Pleased to make your acquaintance! (prosery)

Jacques reflects back on this past year.  It felt more like twenty!   Detox was just a  little taste of his journey that lay ahead.

How he loathed himself and now he had to face all this sober. His mentor and sponsor, once said, “You will love again the stranger who was your self.”

No one told him the first step started within and not pointing fingers. Improve what you need to improve but do the work yourself.  It was so much easier to blame someone else for his misfortunes.

Accepting responsibility for his actions was  probably the toughest pill to swallow.    He has finally forgiven himself even if some still cannot. He’s accepted that truth too.

He sits in the front row at the legion hall, waiting to be called up to the front to share his story  and accept his one year chip.

© Cheryl-Lynn ‘20/08/2019

 On Monday, August 19^th, Kim is hosting  Prosery at dVerse.   This prompt is where you write a flash fiction using a maximum  of 144 words including that line of poetry.

This week the line is “you will love again the stranger who was your self” from Derek Walcott’s poem Love after Love.

perfum d’espoir (troibun)

There is nothing like the feeling of rich dark soil slip through your fingers when planting a garden. Gloves will only rob you of that sense of life at your fingertips. Think about the erotic sensation of a piece of  cheese cake or decadent truffles; feel the smooth richness on your tongue…

arching their bodies
nature’s sweet arousal
nestling in its moistness
in and out, in and out
worms surrender blissfully

(troiku)

autumn’s last harvest
winter’s table scraps
black gold of gardeners

autumn’s last harvest
feeding sod nutrients
leftover leaves

winter’s table scraps
Mother Nature’s caviar
salivating worms

black gold of gardeners
putrefying stench
parfum de la vie

©Tournesol’17/05/09

A troiku is a new haiku form created by Chèvrefeuille at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai

Written for Poetics Tuesday Dverse-Poetics Pub- Soil Poetics

Today at DversePoetsPub, Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Poetics wants you to write poetry about soil. This is what he says:

“To me soil is both the source of life, and destiny for death. Soil is where we come from and soil you’ll be:

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust

I both love and hate the scent of mulch. I love the growth and fear decay. I love to walk barefoot in warm dirt, but afterwards I wash my feet.
Soil gives grain for bread, but when the weather fails we die of hunger.
Soil is friend and foe.

There are many synonyms for soil: mulch and compost, dirt and grime, earth and ground all reflect the soil and various values we attribute to its worth.
Soil can be metaphors for land and country, for home and nations. For war and peace and for the roots of trees.
Taste the soil or bite the dust, bring me poetry from what you sense in soil.
Be gravedigger or gardener, be soil of your origin and dig it deep.

snow is melting (troiku)

©Clr’ 16

(troiku)

under sunlit skies
hope of bulbs blossoming
snow is melting

under sunlit skies
giggling children skip home
hand in hand

hope of bulbs blossoming
in her mind’s eye- red tulips,
Mother’s Day

snow is melting
spots that old red skipping rope
makes her grin

© Tournesol ‘16/03/10 (44 words)

At Dversepoets we are asked to write a poem using exactly 44 words excluding the title (not less, not more). Make sure to include the word grin in your poem.

summer solstice (haibun)

http://dversepoets.com/2016/02/29/haibun-monday-8/

They had been pen pals for two years.  It felt like forever, he had been waiting to meet her again but Genvieve had to wait until she was seventeen. Maman would never had allowed this meeting until then. Jean-Claude Tremblay was her third cousin or as they said in Saint Félicien,  “cousin de la fesse gauche”.  He was twenty-six when they first met at les funérailles de mon oncle Léo two years ago.  It was love at first sight.  He, with his liquid blue eyes and Genevieve with her golden blonde locks and chocolate brown eyes.  Her life was never the same after their encounter.  Waiting was like being deprived of chocolate during Lent for over one hundred weeks. “Impossible!!” she thought, “ C’était de la torture!”  Now this June 24^th, la fête de la Saint-Jean Baptiste,  he had decided it was time to speak to her parents as well as celebrate la fête nationale.

They corresponded every two weeks for two years and now, the wait was over.  She sighed, feeling a little sensation below her abdomen her mother had not quite explained to her when they had “the talk” quand on deviant femme.

She sat in the boudoir of la gare Windsor pretending to read a novel de Victor Hugo.  She had arrived from les canton de l’est early in the morning.  She looked at the clock on the wall.  It read twenty minutes to noon.  She felt a flip flop in her tummy, crossed the room to face the mirror and patted her chignon and pinched her cheeks.  “Parfait!” she whispered staring at her eyes swimming in love and want.

She went into the main hall of the station near Gate 24.

 heat of suspense
summer solstice hangs on,
lovers’ desires

© Tournesol ’16/03/01

Written for Dverse Poets ~ Haibun Monday

winter’s grace (haibun)

©Clr`16

It rained all day and night last weekend. She thought it might just be a brief break in the season. The following day temperatures dropped so much the shiny streets turn white with frost. Whatever reason Mother Nature may give for these changes in the weather, winter is still here to stay…for a while, that is.

© Clr’16

forgiving nature
winter repents
graced with beauty

© Tournesol’16/01/14

dancing in the wind (haibun)

© dverse Poets Pub,View of the church of Saint Paul de Mausole 1889 – private collection of Elizabeth Taylor

The sun is smiling today.  There is still an extra hour of bright colours before I am forced to retire to the  gloom of old church dorms.   I must hurry  and not waste time in the narrows of my mind!   It is time to capture what my heart might see some day…again.   Oh to have lived among the life of such hints, once sparked my life.

The sky is bursting with bright aqua and the sun is so bright it  dominates the clouds.  Billows smile in her golden glow. Oh how I would love to be there some day and run through the fields with my lover.  Hand in hand skipping like youngsters again. Oh, to be young again and soulfully alive.

It is a good harvest,  I overheard a farmer say to the cook last week. And yes, I can see the wealth of wheat so much prettier in the fields;  blow, blow wind!  Run while you still can until we meet again in the grey pit of my breakfast bowl  where only milk and brown sugar will turn you into a shade of mud.

feel nature’s pulse
golden wheat waltz
lilt of the wind

© Tournesol ’15

Dverse Poets – Monday Haibun

November Haibun #3

THE WALTZING WIND – Michiel Merkies – Piano Solos volume 1

They spread their leaves (haibun)

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity. Kahlil Gibran

https://frandi.wordpress.com/lebanese-family-tree-photos/ Sketch by Kahlil Gibran

In her youth she had  many plants in her home.  Begonias, African violets, dieffenbachias, spider plants, cactus and ivies. Oh! how she loved them!  Those years trying to have children, she treated each one like her baby.  Each plant had different needs… watered once a week, some twice, some once a month. All had their special personality, some shied from the sun, others rose with the sun and her prayer plant that folded at night reminding her always to say her prayers before going to sleep.  Now she had her mother and this plant to remind her.

One year she adopted  a beautiful fern that she kept in her bedroom where it was cooler and visitors might not rub on it.   And then, she had babies which took up all her attention. Most of her plants left for foster homes.

Her family moved to a home in the country, where there was room to run and play and plant a huge vegetable garden.  She planted marigolds around the vegetables to protect them from unwanted visitors and petunias and begonias in the front flower bed.

That was long ago. She’s  moved since then; the children grew up and left. She and her cat look out at her humble herb garden and a mother-in-law tongue sits in the dining room. Now the plant serves her, wagging its tongue and purifies the air.

© Clr ’15

flowers blossom,
spread their leaves – then,
  the sun sets

© Tournesol’15

DversePoets – Haibun Monday

winter calls me (jisei – troiku – tanka)

© Clr’15

(troiku)

trace of autumn
butterfly and bumble bee
lingering

trace of autumn
blossoms resisting
summer’s end

butterfly and bumble bee
hold a secret
the other side

lingering
season closing in
shorter days

soft breeze whistles
golden rays warm my face
life remembered

so much love
mother fed me every day
abundance overflowed
left me plenty
to feed an army

on this muddy path
I walk alone
winter calls me

© Tournesol ’15

Written for  Dversepoets – Jisei – Death Poem