Writing

Freedom, for The Sunday Muse Prompt #56. \\\* It hovers in the distance in the space where the edge of consciousness meets the taste of remembering. Where air meets skin, and the sound of living is squeezed into a high pitched wail and then regains length, and afterwards dies as they recede into the distance. Each bump on the road, is like a firm word tossed into the wind, each jar as like a current shared between melded parts. From the distance joy, delirious in its appearance calls but here in the lull before the storm lies a fleeting pleasure, a moment of peace before the whirlwinds return

For The Sunday Wednesday Muse Prompt, Garden Spot. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash. A nod to the still vivid memories I have of being dragged off to our family farm by my parents in those dire, dark SAP days. ** First comes the rain, and then the wakened worms which turn the hard, sun-baked soil into compliant mulch. Grain by grain, leaf by leaf the beauty of Symbiosis begins to rear its head, the cycle of death begetting life and sustenance for the things we must ingest, for which with backs bent beneath the blazing sun we labour; the reward of another day survived eked out from the hard, earth.

For The Sunday Muse prompt, Night Sky \\\* The starlight sprinkled like tiny slivers of silver splashed against a dark canvas peels back the curtain on a tumultuous past- birth, death, dust clouds swirling, mists of primordial molecules accreting, then Becoming - a message to the future from the past echoing down the aeons like a strummed string. I was here before you were; before your father was, and his father’s father too Now you see me as I was. Ponder.

Photo by Josiel Miranda from Pexels, for The Sunday Muse prompt #53 \\\* You have wandered through the wilds, labouring in the shadows of seven hills through caverns carved by seven rivers to a far place, a distant country. Hurtful words tossed into the wind hang like a broken shroud flapping in the wind, heavy with intention, a reminder of the way things were but now are not. But as you linger on the edge of the sea wondering if you have wandered too far this time I see you and call your name. Come Home.

For the Day 2 prompt, a poem about questions. \\\* What is this which zips around my ears, its sound like the deep hum of an old man hunched down, stirring up the sand. It shimmers in the morning light its back a splash of gold splayed across the sky, against which stand the silhouettes of great metal tubes bending to its will. What is this but the wind, which goes wherever it wills.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash. For NaPoWriMo Day 1. \\\* Fold your hands in quiet contemplation, eyelids shut, pressed tightly together, a wall standing tall between the harsh light outside and the quiet darkness within. Breathe, inhale the scent of home, bread and wine, blended into the memories of your youth, when Faith, child-like, bubbled free. You who have wandered seven hills and seven rivers into a far country, drawn by the lure of freedom but now have had your eyes awakened seek redemption. This is what prayer is, quietly heeding the call of the divine

Photo by Skitterphoto from Pexels, for The Sunday Muse Prompt #48. \\\* Maybe it was the slant of the light streaming in, slicing through, as it were, the haze of yester-year’s detritus; the half-drawn blind like a mind stretched thin between leaving and returning, a face half-turned towards the memory of lost songs hovering just beyond the reach of a quivering tongue, and this present brooding. Maybe this is what the burden of life is. To carry, buried deep within one’s heart, the remains of the songs of one’s youth; until in a season of re-memory, they all come back.

Image Source, For The Sunday Muse Prompt #46. \\\* Petal by petal, life returns to this frigid vista each one a delicate splash of colour against a canvas, bringing life, the way blood revivifies a face just in from the cold. From things once dead, life springs again, reborn.

For Prompt #45 at The Sunday Muse. Image “Be Free” by Magic Love Crow. \\\* Line by line the silhouette of an angel rises up, phoenix-like, in the space where the prophet’s finger parts the sand. This is what freedom is- the delirious joy of walking away from the baying crowd, the space between the lines as alive as the lines.

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #44 and some words from The Sunday Whirl Wordle #392. Image “Ireland” by Emily Soto, fashion photographer \\\* Maybe it was the scent of roses- freshly cut, wafting in on the evening breeze that stole my attention; the jolt intruding the same way the reverb of a gentle tap interrupts a deep reverie, a dream receding as though it were a distant vista seen through the lens of a collapsing wormhole. Where cold, hard, and grey once reigned, a wreath of red leaves begins to spring, its colours a bright tide more alive now than it ever was.