The Poetry Marathon

2022 prompt 4 / hour 4 “ghosts dancing in the forest”

The piano sits now, silent

He moved it out of the house long ago

Couldn’t bear to have it inside

Couldn’t bear to part with it either

It was *hers*

Took it to deep into the forested area, well behind the homestead

There is stays being reclaimed by nature, as all things eventually are

He visits, sometimes with family

His granddaughter comes with him often

The mannequin was her addition and he doesn’t mind

She’s 8 and saw it and thought it was a good idea

And there’s a symmetry to it, to his mind

A broken mannequin, playing a broken piano, on the property of a broken man, who visits because it holds *her* urn

Symmetry is good, he thinks

Best to be ready

So when it’s time his ashes can be put next to her, within the piano

Then their spirits can rise and dance in the forest to the tunes from the ghost piano

She always did love music

Merry – LordCricket 2022 poetry marathon

2022 hour 3 / prompt 3 “tension”

Prompt: chose – audio prompt ‘city of stars’ arr. for 2 cellos

Dance, like life, is an exercise in tension

So much can be expressed with so little

Knowing when to reach out

Knowing when to not

Knowing when to let go

Knowing when to hold on

One gets rehearsals

One does not, more’s the pity

Both have beauty

Both have risk

Both have the capacity to encompass the best

Of art, of motion, of love, of wonder, of passion of joy

Of pain, of sorrow, of loss, of lack

In all of this tension, this possibility

… is life, is timing, is trust…

Put your best foot forward, hold out your hand and dance onward

For you cannot back into the future

Merry – LordCricket 2022 poetry marathon

2022 poetry marathon hour 2 – “the fading fae forest”

Prompt line chosen from

“Stopping by woods on a snowy evening” by Robert Frost

~line selected: ‘Whose woods these are I think I know’~

The woods were astonishingly beautiful

They were

They WERE

Lush, a verdant green that was an invitation in and of itself 

So SO achingly lovely that even now, years later, the longing bites deep in my chest

It really should have been a clue

Being so green

Nothing here is like that

So whose woods were these?

I returned, to find them gone

How does one move a forest?

Thinking back I wondered for so long

Wondered on which strange land such beauty was loaned from

But whose woods these are I think I know now

And in truth the Ents seem the most likely shepherds for such a move

I hope, if I am lucky, that will I see their fair forest pass by before I leave this world

To see that truely *impossible* green just one. more. time.
…. and sooth the longing in my aching heart that has truly never left it

Merry – LordCricket 2022 poetry marathon

2022 Hour 1 “Cyclops, Knowing and the Rain on Etna”

The joy of it, my face turned to the sky

Soft rain falling like a benediction

Day after day, night after night, week upon week

So much – so SO much

That even here, atop the hill the land is sodden with it, my feet sinking

The rain though, is warm, welcoming

So warm, blood warm

Warmer even? Warmer than me?

Warm like love, like joy

like the embrace of the world, the earth, the mother Gaia – all 

three?

A madness overtakes thought, me, reason

Shucking raincoat, sock and shoes – I spy a bright gold-tone potting table beckoning

Taking it up, I heft it out onto the lush jewel green grass into a clear open space

Feet sinking deep into the warm wet welcoming earth with its added weight

Canary yellow set against jewel green under a metal grey sky, and I: clad in white, clamber up and tip my face into the warm, warmer, warmest, welcoming

rain

Rain

RAIN

Eventually I come to know

To KNOW

That I am small, but part of this, all of this

That is beautiful, and still terrible

That is can be warm, yet need not be

That is can be all extremes, and everything in between

That it can create and destroy

That is simply IS, and so am I

That it is immense, and I am not

That I cannot predict it, and that’s ok

That there is a joy in that knowing, that accepting

That there was, and is, and remains – joy in the ever unfolding not-knowing

Merry – LordCricket 2022 poetry marathon

OMG – but the advice to log in early is *definitely* good.

Having determined my (exceptionally!) elderly computer had become suddenly non-responsive I (rather obviously) needed to arrange an alternative

…and (some time later) here I am – finally!

I am definitely looking forward to doing the half marathon with you all.

Hopefully I will manage my time reasonably well and finish.

Cheers

Merry.