Greetings fellow Toads. It has been too long. I am as you may now know spending most of my time in a woodland cabin, away from the maelstrom that is our world today, seeking a little corner of peace for the moment. My life has turned upside down recently and this wee haven is allowing me time and space to re-group.
So what better subject to pen a poem on. Peace. How and where do you find it? What does it look and feel like? Can we have peace when others do not?
I have intermittent access to internet so apologies If I am slow to read and comment. Here is a favourite of mine by Wendell Berry When despair grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. As always once you have written your poem link up to Mr Linky and visit and read/comment on the other Toads work. I wish you peace in your endeavours. "I have lost my smile but don't worry. The dandelion has it" Thich Nhat Hanh. Peace is every step. The path of mindfulness in everyday life.
18 days in and I hope and wish those of you who took up the 30 in 30 challenge are mining a rich seam full of magic and gold right about now.
Halfway is behind you and the journey homeward has commenced but there is still a way to travel.
Tempting as it might be to ponder the end of the road ahead and the steps required to get you there, I would like you instead to bring your attention to the present moment.
Forever is composed of nows. Emily Dickinson.
I would ask that you bring your pen to a mindful place, stop and breathe in... then breathe out. Then breathe in again... and then out. One more time. Be Here Now.
Write Here. Write Now.
Write me a piece about being in the moment...that place where time stops. Could be playing a sport (the zone), shooting a photograph, making love, fishing, climbing a mountain, crashing the car....writing a poem!!!!.....the possibilities are endless.
So once the moment has passed and you find yourself in possession of a completed poem please add to our link-up below and make sure you take a moment or two to visit the other poets who are participating in the prompt.
Good day my fellow poets...tis early days in this the month of 'one a day' and I'm sure all who have taken the challenge are doing just fine thank you very much.
Here's the rub.
There's all kinds of weather ahead. Maybe snow, rain, hail, sleet...maybe a bright bright sun-shiny day...but whatever the weather we poets can pen a piece to brew up a storm in a teacup.
So don't rain on my parade. Pen me a weather related poem.
As the song says, 'wherever you go, you always take the weather with you' or as we like to say here in Scotland, 'If you don't like the weather stick around for 20 minutes'
'Weather forecast for tonight: dark' George Carlin
As always link up and drop in to see how your fellow poets weathered the challenge. Happy scribbling.
Greetings fellow Toads. On this day, Jan 11th 1770, the first shipment of rhubarb was sent to the United States from London. When I think of the word rhubarb I am reminded of an animated children's show from my childhood, Roobarb and Custard, first aired in 1974. ( I was 11)
It got me to thinking in a nostalgic way about the story characters (books, TV and film) that may have had some subconscious influence on me from childhood. Did Toad of Toad Hall instill a sense of abandon in me? Did Alice open up a wonderland? Did Mr Benn open the door to Shamanism or travel?
What character(s) might have found a home in your psyche? How would they write if they were to pen a poem? Today I would ask that you tune your channel to one or more of those subconscious storytellers and pen a poem from their perspective or simply write a poem about them. If your character is obscure, from a different culture or era perhaps, then enlighten us in your notes.
Link up as usual and do the rounds of reading and commenting. Have fun.
Hello all...tis The Scibbler here for a second edition of 'Scribble It.'
What better beginning for a plethora of poets than a multitude of wordageables?
Experts at the University of York have complied a list of 30 words from the English language that have fallen out of our consciousness and conversation that might conceivably make a comeback.
What better place to put that to the test than The Imaginary Garden? Here are those very words and their meaning.
Ambodexter: One who takes bribes from both sides.
Betrump: To deceive, cheat; to elude, slip from ( I know right?)
Coney-catch: To swindle, cheat, to trick, dup, deceive
Hugger-mugger: Concealment, secrecy
Nickum: A cheating or dishonest person
Quacksalver: A person who dishonestly claims knowledge of or skill in medicine, a pedlar of false cures.
Rouker: A person who whipers or murmurs, who spreads tales or rumours
Man-millinery: Suggestive of male vanity or pomposity
Parget: To daub or plaster the face or body with powder or paint
Snout-fair:Having a fair countenance; fair-faced, comely, handsome
Slug-a-bed: One who lies long in bed through laziness
Losenger: A false flatterer, a lying rascal, a deceiver
Momist: A person who habitually finds fault. a harsh critic
Peacockize: To behave like a peacock; esp. to pose or strut ostentatiously
Percher: A person who aspires to a higher rank or status; an ambitious or self-assertive person
Rouzy-bouzy: Boisterously drunk
Ruff: To swagger, bluster, domineer. To ruff it out/ to brag or boast of a thing
Sillytonian: A silly or gullible person, esp. one considered as belonging to a notional sect of such people
Wlonk: Proud, haughty/Rich, splendid, fine, magnificent: in later use esp. as a conventional epithet in alliterative verse ( N. A fair or beautiful one)
Fumish: Inclined to fume, hot-tempered, irascible, passionate; also charectorised by or exhibiting anger or irascibility
Awhape: To amaze, stupefy with fear, confound utterly
Hugge: To shudder, shrink, shiver, or shake with fear or with cold
Merry-go-sorry: A mixture of joy and sorrow
Stomaching: Full of maalignity; given to cherish anger or resentment
Swerk: To be or become dark; in Old English often, to become gloomy, troubled or sad
Teen: To vex, irritate, annoy, anger, enrage/ To inflict suffering upon; to afflict, harass; to injure, harm
Tremblable: Causing dread or horror; dreadful
Wasteheart: Used to express grief, pity, regret, disappointment or concern: 'alas!' 'woe is me!' Also a wasteheart-a day, wasteheart of me
Dowsable: Applied generically to a sweetheart, 'lady-love'
Ear-rent: The figurative cost to a person of listening to trivial or incessant talk
So the task ahead is clear. Pick one or two or a dozen of those words and pen a poem. Not inspired by them? OK! Do your own research and find words that we do not currently employ in conversation and put them into a poem instead. Link the words to their meaning if you would.
I look forward to reading your revivalist tomes. Link up below and please visit each other and comment. We all love a visit.
As I cast off on my maiden voyage as a host of the occasional 'Scribble It' prompt here in the garden ( I am honored by the way. Thank You Kerry for the invite) I came to pondering about your experiences of 'First Times'.
Were you Nervous? Excited? Full of anticipation.Unawares?
Where does that list of 'First Times' begin? Where might it end?
First steps, first teeth, first words, first flight, first kiss, first fall, first love, first....you get the drift.
Please pen me a poem that speaks in some way of a 'First Time,' one already met or perhaps to come.
Once penned please add your poem to the Mr Linky below.
Don't forget to visit each other to read and comment. It makes this community what it is.
Here's a little grist for the mill in both music and word. Enjoy.
The Scribbler ;)
Always For The First Time
by Andre Breton
Always for the first time Hardly do I know you by sight You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window A wholly imaginary house It is there that from one second to the next In the inviolate darkness I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring The one and only rift In the facade and in my heart The closer I come to you In reality The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room Where you appear alone before me At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness The elusive angle of a curtain It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse With the diagonal slant of its girls picking Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare Before them a T-square of dazzling light The curtain invisibly raised In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep You as though you could be The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you You pretend not to know I am watching you Marvelously I am no longer sure you know You idleness brings tears to my eyes A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures It's a honeydew hunt There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the forest There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings Flaring out in the center of a great white clover There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy There is By my leaning over the precipice Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the first time