poetry prompt – Page 6 – Susan Joy Clark

Creative Life, Poetry

The Waterfall, #Tanka Tuesday

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA: Trent McDonald, Photographer

rush of

water sprays

over jagged

places, and gushes

down into the chasm,

skipping over shards of rock.

Falling from an impressive height.

it slides past every obstacle.

Continually, it falls but never breaks.

II Corinthians 7:8-9

⁸We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed—

This poem is in response to Colleen M. Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday prompt. The idea was to write an ekphrastic poem with metaphor based on the above photograph. I chose to write an etheree, one of the acceptable forms, because it would create a waterfall effect visually.

Creative Life, Poetry

Don’t Look!

You don’t want to hear my sad tale,

It was not too pretty a sight,

Cover your eyes and close your ears,

And don’t let me give you a fright,

But I wound Dad’s wound in towels,

After a big dog took a bite.

This poem was written in response to dVerse’s Monday quadrille challenge. I’m not sure how I feel about this poem. It has a strange, almost silly feel for such a serious incident. Then again, a graphic retelling would be far worse, I think. I guess it fulfills all the requirements which is 44 words, no more or less, and the homographs “wound” and “wound.”

When I thought about “wound” and “wound,” this is where my brain took me. I did not know I would make the incident a subject of poetry. 😛 Dad and I were bitten by a dog in mid-August. My injury was more minor. Dad required two surgeries for his wound, but he is doing just fine now. We are thankful to God there was no major damage to joints or structures of the hand.

Creative Life, Poetry

The Goldfish and the Robin

Paint Chip Quintilla or Two

This poem was inspired by Linda Kruschke’s Paint Chip Quintilla or Two Challenge. The idea was to use two of these color names in a poem in quintilla format.

A goldfish in his glass-bound pond,

Feels limitations of his space,

As he looks through window beyond,

He spies a nest among tree fronds,

A peaceful and unhampered place.

A robin’s egg of pastel blue,

Sits in that nest upon its perch,

A fish can’t fly – now that is true,

But it can wish for freedom too,

And a share in that robin’s mirth.

This was an interesting exercise. I’m not sure I would have come up with this particular poem outside of the challenge. Once I selected my two color words, I began to think about the contrasts between the two animals and how they live.