Bridges To get across a life, it's bridges we build, span the daylight of our waking days with alliances, compromises, negotiate our walking routes, cut avenues through the undergrowth. These hours are lush like vegetation, alive and drinking the succulent rains that swell the raging rapids of desire, the swirl and boil of racing, constant hearts. These bridges can be made of ancient stone, a huge suspension wrought of iron and steel or merely a plank placed across a stream. All have two purposes; to set us free, so we can feel the joy of coming home.
Author: Arthur Richardson
Very part time poem maker. Retired from paid work. I have been a political and trade union activist but now seem to be more contemplative and, I suppose I should say, lazy. I haven't given up on a better world, it's just that I now realise I have no idea how it can be achieved. That said, struggle and resistance are still the watchwords.
For the Ronovan decima challenge No.40: FLOAT is the prompt word on the B rhyme line.
Abridged At Cowes, upon the Isle of Wight, a floating bridge appears to float across the river like a boat. It's a quaint and curious sight, Medina crossed both day and night, a bridge that gets it's trousers soaked, it's elevation now revoked. Reduced to ploughing through the spray to carry cars along their way, how was Saint Benezet provoked?
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Making Time
Making Time
It started with just night and day,
hunting, sex and sleeping,
keeping wolves at bay
and, when the sun came up, relief.
Then someone noticed how
moons repeat their wax and wane,
put things into sets, accounting,
and after things, came time.
And after time, more time,
finer and diffuse, better able to
regulate our lives,
even pinpoint God,
till we could tell how long
it takes an atom to comb it's hair,
grow paunchy, gruff, and die.
How time thins the more we manufacture it.
A contribution to Ronovan’s decima challenge number thirty something with the tricky prompt word Contrast on the A rhyme line. Difficult, metrically, I found.
The Dream
It's time to get down on a fast,
eschew all the sins and the treats,
abandon the cakes and the sweets,
slim down, in a dazzling contrast
to the calorific repast
you dulged in for year upon year
swilled down with those gallons of beer.
Break out that old exercise bike,
swim, run and jump, go on a hike,
reducing the scope of your rear...
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A Mused Limerick Challenge
Chel Owens latest Challenge is for a Limerick form with the theme of “Resolutions”. She wants them to be funny but not too filthy. That’s a challenge in itself! Here’s my attempt…..
The trouble with trying to be humorous
is that senses of wit are quite numerous.
This nonsense solution,
with a rhymed resolution,
is a punchline that stays unassumerous.
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Haiku Challenge
My contribution to Ronovan’s Haiku challenge 339 with prompt words CHILD and Grow: I’ve made a tanka this time.
So - the instructions on how to grow a child have not been included as well as the batteries and unconditional love
A contribution to Ronovan’s decima challenge 38, with Bash as the prompt word on rhyme line D.
Abashed We often find ourselves ashamed knowing we're members of a race that barely shows a human face, our consciousness twisted and maimed. Uneulogised, unknown, unnamed, the heroes of our human kin retain this knowledge in their skin; the reddening of cheeks abashed, confounded dreams and ideals dashed, condemned to darkness held within.
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Taking Flight
Taking Flight What we've burned there still is use for. Ash, like snowflakes settling dousing landscape, sounds muted as if smothered, a page of words released like doves.
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A Christmas message for my wife.
For Christmas I would give you all the earth, the planets shining jointly in the West, the low sun crouching in the clouds behind the cleansing rain beating gently on our window pane. But most of all, and all that's best, I give you treasure for your warm heart, my ancient love to lie there, repeating again and again that never, in this life, will it depart.
Categories
An Old Friend Passing
I have on an old tee shirt that I've worn these many years; it's threadbare, stained and torn. The dye has faded, it used to be coal black but it's lost it's rigour and the neckline's going slack. When I take it off tonight it's for the bin or cut up into rags for polishing. And I'll feel like giving thanks to this thing I spent those many years being in.
