Pine boughs…

 

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.

 

 

 

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)

 

Layered deconstruction

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)

Layered

 

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)

Deconstruction

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.

 

Take a hike

A week ago today the Capture Your 365 photo prompt was “Take a hike.” On my walk that day I photographed several woodsy hiking paths, pondering all the while what other ways I could interpret the prompt.

Then, walking through Portage Park, past a newly installed shelter and picnic tables (probably saw them for the first time a week prior), I noticed pink graffiti everywhere. Yuck. What a mess. Take hike indeed!

Graffiti in the park (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)

Graffiti boy
on your bike
we don’t like
you using your spray can
as a mike.
Shoo, boy, shoo!
We’ve had enough of you.
Take a hike!
Stay out of our park
for your after-dark lark
we don’t want your mark—
of anti-us snark!

 

© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

Thankfully the city crew was on it quickly. When I went by a  few days later, it was all cleaned up.

This poem is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme. Thanks Matt (author of the just-out and already highly acclaimed Flashlight Night).