The-Sunday-Muse on A Geek's Life

Prayer

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 03:05:40 +0000

Breath by breath, bead by bead,
the prayers of this parched heart rise.
Lips quivering with the yearning of a
thirsty heart, pursed to take the blood
and flesh, blessed, transubstantiated.
Kneaded by hands washed seven times-
stripped of yeast and the things that beguile-
we come to take the bread in hope
to shed our turpitude, arise anew.
In the ritual of rest and reset,
we speak our words into the world,
lingering in the liminal space
between asking and accepting

Kneeling in the Light

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:52:21 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #234. Image source: Rosie Ann Prosser.:

Still, in the silent solitude of repose,
I survey the face that peers back at me.
Three candles flickering in the dark,
a space suffused by a mellow, yellow light
pushing back against the dark.

The ghosts of grief, railing against delight
fight the light, their dissonant sounds
a constant clang. But in light, there is delight
to know this is to rest, here.

On the 49 from Northcote

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 18:40:00 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #188 and the 49 from Northcote to White City:

On the 49 from Northcote,
a young woman sits. She
folds her hands, hangs her feet,
and lets the world without slip by
- grey granite yielding to gleaming glass,
verdant green disappearing behind the whorls
of potted plants. Somewhere outside,
the river wends its way across the plain.
Above, in a fleeting moment a giant
clanging bird roars. Somewhere
on the corner of Shepherd’s Bush and King’s
an old man, wraps his hands around himself
as his breath draws wisps in the winter wind.
As it was in the beginning and now is
the river remains. We all like small lights
flicker, and then are gone.

Before You Call Me By This Name

Sun, 14 Nov 2021 18:10:57 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #186:

Before you call me by this name
and shrink the sum of all my days
down to this facade, this still-life
of sepia pixels flickering like daylight
disappearing before the force of dusk;

Before you place the burdens of
history around my neck, till
it begins to break beneath the weight
of expectation, you must know
that this name is one of a myriad,
each bequeathed by the ones
who came before, a prayer
that we might see, the small lights
in our being.

Still Water...

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 17:16:09 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #180:

We come to water to be washed and be reborn, this hand cupping the curvature of the face, the other dipped, drenched in the very fluid from which we come, the space between the fingers of that hand filled with the water, straining against the strictures of the hand.

We come to water to lose ourselves in the beauty of the simple things, to see the dirt of our days and the detritus of the night loosen, dissolving until we see ourselves pristine whole again, the way we have imagined in our dreams a lip, an eye, lingering still in the mirror of still water.

Homecoming...

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 17:16:24 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #179:

** The scent of life and of living hangs heavy on this place, Here, where the weight of memory and first things lose themselves in the labyrinth of the mind.

First step, first walk, first smile. First words - garbled beyond recognition but finding the connection between the proffered body and sustenance.

First leaving, first returning then leaving - the first steps of a lonesome journey to a far country, of seeking the wily welcome of the open world calling - siren-like - from beyond the walls that time has built.

Becoming...

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 19:01:53 +0000

For The Sunday Muse #178:

In the wisps of the smoke blown in a moment of recalcitrance the man he might yet be lurks. The man he now is and the one he once was yielding in the moment to the future better one. Becoming.

Leaving...

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 15:09:32 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #176:

** When in the stillness of the night, sleep slips away, slowly - my eyes heavy with the weariness of deferred respite - I remember the road from there to here, how it turns upon itself, snaking this way and then that and then disappears.

I remember that leaving is for the living - those who have learned to gift the blessing of forgiving and forgetting to the past.

Being Seen

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 16:11:50 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #175, and the shades of that garden it reminds me of:

** I am dreaming again of days gone by, of nights - heavy with the weight of solitude - lightened by the joy of discovery, a light born of tumult in an age of innocence. This is what the glow-worms in their flitting feel, each shimmer of light a whisper into the night to see and be seen.

Beauty

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 13:33:20 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #174:

The empty glass catches the fading light, its pale blandness turned in an instant into a merry band of colours wending their way around its rim.

In the still moments of yielding to the night we see, through heavy eyes that in the brilliance of the radiant light, and the shadows too there is beauty, everywhere

Self-Potrait

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 13:33:04 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt # 173: Self Portrait with Accordion, (original image by Guido Vedovato) and How To Paint A Self Portrait by Nicole Tinkham.

First form the silhouette,
press the mound of wet earth thin
till it yields, pliant, to the probing
of the finger and the thumb.

Place the eyes, in the space
between the first and the middle third,
let the ears and the eyes align:
two eyes, two ears, one mouth

Un(caged): A Note to Self

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 19:01:21 +0000

For the Sunday Muse prompt #172:

** When the rain comes breathe in the clarity it brings- savour the stillness you remember from the times it came before, the delights the memories of past days and gone weeks and seasons long disappeared, bring you. Cherish the muscle memory of the steps that draw you along this path to the days of innocence, because drop by drop, the sorrows of the far country are dissolving in the rain.

Roots

Tue, 03 Aug 2021 17:17:09 +0000

“Roots” 1943 by Frida Kahlo, for the Sunday Muse prompt 171:

** They say that fiery flames beget cold ash, the certainty of beliefs passed down petering out into the lukewarm ambivalence of doubt and questioning. These roots are the things that hold us still each tendril like a link tethering us to the ones who went before.

The Light in her Tears

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 13:17:10 +0000

For H, and The Sunday Muse prompt #170:

** She lingers like a ghost in the night, this memory of my mother, framed by a distant light: the stately stillness of her furrowed brow, the slight tilt of her chin catching the light, defiant.

The moment when the lone tear hangs - perched impossibly as though straining against the world - comes to me again and again in a vision of the night, its lingering like a thread tethering me in my seasons of incertitude.

The Sunday Muse: Times and Season

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 11:56:39 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #141:

Each whirl of the earth

around the Sun’s well

of power and of light

brings us back here.

Like a boat

dragged inexorably

by the rising tide to shore,

the swell of the sea

brings us peace,

to a season of reflecting,

of contemplating and of pause.

Time’s rhythm

like the faint echo

of a distant drumbeat

is welcome whisper

in our ear. Yesterday

Awe

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 16:31:55 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt # 128:

When Neil and Buzz

reached the top of the world

their feet ensconced

in the very dust

from whence they came they left in awe

at the fragility of things,

at how the pale blue dot

they left behind hung

as though by an invisible thread,

shimmering with the ethereal beauty

of the light lent it by the sun.

Butterflies fluttered

on their insides, their hearts

One

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 17:50:19 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #124:

** The King surveys his realm, from his perch high atop a dry, wizened tree.

This is what freedom is, to roam without a care and be one with the earth.

Light

Sun, 30 Aug 2020 17:47:17 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #123:

Even in the darkness the beauty of lent light shines through, the golden petals of the sunflowers magnificent as they follow the sun. Beauty, hitherto hidden, is called out by the sharing of the light, the sum of its parts many times more brilliant than when it hides alone.

Prodigality

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:01:36 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #122:

** We have carried our bodies to a far country, the weight of the burden of the duty of sons driving us like a ship heave-hoing in a stormy gale to the place where our kin were brought before.

Each day we toil amongst the living to save the ones we hurt by leaving, the labour of our bent backs a libation poured on dry earth, to appease the spirits of the old ones. This is our penance, a prayer sung to the tune of the songs handed down.

Hope

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 19:16:03 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #121. After Emily Dickinson.

** Hope is the thing that shimmers in the distance the faint light flickering in the brooding stillness of the afternoon heat, the persistent promise that this thirst, this longing for restoring will be sated by rain. It is the pulse quickening with the lengthening shadows of evening and the return of familiar sights to the eyes. It is home calling the lost son to return to the dangerous duty of tending.

Weight

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 17:07:52 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #120, and B who in (wo)manfully wrestling pain to a standstill reminds us to hope again…

** Remember, in the failing light of falling night, when the weight of the world feels like a thing around your neck, that we see you, proud against the night- feet planted firmly in the mushy earth, unflinching in the maelstrom. Like the North Star sometimes hidden, sometimes peering out from behind the clouds, a beacon showing home we see you and believe again.

One

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 10:50:35 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #119, Artistic Photography Dreamlike Portrait Photography by Damien Casals:

** You and I are becoming one, our unspoken words a voice, mellow in its timbre, its echo light like a soft hand yet firm, kneading out the noise from the silence that we share. In that silence of being and being present, of returning and reforming, of holding out against the pressure of the world, are broken things becoming whole again, each breath a small victory won by persistence, a fresh shoot pushing its way through the things that rage has razed.

Water

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 15:19:34 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #118:

** In the chaos of water meeting water and breaking free, each splash

a hop of joy freed to twirl and twist and kick and be, a body bent

fluidly flowing like a shout of delirious joy, life echoes.

Breathe

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 11:49:20 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #117:

** Breathe, in spite of beauty, in spite of the frailty of the blue orb floating free beneath your feet, stunning you.

Breathe, because of beauty because the earth hugs you like a mother tethers her unborn child fragile in its parts guiding, calling, growing feeding.

Breathe, because home centres you because wherever you are times and seasons are locked in an eternal dance

Breathe, because.

Disappearing

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 14:08:52 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #116. Image “Seeing Black & White” photography by Susie Clevenger

** Yesterday’s ghouls are slowly disappearing, fading like the night light once bright but now dappled, wisps of grey carried away in our slipstream, lingering like the dust a knight’s steed leaves in the frenzy of flight.

But the promise is a mirage, objects in a mirror are closer than they appear and though we run as though the wind bears us, yesterday’s shadow lurks in the space between the things we leave and the things that disappear

How To Taste Wine

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 17:24:50 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #115:

** Let the first sniff hit you, let the faint hint of the juice pressed and aged be like incense wafting up, a prayer to Dionysius for a blessing on this rich red liquid, chilled, swirled and sipped.

Let the low heat linger, let its essence slowly spread, warming the insides of your mouth let its heft spread like a warm embrace across your tongue. Let it rise Let it rise.

A Prayer for Lost Loves

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 12:36:10 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #114:

\\\* May the pains of today’s desires lose themselves in the fragrance of a love reborn, the pained passion of unrequited love find itself returned in time like a blossom that speaks, a sacred whisper to the soul colouring everything in the light of a rose, beautiful in its bleeding yet whole, because the Lover and the Loved like thorn and rose find themselves entwined, from past pain and tortured paths, delirious joy arising.

Summertime, for G

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 18:19:24 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #113: \\\* The light in her eyes mirrors the mirth, in the wry smile that still, some days, wraps itself around her lips, a bird, free, born of the wild borne by the wind.

The heavy scent of summer, of flowers blooming and of squirrels flitting between the trees, reaches down into the depth of the memories she bears within, the delight of summers past simmering, then bubbling to the fore though her fingers can no longer coax life from the dry earth or press pleasure into a cone.

Ignition...

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 09:58:00 +0000

For the Sunday Muse prompt # 112: \\\* Sometimes I carry the weight of the world upon my head, its heft held between the twin peaks of forgotten and accepted things, a history curated not by those who waver at the threat of war but those who embrace its vagaries, who daily pour out a libation to destruction.

What seems like the stillness of a boat in quiet waters only hides the furious paddling of a mind being torn apart as it wrestles with the tension between conforming and desire.

Half Remembered

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 09:13:24 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #111:

\\\* what we remember of the past are the things the mind allows, the harshness of being hacked into a thousand tiny pieces assuaged by the desire to forget, to not let the horror of the past hold the present hostage, to find a path that winds through the remains of pillage to a coherent whole.

what we learn in the end is that skirting the hole where our kin should be is akin to yielding to the pressure of a hand pressed against our throat, to feed the pleasure of the ghouls hovering over our history.

Quest

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 14:12:31 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #110,

\\\* The heart ponders what lies beyond the realm of sight, what hides in the place where dreams come from, where the beauty of a still night twinkles in the soft light. From afar it tugs at the strings of the curious heart, in its distance, a promise of salvation from the fires below.

When A Deed Returns

Mon, 25 May 2020 11:21:02 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #109, Image “Snow White & Rose Red” by Kerry Darlington

\\\* The kind hearts of the shy and the cheerful make space for the stranger, a traveller quivering in the winter wind, lost, for a moment.

What lies hidden in the dream is that sometimes a good deed travels the world for a season and then returns twice revived, the shy and the cheerful ones saved in return by the stranger who once wandered by.

Place

Mon, 18 May 2020 09:46:35 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #108:

\\\* Bound up in its faux pillars and its dangling chandeliers are the memories of stolen things, the tears shed here by the lost ones reverberating in our ears. Time disappears here, subsumed by the delight of truly feeling and of seeing, the art of each act a tribute to the ones who’ve come before.

Wafting

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 13:24:15 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #95.

\\\* It thunders, and then it wafts, its wispy tendrils slowly rising like the white smoke of incense from a censer, held aloft by a priest intoning a muttered prayer. Behind, a bridge to the past hides, disappearing, as it were, into the haze of memory; ahead, the future - not yet glimpsed but in the moment frozen - and enjoyed.

Gift

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 11:15:47 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt 93:

\\\* Here, prone beneath the weight of things unseen, the vision has begun to fade, the dream once resplendent in its colour, now faint and grey, Between the leaving and the grieving a messenger appears, a key in its wings, a gift of redemption and rebirth.

Oasis

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 04:41:54 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #92 and Matthew 11:28-30.

\\\* Beyond the drying and the dying salvation calls; the distant shimmer of light cast by the morning sun a whisper to the weary; Come, draw nigh all ye who are heavy laden, who bear the burden of a common life around their neck. Hope and Haven is the promise, if we dare go through the door into the way.

Arctic Eyes

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 12:40:21 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #90 .

\\\* The brilliance of her luminescent eyes lights the darkness all around, twin pricks of desire shining bright, like stars, stark against the tapestry of a night sky. Fire and ice, both together and apart lie here, the wild and the quiet as one.

Abandonment

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 19:11:03 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #84. Image Source. \\\* Behind the grime, and the ravages of time the remains of living now lie, each layer of dirt a sigh, a dirge for the mystery of abandonment, for how easy it is for things once woven into the fabric of the present to slip beneath the shroud of the memories we lose. Maybe this is what leaving is, things returning to the way they always were.

After The Rain

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 17:06:22 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #83 . Image “After The Rain” by Cyril Rolando

\\\*
I tremble
at the echo of
the booming thunder,
the resounding
of its clap like
the roar of a lion
stirred, a brilliance
incandescent in its majesty
as it splits the night sky
like a warm knife
shears butter.

I have shivered
in the embrace
of a light rain
its fluid fingers,
by persistence finding
their way through
my garments till
they meet my
bare skin.

Wildlings

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 20:20:01 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #82.

\\\* Though quiet in their noon day repose, strength hides within their supple limbs, the power of the one - unfettered in its reach - melded to the quiet guile of the other; together - a Whole stronger than its parts - freely, wildly going.

Dancing In The Dark

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 12:54:18 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #81 . Photography by Sarolta Ban (Website HERE )
\\\*
The lure of the lyre -
alive in its reverb - calls out,
inviting beauty and the beast
to dance, to yield to the rhythm
of the wind, as it rustles
in the leaves, swaying the trees.
We all - boar and deer-
of earth born and saved,
gather here, to dance
the gentle dance
of the dark.

Missing Parts

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 04:05:12 +0000

For the Sunday Muse prompt #80 and Wordle 428. Image source.

\\\* I carry a heavy silence in my missing parts, each breath a prayer for resolve to fight the desire to resign myself to the ache of a festering disgust spawned by the echoes of a lie borne up on the winds from the hills into the valley’s depths.

Outside a crisis looms - our house of cards built up brick by brick with the things we want to believe slowly yields to the probing of the truth, until in the way things really are I find myself covered, whole again.

Together...

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 04:30:57 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #79 and Wordle 472

\\\* Sometimes beautiful things can dance in the light - the dainty and the dense chiming together, their hum heavy with intent as it probes the edge between the steady and the sublime. In washing the raw hide of of a dead gazelle with salt there is a saving from its struggle with putrefaction, a prayer for forgiveness, for absolution for the crime of taking by brute force. Here on the edge of the things we think we know the dainty and the dense become as one, both reduced to subsisting at the mercy of the things which hold everything together.

Shelter

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 12:33:43 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #78. Image copyright Erik Johansson.

\\\* Stroke by stroke these words, hewn by force, as though from resistant rock are building a shelter, each one a link to a thought and then a world beating back the clouds which loom, a slowly growing splash of colour holding out against the ashen night without. These words are calling the trees, to stand in defiance against the howling wind and the ground, now covered with frost, to cling to life, through the night, because tomorrow comes, and with beginning again.

Yellow Dream

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 19:38:55 +0000

For The Sunday Muse Prompt #75. Image Source .

\\\* A yellow orb,tethered to the earth by slender strings descends, its yellow light a hue cast over this dream in which I find myself looking at my selves; the past and the future holding the hands of the present, tiny figures scurrying up ladders which seem to reach for the sky, reinventing what is seen. Darkness lingers in the corners of this vista but stroke by stroke pixel by pixel, the dream and reality are slowly melding into one.

Remembering

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 17:04:06 +0000

Image source, for The Sunday Muse prompt #74

\\\* Like the slowly louder clunks a train’s wheels send ahead, as it wends its way along ancient tracks, the old man’s memories float slowly to the fore, the streaks of dappled light dancing on the walls behind his face a spotlight, falling on him the same way it falls on a minstrel at a cabaret, drawing a hush out of the muted mumblings of the gathered. Though his wrinkled skin, once soft now lies wrinkled, warped and folded and his fingers once supple now lack dexterity, like a seagull resplendent in its freedom the memories of past songs return, the track and the piano fusing in a crescendo refusing to be silenced.

Stolen

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 11:52:38 +0000

For the Sunday Muse prompt #73.

\\\** Beneath the garb of Prudence and propriety deep delight can lurk.

Free

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 10:52:37 +0000

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

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 17:23:32 +0000

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.

Broken Things

Thu, 08 Aug 2019 12:46:34 +0000

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.

Harmattan Rain

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 11:28:59 +0000

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.

Waiting: One Day I'll Fly Away

Wed, 24 Jul 2019 10:28:56 +0000

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.

Still Life

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 20:49:00 +0000

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.

By Degrees

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 20:38:20 +0000

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.

Freedom

Wed, 22 May 2019 11:44:09 +0000

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

Night Sky

Thu, 02 May 2019 08:23:50 +0000

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.

53 - Prodigality

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 04:27:47 +0000

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.

#48. Rememory

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 18:06:48 +0000

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.

Rebirth

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 06:00:11 +0000

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.

Freedom

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 18:36:11 +0000

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.

44

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 18:53:40 +0000

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.

Earth Child

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 11:40:10 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #43. Image Source.

\\\* Child of Mother Earth, dust, breath, fire, and water, from clay formed, stitched together by the finger of the Divine. You, who are a string stretched taut between the past and the future unbroken in the present, have simmered beneath the pressure of hell and high water, bearing the burden of a message preserved for you. But now like a bird set free, you must take wing and fly. I call you by your name, Alafiaoluwa, Be peace.

Becoming

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 04:07:27 +0000

Image: “War Horse and Peace Horse” by Sue Halstenberg. For The Sunday Muse #42.

\\\*

You and I like two fiery stars locked in the embrace of an eternal dance are becoming as one, our light growing in Coherence brighter now than it once was. Against the odds war and peace are finding common ground, making all the broken whole again.

41.

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 17:59:08 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #41 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 388. Image Source.

\\\* Green with a hint of yellow, the tender tendril pushes past the strictures of an empty bottle. Outside, the chill from snow piled high smothers everything, its weight like a bland, white blanket inhibit ing life.

The shy and the retiring do not inherit the delights of this benighted world, only the tough who blithely swipe away civility appear to win the trial of perception.

Freedom

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 11:14:33 +0000

For The Sunday Muse prompt #40 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 388. In The Middle of Freedom, Image Source.

\\\* My fingers mould the pliant clay beneath the surface of this puddle into an image of a memory; each mound of earth rubbed round between my fingers a portion of a story emerging like birds set free from a gilded cage. The memory is a chain anchoring the fluid present to the stable past. It pulses like a thing that lives - somehow more alive with freedom than at first it would seem.

Call of the Wild

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 11:57:54 +0000

For The Sunday Muse #39 and Wordle 387 from The Sunday Whirl. Image Source.

\\\* Here in the shadow Of despair, loneliness Hangs in the air like A wet coat, the silence Like the weight of pebbles Beneath which which one sags, Broken at the knees.

Each step towards The distant light is a prayer Of repenting, for forgetting What love in the wild Feels like.

Step by step, walk after walk We are making this world Whole again, heeding the Inner call to become Wild and free again.

Piano

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 19:37:59 +0000

Image Source, for The Sunday Muse prompt #38. After Dan Howell’s Piano.

\\\*

Although her lithe and petite frame Shivers in the chill of the falling rain, Her fingers pound the piano’s keys Into submission to the rhythm of her will And with the libation of her song She sets us free to dance in the rain.

Guardian

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 11:13:38 +0000

“Guardian” by Chie Yoshii, for The Sunday Muse #37 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 385 prompts:

\\\* She perches on your shoulder This invisible guardian of the night Her voice a quiet word Whispered in your ear Barely heard above the din The way text, lightly etched On a slab of stone would look In the shimmer of dusk.

A dream deferred cannot slip back Into a sleepless mind. Once a butterfly’s eyes Have seen the light of freedom; Once its kicks have set it free From the caul of the caterpillar It cannot become a larva again.