Author Archives: quillfyre

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About quillfyre

I'm a poet and member of the League of Canadian Poets published in Ottawa journals and online. My poems have received Honourable Mentions in Arborealis 2008, Ontario Poetry Society, and the Canadian Authors Association National Capital Writing Contest in 2008 and 2011. I began writing on a manual green Olivetti typewriter, but I don’t miss having poems flavoured with correction fluid and cross-outs.

the 18th and 19th stone: the minds one cat and one poet

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Day 18

I took my own Internet blackout break in not posting to WordPress yesterday.
I could have joined their protest, but the banner version was a bit too easy to miss, while the full blackout version seemed more for U.S. citizens who could send mails to their local representatives.  So, I just didn’t post at all.

That means today, I have two small stones to write.

small attentions

a small device for measuring
hums an unfamiliar tune, my cat
stops in his kitty-paw path
along my desktop, eyes fixed
upon this curiosity. His gaze
is steady, but as I watch
his eyes move, a small motion
not  quiver but shiver,
a shimmer of movement
so swift, almost invisible,
his small attention a deep
and thorough meditation
before his body loses tension,
relaxes into his usual pose
of inward-facing cat.

Day 19  messy desk, messy mind

under the paper and pens
the notebooks and journals
post-it notes and crossed-out drafts
poems are waiting to be birthed
a marvelous mess of words and metaphor

Carol A. Stephen

Day 17 Small stone and my No-Comfort Zone challenge

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3 Kokopellis dance,
each casts three shadows,
a distortion of design
and light. If I could
hear their flutes,
how many notes would play?

Carol A. Stephen

For my challenge this week, I have stepped outside my comfort zone and asked someone for help with something. My smoke alarms have been going off for no reason, except perhaps old age. I wrote a stone about it a couple of days ago. My brother isn’t here to help with it, so I reached out to a friend for help. For most of my life, I couldn’t do that, because of a great fear of rejection, even in such a simple thing.

Yesterday, he helped me choose new alarms, and today he will come back to put them up for me. That makes twice in a week that I have asked someone for help, actually.  The other day I also asked a neighbour to help me this winter with the snow in our shared driveway. I supply the equipment, he supplies the strength. That one was not quite so challenging though, since there was a benefit both ways. Today’s “ask” only benefits me, so that is a successful step outside the zone.  C

Stone 16 noticing small routines

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first,
percussive sound,
then cold on fingers
becomes warm,
becomes hot.
water runs
down back
muscles lose
tension, arc
into stream
one
with the water
with the warm of it
with the wash—
morning shower.

Stone 15: false alarms mean rude awakenings

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I wanted to write about seeing things, without the metaphor or simile as suggested by today’s guest post but my brain remains jangled by a recalcitrant smoke alarm that is having issues today. No smoke or fire, just the darned noise!

Day 15 False Alarm

in this silence, there should be peace
more precious after frantic hours
fighting angry smoke alarm
chanting its lies two floors below

without fire to fuel its chatter
perhaps it chirps to prove its voice
but my focus is splintered,
still on edge and waiting
for another chorus of worry and fret

Carol A. Stephen