Challenges & a few PINK poems

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:

February 4 – PINK

Soft intersection
of red and white
Heather confection
Spring delight.

February 8 – SOFT PINK

Morning sky
sheets tousled, covers half off
still flushed from sleep.

February 10 – SHADES OF …

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)

 

January Almanac

Ice sculptures form in the creek – Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly

Frosted black pavement
Slush hillocks turned ice, packed snow
Slippery when wet

Streetlights spot diamonds
Every street a booby-trap
of black ice

East outflow winds
Harsh, strong, glittering, long
freeze-drying Winter

Puffy Capsize coat
Icebreaker socks, Northside boots
my new best friends

© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

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Winter has caught my attention. This year we’ve had particularly long cold spells with snow off and on since mid-December. Then mid-day the temperature warms to just above freezing and for a few hours the snow melts till the temps dip again. The pair of sturdy, warm hiking boots I bought way back in October is getting lots of use. No falls on the ice so far!

This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted this week by Keri at Keri Recommends.

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Summer pickings

As we made plans for the summer, I knew our back-and-forths would make it hard for me to do much writing. So I decided to keep it simple and combine poetry-writing with my love of photography… a sort of haiga.

Here are three gardens I snapped in last little while (sadly none of them are mine).

Garden galaxy
Milky Way turned molten
June Calendula

~*~*~

Hollyhock—so cute
in flouncy summer sundress
of rose seersucker

~*~*~

Summer sky blossoms
celebration petals spark
a garden party

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This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Books 4 Learning.

 

 

Forsythia

Happy First Day of Spring!

Forsythia (Photo © 2015 by V. Nesdoly)

forsythia
sprays grey winter
with spring sunshine

© 2015 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

 

one beady eye

I’m back. I haven’t posted here in a long time. But it’s spring and the sap has started to flow.

I took a walk this afternoon and, with my camera, found haiku all over the place. I’ll share them over the next while. (Wouldn’t want to flood the place with the spring runoff.) But it sure is nice to be writing poems again!

Here’s one for tonight…

Photo © 2015 by V. Nesdoly

one beady eye
through twigs and branches
who’s watching who?

© 2015 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

 

Magnolia haiku

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Despite my accident earlier this spring, I’ve been getting out for a walk most days. Perhaps the fact that I go more slowly (cane and all) has heightened my enjoyment of spring this year. Many days what I see on my walk becomes the day’s poem (especially this April when I’ve been challenging myself to write one a day). These three haiku came about that way.

This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Tabatha Yeatts: The Opposite of Indifference. She has a double treat for us–the Poetry Friday collection as well as a Collection of Imaginary Poems, inspired by the Dictionary of Imaginary Places. Hie thee hence!