Today’s constraints from Two Sylvias: write about something complicated, restrict line lengths e.g. four words, three words, two words, no words etc. and number of lines to between 8 and 12.

Here’s my attempt, which started as a found poem, then I played with it:

Origin. Intelligence.

Mystery. The parts don’t
make sense. The visual
way back, the reptilian.
Balance. Territory. Sex.

Snakes stare back, thinking
Is she lunch?

Monkey emotion.
Social hierarchy.

Prefrontal.
Rational.
Where am I anyway?
You? Behind your forehead.

Carol A. Stephen
April 7, 2018

Have not been able to do the prompts every day, so in the spirit of catch-up, for Two Sylvias prompts:

Day 6 was to build something in the sky or on another planet

The View from Here

nothing but sky: to the left, to the right,
and sky in between. Unending
palette of deep blue.

There should be poems, longhand, written
in cursive across the horizon, each line rising
upward like the scroll of words in Star Wars.

Every day a new selection. Every day
a poem by Robert Bly. Each poem would scatter
seeds down, and from the seedlings, flowers.

Each petal inscribed with lines of verse.
Today I read from a dark purple tulip,
tomorrow, a  periwinkle campanula blossom.

Between the flowers, pink granite rocks,
cut from an outcrop of Canadian Shield.
Wet and sparkling under a different sun.

GARDEN

Carol A. Stephen
April 6, 2018

Running behind yesterday, so for today the April 5 prompt, which was to start with a personal issue or problem and relate that in some way to nature. I remember fields in Italy in August, masses and masses of sunflowers, and the way they turn always to face the sun.

Winter Imagines Spring

Each day the air leaches moisture
draws deeper lines into my face,
the left cheek mapped in dark
spots like small brown
lakes, dry as desert sand.

I imagine a farmer’s field gone
to seed in autumn, all brown
branches and faded flowers—
summer’s beauty just a memory
their petals ground to dust.

Yet, come Spring, see
how the streams freshen. Snow
melt-water cascades
down mountains, pools
in the dry lake beds, the fields
turn green with seedlings, their
faded blooms cast off as new ones
form their tiny buds.

By August, the field is alive again
with yellow petals and dark centres
of each sunflower as it turns
its head with the hours
to catch the sun.

from wikimedia commons under creative commons licence 2.0 Maremma Toscana Date 25 June 2005, 10:57 Source Maremma Toscana Author Giovanni from Firenze, Italy

Carol A. Stephen, poem for April 5, 2018