ON THE HUNT (photomorph) & THE TUNNEL (free verse dream poem) by Roswila

THE TUNNEL

always looking beyond
while tunneling through,
each new stretch of wall ignored
as soon as it’s tamped back:
where wild life once rooted
and only seeds now sleep


[Free verse poem inspired by a vague dream image from evening of 2-15-19. Photomorph "On the Hunt" (10-21-17 d&p, 10-18-17 018v2g adobe) by Roswila, click on the image to see the details.

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,

[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

HEAT WAVE (photomorph) & IT'S NOT YOU I MISS (non-dream free verse poem) by Roswila

IT’S NOT YOU I MISS

it’s not you I miss:

not your smile supported by parenthetic lines of age;

not the sight of your lanky build that never failed
to lace my blood with a lingering high;

not your awkward sense of humor, the only way I ever
knew you to reach toward me: to connect
with some labored pun or still smile-
worthy, hoary old joke

no, it’s not you I miss
but how I felt about you:
heated and hungry, hopeful and deliciously despairing;
a pining away for you, that nevertheless warmed
and softly lit my life, like the flames in an old
flagstone fireplace, not realizing then how I
reveled in rocking and ruminating sadly beside
that anchoring center in which a cauldron of
homemade stew bubbled on a hook (but
was never doled out)

a fanciful center that’s long since collapsed in on
itself and turned to ashes: brushed away by time’s
steady passage, even as memory pipes up
(now and again), like a cricket still chirping
though the hearth’s caved in:
I miss you
miss you
miss
you


[non-dream free verse poem written 2-13-19. I’ve tried to address this same issue before in poems. This one may come closest to expressing the experience. BTW, when I was scribbling the notes for this -- late in the evening of the 13th -- it did not occur to me that it’s an odd sort of Valentine’s Day poem. And it’s as such that I offer it belatedly. Photomorph “Heat Wave” (5-2-14 d&p, 9-5-13 005v5 adobe) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,





[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

THE CALL OF HOME (photo) & "the pawned figurine..." (dreamku) by Roswila

the pawned figurine
of a woman and kestrel
shelved soul


[Re-post of dreamku from April of 2008. It has also appeared here at other times, as I eventually grouped it with other dreamku of mine as a series. It may be a simple image, but it has a lot of complicated personal significance. (For only one of many things: a kestrel – a small hawk, often flown by ladies – is on the Nine of Pentacles in the Rider/Waite/Smith Tarot. I made that card the symbol for an open poetry reading series I used to offer -- decades ago -- naming the series “Kestrel.”) There’s always a sadness to recalling this dream for me, and yet a beauty. After all these years I can still “see” that figurine. It was made of Belleek (fine white Irish china), that to my surprise in the dream, hadn’t yet gathered dust. The question this morning: is my soul still shelved? Photo “The Call of Home” (4/29/14 tthabol, 4-29-14 012v2 adobe) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,





[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

THE CHALICE (photo) & SEEDS (non-dream haibun) by Roswila

SEEDS

The seeds my roommate plants in our tiny front yard are a variety of unknowns. It is fun to watch them sprout and see what they become. They take over the postage stamp-size yard, growing tall and wild. I rather enjoy them still, but they lean out over the sidewalk, and reach through the chain-link fence:

catching my skirt
dark-eyed blooms

I pull up the biggest offenders and try training the others to stay more circumspect, but to no avail. Still, neither my roommie nor I want to get rid of them totally. In their season, they die back, leaving tall, rigid stalks. My roommie pulls up the dry reminders:

surprise!
up the tall dry stalks
last season’s glories

One already has an open, lovely purple bloom. Although I harvested morning glory seeds last year, she had not planted them. She disentangles the little morning glory vines carefully from the tall dry stalks she pulls, and gently guides them up the chain link fence:

delicacy
after dense wild blooms:
morning glory


* * * *

[A haibun written in August 2004 when I was still living in New York City. I posted it here previously in 2007. My roommate married a couple of years after what’s written about above and now has two children. And I moved to CA in Feb. of 2008. I’ve been thinking a lot about NYC, and especially the apartment mentioned here, where I lived for 23 years. I resided in NYC altogether for almost 65 years. BTW, a haibun is an (often poetic) prose paragraph completed by a haiku, or a series of such paragraphs with haiku caps. Photo "The Chalice" (10-25-13 d&p, 4-27-11 adobe) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,





[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

SNAKING THROUGH THE NIGHT (photo) & THIS REAL AND PRESENT HOPE (free verse dream poem) by Roswila

THIS REAL AND PRESENT HOPE

the night of dreams is taken up with
requests -- really more like demands
truth be told, but feeling (and being
powerless) the crowd simply asks
meekly for what they want …
nay, sadly, deeply, need

then a new curious crew of folk bond
around a particular need of theirs
and practice to bring it right up to
the altar of The Pope, learning to
genuflect respectfully but not let their
(call a spade a spade for once) demand
go unheard, without even a vague
promise it will be considered

things look good, that’s to say the dream
is artistically laid out by now, colors
and shapes all lined up and balanced in
carefully considered compositions
along the corridor of the marble floored
and columned hall where they walk
slowly forward toward the sitting Pope,
to whom they will be permitted
to present their demand

a song surfaces in the dream memory
(yes, the dream seems sentient), an old
one from long ago hippie years:
“You can not. petition. the Lord. with prayer!”*
echoing in the dream consciousness
like church bells sounding from tower
after dark tower, an all too heavy
and familiar drag (one thinks
of the mobster days of cement
overshoes and a river) on this
real and present hope


[free verse poem on a dream of 2-10-19. *From “The Soft Parade,” by The Doors, 1969. As I read through all of the lyrics now, I see the little bit of a similarity in this dream to that song. Not surprising, given I was deeply affected by watching a PBS series on the 1960’s and its music, just the other night. I was left feeling so sad. BTW, I consider myself an aging hippie (well, by now, a really aged one). Photo “Snaking Through the Night” (9-19-17 d&p, 9-17-17 adobe) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,





[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.