Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly
Pine boughs
mittened, each finger cuddled
in quilted fleece.
© 2018 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)
This morning we awoke to a winter wonderland!
The Capture Your 365 prompt today was “Prompt Free.” How convenient– a perfect invite to capture the snow on a crystalline morning.
Last Saturday the #CY365 photo prompt was “Currently Reading.”
Two of the books I’m reading are the Bible book of Revelation along with Discipleship on the Edge by Darrell Johnson—a book about Revelation (which two of our pastors are teaching a class of seniors and others on Tuesday afternoons).
The teaching sessions and the book are fascinating. We’ve learned about apocalyptic literature as a genre. (Revelation is an apocalypse—written large with symbols and hidden meanings in order to encourage the Christian churches of that time with a message disguised by images they, but not necessarily their persecutors, would have understood.)
We’ve been given insights into the meanings of numbers and symbols with special emphasis put on how would the people of John’s time may have understood the book.
A refrain that Johnson keeps repeating throughout is “Things are not as they seem.”
A letter to lamp stands,
a throne room, a crowd
worship continuous
passionate, loud.
Creatures mysterious,
seals that won’t break.
Apocalypse visions
for Church’s sake.
Dragons and angels
that prostrate themselves,
sevens and forties
hundreds and twelves.
Horsemen and plagues
that fill mankind with terror,
signs from the heavens
that change Earth forever.
Martyrdom, bloodshed
pursue the Lamb’s team
but do not despair—
Things are not as they seem.
© 2018 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)
(If you’re interested, audio sessions of these classes are online, under the heading “Behind the Curtain: A Study In the Book of Revelation” – bottom of THIS page.)
Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly
My pencil
has begun to tell
simple stories
© 2018 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)
(“A Hobby” was the photo prompt for Feb. 13, from Capture Your 365 [#CY365] February list.)
And the finished piece inspired by the Matt Tommey’s 30-day Art Challenge (of which I’ve done a mere four so far) for day 14: “Create a piece of art using only shades of one color of your choosing.”
It’s based on “I have loved you with an everlasting love” – Jeremiah 31:3.
Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly
I love challenges. I find myself eagerly jumping in to writing and art challenges of all kinds. Keeping up with them is another thing though!
This year my one-little-word is FOCUS, I’m trying to put it into practice by actually imposing some focus on my life. One area of focus is to eliminate some of the extras I get myself into that then end up becoming a burden when life gets busy. Snapping a photo a day and then using that photo as a poem prompt was one thing that I thought perhaps could go. So at the end of January I neglected to download the next month’s list of photo challenges I’ve been using.
I didn’t intentionally not download it—it just slipped my mind. As I started on my walk Thursday, February 1st, I reached automatically for the notebook with the photo list that I keep in my camera bag to see what the prompt was for the day, then realized, there was no point. I hadn’t copied it. In fact, I recalled, I was considering not following it any more at all.
Those thoughts brought on the most surprising feelings. I felt sad, bereft, abandoned, even disoriented. Now what would I look for on my walk? I would miss the mental stimulation of connecting an image with the prompt and thinking of what to say about it.
Then I remembered that I had missed a walk several days earlier and hadn’t snapped something for that prompt. I would do that. I immediately felt better.
The first thing I did when I got home was—you guessed it—downloaded the February photo challenge list. Even FOCUS will not rid me of this little lifestyle habit.
For a while I was sharing these photos and poems every day on Facebook, but it felt a bit much. So I have decided to, from time to time, post some of them here on the poetry blog. No promises, though, so there won’t be any to break!
I’m following the photo challenges from Capture Your 365 (#CY365). The February list is HERE.
Here, are a few photos & poems from last week’s prompts, which was a color week featuring PINK:
Soft intersection
of red and white
Heather confection
Spring delight.
Morning sky
sheets tousled, covers half off
still flushed from sleep.
The pinks of winter are a little blue
from shivering in north and east wind’s strew.
The pinks of winter are a little green
with dreams of leaves to fill the in-between.
The pinks of winter are approaching reds
As spring soft-whispers: “Wake, you sleepy-heads.”
All poems & photos © 2018 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)
I have returned to an old habit—following the Capture Your 365 daily photo prompt challenge (#CY365), and pairing the photos with a few lines. I’m finding it’s really quite doable if I keep up with it.
So, without ado, here are some of this week’s captures:
Last Saturday’s prompt was WITH WORDS. Here is the photo and poem I cobbled together from the week’s words in my 2018 Word-A-Day calendar.
(Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly)
On New Year’s Day the BENTHOS froze
under our polar bared toes.
Our Christmas treats we now CONTEMN
against our hopes of getting slim
(though with bold APPETANCE they still beckon
our calories we’ve resolved to reckon).
PROCRUSTEAN as resolutions are
without them we won’t go as far
their value is at least HEURISTIC
and though our methods are simplistic
to fight holiday excess PIACULAR
our hopes still burn for the spectacular.
Sunday, January 7th the prompt was WHITE.
We met our newest grand-dog on Sunday. His name is Henry.
Henry (Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly)
Tuxedo Henry—
natty polka-dotted socks
fashion forward tail
Monday, January 8th’s prompt was SPLOTCHES (OF WHITE). This photo doesn’t really answer the prompt, but it had to be taken. (The next three photos are of my grandchildren.)
(Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly)
Little Santa girl
delivers the best gift—
herself
On Tuesday, the prompt was ODD ONE OUT.
Two moments made my photo day, and inspired a tiny poem:
(Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly)
(Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly)
Caught
in the act
of play
On Wednesday the word was MINIMAL.
Hooded Merganser (Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly)
Study in white, black,
brown, with amber eye
Hooded Merganser
And finally yesterday, Thursday, the challenge was to photograph EXQUISITE. Oh boy… it was a very unexquisite day here but I did escape the dull and dreary indoors for an even more dull, dreary, and damp out. And I found something exquisite!
Nandina also known as “Heavenly Bamboo” (Photo © 2018 by V. Nesdoly)
Leaves of flame, embers
of berry warm this soggy
January day
(I just had a great suggestion from Joy in the comments below about making the verse above more comfortable in its skin…. changing it to a rhyming couplet or a quatrain. I’m opting for the quatrain. Thanks, Joy!)
Here’s version 2:
Leaves of flame
embers of berry
warm this soggy
January
(All poems above © 2018 by Violet Nesdoly – All rights reserved)
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This post is linked to Poetry Friday. Our hostess today is Jan, who directs the poetry traffic at the Book Seed Studio (what a fabulous name for a blog!). Thanks Jan!
First of all, HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all my American friends!
On December 11th last year, an apartment complex that I pass on one of my walking routes burned.
Apartment fire – December 11, 2016 (Photo © 2016 by V. Nesdoly)
It wasn’t totally destroyed but has been unliveable these many months as it’s being repaired.
Though it’s not the most beautiful subject, there is something compelling about repairs going on behind curtains month after month and so it has been my photo / poem subject several times in the last while. On July 25th, in response to the photo prompt “Layered,” I took the photo below and wrote about it (in a shadorma):
Apartment repairs – July 2017 (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)
One afternoon
massive fire engulfed
water wrecked
smoke sullied.
Months later still rebuilding
layer by layer.
© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)
On October 16th in response to the photo challenge “Deconstruction.” I photographed and wrote about it again (this time in a senryu):
Apartment sheers – October 2017 (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)
Construction gauze—
band-aids for fire-singed rooms
healing their scars
© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)
It will be a happy day when all that reconstruction is done and its people can move back in. (And so I’ll probably write about it again.)
I’m adding that last ditty to Michelle Heidenrich Barnes’ November Padlet, where this month’s challenge is to “write a poem that finds beauty in something that is not usually considered beautiful.”
Oh, and speaking of Michelle, she’s just completed the publication of The Best of Today’s Little Ditty 2016. I’m pretty stoked to have a couple of poems in that volume. What a great collection of poems from all the lovely Poetry Friday peeps! Congratulations, Michelle (and committee) for another great book!
(To add icing to that ditty cake–between when I posted this and now, my physical copy of the book arrived! It’s so cool to hold it in my hands!)
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This poem is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Carol, at Carol’s Corner.
I wasn’t going to join in on Poetry Friday today, then went to Linda’s roundup, found her post on Adelaide Crapsey and the cinquain form, and decided to put something up after all.
The cinquain is one of the short forms I’ve written in when composing poems in response to the daily photography prompts I’ve been following. Here are five (in honor of the cinquain’s five lines) that I’ve written in the past few months. They’ll take you back to spring and onward. (Title is the photo prompt word or phrase.)
Policeman’s helmet (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)
just washed
smell of laundry
policeman’s helmet grows
riotously beside the stream
fresh pink
McBurney Lane art piece (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)
Teamwork
Community
Get involved, Lend a hand
Support, Help out, Volunteer, Care
Give back.
My viewing deck on eclipse morning (Photo © 2017 by V.Nesdoly)
Eclipse—
protect my eyes:
box, tin foil, white paper
pinhole camera in my hand.
Viewed safe.
Bug on a fence (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)
After
stone-bottom burrow
this sleek white thoroughfare
is a bug’s sci-fi fantasy
new world!
Street vendor sugar bowl (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)
Silver
imperfections
can’t hide your sweet intent
like grey hair, wrinkled face of our
Granny
All the above © 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)
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This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Linda at Teacher Dance.
Calendar is now available as a FREE ebook! Click on image for details.
Violet Nesdoly / poems 