STAIRCASE TO SOMEWHERE

It's Sunday Muse #132 and our photo

 of inspiration this week is a stairway 

that seems to lead to a mystery 

destination shrouded in the woods. 

Submitted October 31, 2020 

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I came upon a battered stair

which seemed to lead I knew not where.

Who felled the trees to make each step

to build the stair to dreams they kept?

Who climbed the stairs to a destination

left now only to my imagination?

Only the steps remain, all else is gone

No clue to dreams or battles won.

I can only salute as I pass by

the anonymous builder, and wonder

Why?

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A revised version of an earlier poem.

FOUND POEM

Wedneday Scribblings and we're challenged 

to consider found poems...erasure, blackout, etc.  

Here's my very late and definitely sub-par attempt. 

Words from "Rich Boy" by Sharon Pomeranz

 Submitted to Poets & Storytellers United 

 October 29, 2020 

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PRAIRIE HALLOWEEN

Haibun day and time to celebrate 

Halloween. 

Submitted to dVerse 

October 26, 2020 

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 When I was a child I went to a one-room schoolhouse which was situated just across the road from our house. School and church activities were the fabric of social life in our rural part of middle Illinois. At the school Halloween party, the parents came in costume as well as the children. My mother loved Halloween, and was quite creative in choice of costume. In the year I was 8 or 9, mother decided that she and I would dress as a couple taking their rooster to market. I don't recall exactly how my father escaped this plan. Mother loved to dress as a man. She was pretty believable with her fedora pulled low, her fake moustache and her britches and shirt. I was a chubby child, and so I suppose I was believable in my babushka, house dress, stuffed ample bosom, long stockings and brogans, carrying a basket containing one of mother's roosters, hogtied and terrified. The logistics of arriving at the party without disclosing our identity puzzled Mom for a bit. "They'll know us", she said, because they won't hear a car before we arrive". At last she arrived at a solution. "We'll go through the garden, climb the fence (with the barbed wire on top) and sneak to the side of the schoolhouse. When the next people arrive, we'll go in with them and they'll think we're all together."   So, through the garden we went, and mother spryly climbed the fence. I was not so lucky. I was not only a chubby child, I was a clumsy one, and in my clamber over the fence ripped my leg on the barbed wire. Undaunted, Mom tucked a hanky in my stocking to catch the blood and took off across the road, carrying my rooster-in-a-basket for me. 

As I recall, our ruse was successful. Mom had a great time twirling her moustache and tipping her hat to the ladies, the hapless rooster survived, and we won first prize. To this day, the scar on my leg brings back memories of that long-ago Halloween.

Prairie Halloween

celebration in the schoolhouse

well earned prizewinners

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON

October 2020 ends with a blue moon. I decided to

 challenge myself to write something dark and 

ominous in its honor. 

Submitted to Poets & Storytellers Anonymous 

October 25, 2020 

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BLUE MOON

October’s blue moon cast an eerie glow

  over the bayou cypress.  

The spittle flinging demons lurked in the shadows

 and serpents coiled silently

on the limbs above.  

Swamp witches stirred  their cauldrons  

with bleached  bones of questionable origin, casting 

curses and muttering voodoo spells.  

Corvids peered from their perches  

through the swamp mist, beady eyes 

searching  for their  next victim.    

Woe to the 

unsuspecting  traveler 

who ventures 

into the bayou 

under  a 

blue moon.   

THE SUNDAY MUSE #130

Sunday Muse #130 and time to indulge in some 

ekphrastic nonsense....my usual deep philosophic

take. Submitted October 24, 2020

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NIGHT RIDERS

T'was a starry, starry night 

Vince craved a country drive. 

He picked up two cohorts who

look familiar, sakes alive!

Sal and Frida were up for a roam

Any diversion from being 

Sequestered at home

Stop at the corner, said Sal to Vin

I’m in the mood for some bottled sin

Frida nodded with a Marlboro puff

Whatever you choose, just get enough

Off they went in Vince’s Cadillac

Strangely, it's said, they 

        never came back.

BONES OF CONTENTION

 Weekly Scribblings #42, and we’re challenged to use one or all of the given lines, or write a poem inspired by all.  "fingers framed by light

                            clutching an old rosary

                            carved from human bone"

Submitted to Poets & Storytellers United

October 21, 2020

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BONES OF CONTENTION

Hail Mary, full of grace,

whose bones are these

on which we count our

prayers.  

Perhaps a saint

who wished to hear

the prayers over and over

again, the sacred ritual

comforting us in our sorrows

and the saint in infinity. 

Perhaps a warrior felled in

some religious battle, now

wandering in perdition searching

for his fingers.

Magnetism Schism

It's Quadrille Monday #144, and the key word is "magnetism"

in exactly 44 words, no more, no less. Limitation causes 

pertubation, I fear! 

Submitted to dVerse October 19, 2020 

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I dread the rule of forty-four

Seems I always have some more

                                  To say for my quadrille                                      

When it comes to magnetism

There’s a definite schism

                    ‘Tween allowed and what I feel                   

Now I’ve only eleven left...

Alas not done, and quite bereft