A Conversation with My Late Husband

He tells me, "You need 

male energy around you. It's OK

if you have new relationships. Later, 

we'll be together forever. 

But for now ..."

"Listen," I say, "I like 

being with me now. (And 

with you, still so present in spirit.)

For the rest, my little cat

is my new love, my sweet, my treasure."

Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Promises

I signed, 'Love forever'. He replied:

'Forever is a long time to love. How about, 

Love – as long as you're still

the person you are today.'

(It was a promise, not a question.)

He died soon after. 

Decades later, 

love appears to be forever ...

after all, he is still 
the person he was that day.

Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Re-reading Martin Pippin*

I have been rambling for days

in an apple orchard and a daisy field, 

in the fine company of Martin Pippin

(introduced to me by Eleanor Farjeon).

I was a lonely girl, unlike those

who stopped their play to hear these tales –

yet my childhood too, I recollect,

had its daisy chains, its golden apples. 

* "Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard" and "Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field" by Eleanor Farjeon: classics still available in print and as ebooks.

Written for a 55-word prompt.

'My Heart is a Ghost Town'

... the man sings, lamenting

love lost, a lover gone

and I think, never mind my heart, 

my head's where the ghosts reside

of lovers gone – never lost –

the talkative ghosts

who haunt my old age

pleasantly

as we reminisce, and finally 

resolve our stone-cold issues ...

good to have a yarn

for old times' sake.

Written for Flash 55 – PLUS! 3 June 2017 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

There Was This Man

(this out-of-standard dropout)

He climbs from a hole in the ground,

trots jerkily through the cemetery

gorging on wreaths of roses

redder than blood –

plunging his whole face, tearing. 

Wearing green; devouring flowers ...

yet nothing about him suggests 

life or nature. He has crawled

from some circle of Hell; he has lost

everything he ever loved or was.


For Play It Again 7 Jan. 2017 at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we are asked to be inspired by Laurie Anderson, or the Out of Standard movie clip 'Film School Dropout' (see below), or (in 55 words) by Dante Alighieri. It was mostly the movie clip that got me, but I also gave nods to Anderson and Dante, and wrote it in 55 words. The fact that I have recently been bingeing on 'The Vampire Diaries' crept in there too.

Deep Blue Spaces

In a space between

the every-days of my life –

my here life –

I dive into the sky

to fly to a party.

'Now you can say

you're a jet-setter,'

my son declares.

He thinks my life

began at his birth.

Island-bred

I smile, remembering 

many flights 

out and back,  

and the oceans.

55 words for Flash 55 PLUS! – the concept of Space 

at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Fictions

His high cheekbones, intense eyes, full lips –

can’t look past the man (painted 

by a Nigerian) with long locks.  

I’m shown an internet page of primitive.

Art, my sweet cat, 
savagely chases a lizard.

Today, in calm early Spring,

my man’s been gone –

it’s four years yesterday

of thwarted passion.

(I’ve been reading a novel.)

A second poem written for the current Flash 55 PLUS! at 'imaginary garden with real tioads'. (If the words seem familar, they could be.)

Temperatures Rising

I've been reading a novel
of thwarted passion.

It's four years yesterday
my man's been gone.

Today in calm early Spring
my sweet cat savagely chases a lizard.

I’m shown an Internet page of primitive art
painted by a Nigerian with long locks.

Can't look past the man –
his high cheekbones, intense eyes, full lips.


Written for Flash 55 PLUS at 'imaginarygarden with real toads'.

Soldier Fathers

Dad didn't go
overseas to war
but to camp,
training against invasion.

(He was already wounded.
His leg, injured at 10,
needed daily dressing
all his life.)

Andrew's dad went
to the trenches –
stretcher-bearer
(wouldn't kill).

20 years later, his son 
found one surviving page 
torn from a war diary:
'Hell. Hell. Hell. Hell.'


Written for Flash 55 PLUS! at 'imaginary gardens with real toads'. We are asked for a 55-word piece (excluding title) plus we may use the theme of war. My father and father-in-law were involved, in these different ways, in World War II.

Somewhere, Some Day

‘Just hold me,’

I wanted to say –

as though we loved.

Then, when I fell

over that damn rock,

you lifted me

into a hug.

I rested there.

You told me about

the red-winged hawk

you’d seen at dawn.

A time for us? A place?

Just then. Just there.

The feeling of home.

The parting.

For this month's Flash 55 PLUS! at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we are asked for a piece in 55 words, and may include a reference to a line from a tear-jerker song. 'Somewhere' from West Side Story does it for me.

Inescapable

Let’s keep contact to a mimimum,

he said. I know it’s unfair, but you

remind me of those painful events

we shared long ago. In old age

they keep coming back – and oh,

I want peace these last few years,

whatever’s left. Selfish of me, but….

Agreed – but my mind, now,
writhes with dark memories.

Written for Flash 55 Plus at 'imaginary garden with real toads': a 55-word poem, plus the inclusion of a word with the prefix 'in'.

Berta Cáceres, Indigenous Activist, Is Killed in Honduras *

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be  – Martin Luther King, Jr.


Extreme necessity.

Her voice sounds out.

Will not be silenced.

Until …

If you will speak

for forests and rivers

your mouth can be shut.

If you will defend

generations of future lives,

you may be shot –

Dead – as the land, water, air,

and all who dwell therein.

But her voice

rings even louder now.

* Link to story in New York Times

For Flash 55 PLUS! (5 March 2016) at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. Also shared with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #292.

Komorebi

I used to go out the wooden back gate

up the slight rise of the dirt path through the bush

and savour the fall of the sun, soft gold or blinding silver,  

down through the leaves of the eucalypts, in long shafts.

That was when I still thought the home I lived in was mine.

It's Flash 55 PLUS! right now at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. This time the PLUS is to use one of twenty-two words in other languages for which there is no English equivalent. 'Komorebi' is Japanese and means 'sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees'.

Also linking to Poetry Pantry #288 at Poets United

The photo is mine and should not be reproduced without permission. © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2016

But it's Good

But it's good to have these times
when you come and sit beside me
as if alive – the same questioning smile,
the slightly wicked glint in your eyes –
when I park in a spot that holds
particular memories, of some past
and probably unimportant incident
(in the larger scheme of things) 
… but nothing's more important.



Written for Flash 55 Plus at 'imaginary garden with real toads' (55 words, plus the idea of two, in this case two people)

Not Falling

I seldom fall any more

into doubt  –

only doubt of self  –

but often, still, grief.

Into doubt –

that used to be often.

Trust came slowly.

Only doubt of self,

finally, stopped me. Then

I saw: God is the doer, not me.

But often, stlll, grief

floors me. When

will I know that’s not true either?

Written for the Weekend Mini Challenge, Falling Into Lines, at 'imaginary garden with real toads. 55 words wasn't specified but that's what I did anyway, in the form of a trimeric. 

The Seeming

Today in my quiet garden

Spring settles, clear blue,

above rooftops and treetops

and the glisten

of slightly-moving leaves.

In some other reality

wars are fought, madmen 

attack communities, burn homes,

hack heads off bodies.

In some other truth

children starve, drown,

are raped, beaten, enslaved...

For a moment I put down

heavy Excalibur.


At 'imaginary garden with real toads' it's time for FlASH 55 PLUS, where we write a piece of exactly 55 words – plus, this time, the option of being inspired by this doom-laden Carl Orff song featured in the film Excalibur:

Early Spring

Lorikeets swoop in and out of my bottlebrush.

I went for my first walk of Spring today,

though Winter isn’t officially gone.

Ah, but it feels over!

A pink camellia blooms on my neighbour’s bush.

Bougainvillea starts across the way.

The nature strips up the hill and my lawn
are dotted with balls of clover.

A 55-word poem for flash 55 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. 

Versification Unsublime

Pain defeats poetry;

I resort to mere verse.

My back in spasm

demands full attention.

Doggerel or worse

is my best. The orgasm

of lyrical beauty eludes me,

as does invention.

Yet, may this exercise in rhyme

(called bref doublé)

rate some mention

if only as a weird phantasm

in the annals of poetic divers-

ity.

A 55-word piece for 'imaginary garden with real toads'. Also my Day One offering in the facebook poetry chain for which I was just nominated. And, finally, linking to Gillena's 'Sunday Lime'.

The Priestess

From beyond the veil,
ruled by the Moon,

she speaks for the Dark Goddess.

As Oracle, she must

give seekers the truth —

but only when they ask.

What she tells them

perhaps they won't like,

won't believe, won't understand.

Not her concern!

Her one task is to speak truth,
as it is given to her.

A 55-word poem for 'flash 55' at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. I've been discussing the 'Priestess' Tarot card lately, so I didn't have to search for a subject.

Grasping Water

Growing older, I find

everything important resides

in the ordinary and unimportant.

Shall I then elevate

those ordinary actions,

those unimportant events?

A mistake.

Attach no importance

even to those matters.

Let the ordinary remain

ordinary. Otherwise

you have lost the essence.

When you stop to say,

'Now I am happy' —

the moment is past.

Today, at 'imaginary garden with real toads', the prompt is 'flash 55 PLUS' — a piece of poetry or prose in exactly 55 words, plus (today) a touch of Zen. I sometimes think, if I wasn't Pagan I'd probably be Buddhist; I like a lot of Buddhist sayings. Yet in many ways I think they're opposites. I once read that the difference between the mystic and the magician is that the mystic says, 'This place sucks; I'm outa here,' whereas the magician says, 'This place sucks; let's fix it.' Which puts me with the magicians (or witches). Involvement, not detachment! 

The first verse of the above is true about me. To arrive at the rest, I read a lot of Zen poems to get the mindset. Funnily enough, I now think there's truth in all that I've said. But whether it's a poem or a mere homily....  Perhaps it would take a much deeper immersion in Zen to produce true poetry from those ideas.

(I am quite proud of the title! *Grins*.)