Writing

For the Sunday Muse prompt #73. \\\** Beneath the garb of Prudence and propriety deep delight can lurk.

Photography by Svetlana Belyaeva click HERE for website. For the Sunday Muse Prompt #71 \\\* Where fear once threaded its tiny tendrils through our feet, and captive hearts We choose to fly free leaving behind the safety of this confined space. Because though freedom only is a promise, it trumps certain defeat.

Gift, for The Sunday Muse prompt #68. Photography by Edouard Boubat. \\\* Against the pressure of the sea and the darkness of the depths, the gift has been formed, layer by layer each crystal a prayer offered up for protection from the predation of the boring sponge, the oyster worm and the scurrying crab. Each day that water has washed over it - wearing tiny paths across its stubborn skin - a battle has been won; of survival, and quiet reassurance. And when someday, bequeathed by the sea, it lies in the hands of a grateful child, its hardy brilliance will yet still speak, more loudly in its silence than all the things it has survived.

Photo by Thiago Matos from Pexels. For the Sunday Muse prompt #67 \\\* Even broken things can sometimes find a use: jagged edges catching light, a half-face teasing memory, and imagination. Life, reinvented.

For The Wednesday Muse Prompt, Summer Rain. \\\* It hangs in the air like a shroud, this heavy, brooding cloud of dust through which the sun tries to force its way; the same way a frail old man, bent double at the waist, tries to hack his way through dense undergrowth, by dint of will power and persistence. Suddenly, like a giant oak falling, squashing dense foliage with its weight, the heavens are torn by rain, and relief. Peals of thunder, flashes of lightning birth many miracles of tiny rivers suddenly sprung, washing away the dust of earth baked dry, after which comes the smell of new, clean things, of rebirth and things made whole again.

One Day I’ll Fly Away. Photo by Hayley Roberts. For The Sunday Muse Prompt #66. \\\* Waiting here before this wall of burnt brick reaching high above my head freedom seems distant a mirage shimmering in the distance; promised. Hope deferred makes sick the longing heart, but in this sliver of breaking light, the echo of the promise rings, one day I’ll spread my wings and fly away.

For The Sunday Muse prompt #63. Image: the butterfly jar by lostinthisphotograph \\\* The beauty of these golden wings wrestled free, breath by breath, from the confines of a cocoon, finds itself entombed again, the memory of its flitting flight a distant echo now far removed from the frozen present, a life stilled.

For The Sunday Muse Prompt, #61. Photo Artistry by Erik Johansson Master Photo-manipulation Artist. \\\* Slat by slat, dab by dab this dream in grey is being remade into a sea of blue, its quiescent skin stretched tight like a canvas between the present and the past where the sky meets the earth’s lie. Each slat was once alive, each cell once bursting with the pressure of rich water, drawn by breathing; air and sunlight entwined in a dance whose beat is borne in the body, from seed to fruit to seed by rebirthing. Now this dream of grey, frozen still, is reawakening each dab of colour returning life to where it once was.

For The Sunday Muse, Prompt #60. In which I wonder what the reality of what a cat feels is. \\\* What if what we are Are mere playthings, pawns roughly hewn from stunted dogwood, clinging to life in a season of dearth. What if the feeling of contentment is a mirage, a vision of delusion far removed from the way things really are. What if what we think is the beauty of a garland really is a chain binding us to a different reality, what if.

For The Sunday Muse prompt #59, Photography by Carlo Pautasso. \\\* Plucked by its roots from a place where it once was whole, it lies now alone, the brightness of its petals a splash of hope stark against the blandness of everything. The shadow of an impending end stretches from the future into this space between The Living and the bleeding out of life but till it comes, life lingers still.