weekly Poetry Challenge #267. This week we are being challenged to share our day with pictures and poetry.

I’m sharing a day from our vacation last week. I love to write poetry in as many places as possible, and one of them is while I’m riding with my hubby on a Harley. I keep a pad and pen in my coat pocket and, so far, have only lost one pen but none of the words written. I have a tanka and senryu to share from our excursion. Healing was a theme in most of the poetry written last week.

road takes us nowhere

except into the moment

nature reaches out

caresses my weary soul

I’m healed on a warm spring day

D. L. Finn writes words

captures thoughts on the Harley

healing Denise’s soul

And yes, I do separate Denise and D. L. Finn 🙂

Here’s Colleen Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday Weekly Poetry Challenge #260. The challenge is to do Abhanga form which is 6a/6b/6b/4c. I did an Abhanga series and used a picture I took in Hawaii. The photo looks out of a dark cave into the light.

I have been getting more than my share of messages lately, including paying attention and trusting myself. As usual, I fought the unwelcomed changes at first, but I came to a point where I see the wisdom in letting go and going with this wiser flow.

THE AWAKENING

abundant messages
surround my universe
as if brought by a curse
they are ignored

invasion continues
my suppression inept
finally, I accept
darkness ascends

golden beams filter through
cast light in the shadow
love’s compassionate flow
awakes my soul