#challenge

#Wordle 413 #Poetry

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Wordle 413

What if you woke

in an alternative reality

Receiving a signal from the Universe

A message, like a constant

changing channel on your tv

Hearing only part of the message

Would you run for the hills?

Or would you wait, check it out

See that everything is fine,

better than before.

A simple sweet life, no trauma

No nagging parents.

They’re perfect, loving

You find you like it here.

Would you feel smug by the charm?

That has befallen you.

Would you notice some changes?

like a sharp claw on glass

Grating on your memories.

Would you realise the limit?

Of this new life

Like living in a bubble

Pick up the nearest rock

Try to break free

Realising that Sage, your wife

The love of your life

Your children are not here

When next you sleep,

Where will you wake?

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The Other Love… continued

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The  Oak Tree

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The weather had turned hot, not exactly digging weather and the oak was growing at the front of the house in full view of the sun.

I tried to judge when would be a good time to start, but it wasn’t looking good. The hot sun was constant, not losing heat until it began to set at around 7pm. I prayed for more cloud or even rain, as it wouldn’t be the first time I had been gardening in the pouring rain. In an emergency, I once put up 20 feet of fencing like that. If I need to do something, a little water will not stop me.

It doesn’t get dark until nearly 10pm, I would have three hours to get the job done.

 

When the time came, I had a few words with my target before I started digging. Not asking for a miracle or any cooperation, you understand, for I knew what I was in for. More to explain what I wanted to do. After all, this was an oak, once sacred and maybe still could be. It had been trying to grow in the wrong place for nearly 12 years, so although it was only two feet high, the roots would be extensive and most of them would be thick tap roots.

 

I started digging the trench around the tree again, meeting several large tap roots in the process. I severed these and kept digging. These were primarily for stability and wouldn’t be needed for what I had in mind.

The trench could only extend halfway around the tree for it was growing so close to our ancient wall. At this point, the job was beginning to look impossible. The trench was nearly 2 feet deep, but the tree wasn’t moving.

 

Time to start undercutting, so I produced my kneeling pad and set to work.

Several enormous tap roots later, there was still no movement and there had to be a reason. One last tap root was holding the tree in place, but I hadn’t spotted (or felt it) yet.

Despite the sun going down, it didn’t seem any cooler. I was dripping with sweat, very muddy and bleeding from several nasty gouges on both arms.

This oak wasn’t playing nice and I was exhausted, but not beaten or about to give up.

I cleared more soil to find the offending root.

 

My heart almost stopped when I found it. Covered in mud, it had been almost invisible and the size of it was incredible. It was the size of my arm!

Time to attack it with my branch saw.

 

I battled for another hour, determined to succeed in walking away with the sacred oak in my arms.

When it finally came free, I almost crawled around to my back yard, where I dumped it unceremoniously into a large bucket of water…

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Tune in later for what happened next…

AAA (2)

#Writephoto ~ Clarity

/ jenanita01 / 4 Comments

Thursday photo prompt: Clarity #writephoto

 

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Image by scvincent.com

For visually challenged writers, the image shows a seashore with a clear, turquoise sea, bordered by small islands and a rocky headland .

 

 

The fog has lifted

My eyes are open

I feel sand between my toes

Clear blue sea taking my footprints

A part of me washed away

As if I had never stood there.

Why had it taken so long for me

to see what was under my nose?

So much beauty

hidden by fogged up thinking

My mind illuminated

by the clarity of the moment

Seeing clearly is like feeling for the first time

Why was today different?

I believe it was the silence, the peace

The gentle lapping of water

Washing my fears away…

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#Colleen’s Weekly #Poetry Challenge

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life-is-likea-cup-of-tea.

Colleen’s 2019 Weekly #Tanka Tuesday #Poetry Challenge No. 136 #PhotoPrompt

 

 

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Image by Colleen’s Poetry Challenge

 

Use the above photo as the inspiration for your poem. Ask yourself questions and tell a story. Be creative! What does this photo say to you?

 

106

Looks out

At the world

With lights shining

As if it belongs

Chairs hidden forgotten

Bicycles never ridden

Parcel placed outside just for show

Looking for all the world to belong

Hologram, a picture from the future…

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Editing the Hedge…

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I took the afternoon off the other day to cut the rather large and long hedge in our back garden. All the time I was doing it, my mind was editing the last chapter I had written that morning. My mind is like that, give it something to do that doesn’t involve a lot of thinking, and it will entertain itself.

Just down the road from me, someone has trimmed their hedge to look like a dragon. Must have been very difficult, and quite something to see.

As I was clearing up, piling all the cut leaves into my garden waste collection sack, I was struck yet again by the similarity to life that editing a book and trimming a hedge really is. You start with an untidy mess, overgrown and out of control. You look at it, wondering where to begin, doubtful of your ability/capability to do the job justice.

Plucking up the courage to begin, you chip away, trimming here, shortening there, trying to make it perfect. Standing back from it, you notice all the small things that need your attention, and you go back to it, determined to get it right.

At least that’s your intention.

 

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Not my best work!

 

 

Unfortunately, either the hedge in my garden is too long, or I am not as fit as once was, but the finished result was not perfect. Mostly down to the fact that the cordless hedge clipper ran out of juice long before I had finished. Yes, I know you can get electric ones, but having cut through three cables and narrowly missing frying my good self, I am giving them a wide berth!

Thankfully, editing a manuscript is a lot easier than trying to trim a seven foot high, thirty foot long monster of a hedge.

Thank God for that at least.

AAA (2)

Jaye’s Journal ~ week 29

/ jenanita01 / 8 Comments

 

Jaye's Journal x12

 

There have been so many ups and downs this week, and I’m giddy.

The first few days I couldn’t do right for doing wrong. Jobs I do on a regular basis were going wrong and as for some of the new stuff I am trying to learn, don’t ask.

At one point I thought my brain must have gone for a walk, as I couldn’t understand a bloody word!

This was bad enough, but then I discovered that some of the work I thought I had managed to do, was in fact, rubbish. Add to all of that, I was trying desperately to get used to Windows 10 and a new version of Word too, and everywhere I went, everything seemed to have been updated or changed, sometimes for the worse. My life was becoming unbearable (as a writer/blogger anyway!)

So, during all of this, when I turned up at the hospital for the post-surgery check up on my new eye, I was delighted to be told it had healed beautifully and was behaving brilliantly. Not that I was getting the benefit much as the other eye seems worse by comparison. I seem to spend most of my time with one eye shut, but at least something had turned out all right.

The next few days were a strange mixture of joy and confusion as my good news was slowly suffocated by everything malfunctioning. This Windows 10 is the devils work and my laptop seems to be joining forces with it, almost convincing me to find a better way to spend my time!

What kept me going was the determination to rescue that Oak sapling and encourage it to be a bonsai. I knew this would be hard to do, but the idea wouldn’t leave me alone…

Tune in later this week for how it all went!

AAA (2)

 

#Wordle ~ 412

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Where is the rain when you need it?

We are still trying to grow

food for the seven nations

Listen to the rattle of the empty plate

As mother sits to tell her stories

Playing with a piece of string

Trying to make a change

Where the rain will not fall

There is no humility in starving…

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#Writephoto ~ Castle

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Thursday photo prompt: Castle #writephoto

 

 

Image by scvincent.com

 

 

Ghosts…

Blue purple clouds above the castle dark

My body lying in the silver water below

My soul trapped within black castle walls

I wait, a ghost you cannot see.

The chains that held me,

hang against damp walls

My tormentors long gone, a forgotten time

Damp walls pulse with remembered pain

There are few visitors to this dark place

They never come twice

Strange feelings creep into the skin

They carry them away for a few weeks

My hope is one visitor will see me

Hear my whispered voice

They can read about my plight

In a paperback novel.

I need someone sensitive

to the horrors of this place

to feel my presence

lay flowers on the silver waters outside

reunite soul and body, help me move on

to pray for the ghost, they cannot see…

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#Wordle 411… #Poetry

/ jenanita01 / 4 Comments

 

 

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It’s 2.02 pm.

I am driving past St. Bonneville

My home, my place of work

The gravestones shimmer under moonlight

Like broken teeth.

An illuminated grimace.

I felt my heart give an extra beat

An uncomfortable feeling of being watched.

I pulled the car into the rectory

Gravel spitting

I would need to change my clothes

Check the font for water before morning.

I heard the broken hall clock chime at 3pm

Making the night feel decidedly unholy

If it weren’t for the beat of my heart

The silence would whistle in my ear

The way your blood does late at night

on your pillow, pulsing, a reminder of life.

About to turn in, I hear the soft moan

A groan of someone in pain.

There is no sign of an intruder

I check outside among the gravestones

The air was still, not a leaf stirred

As if someone held me by my shirt tail

I stood staring, not expecting to find my name

written there among those broken teeth.

I made my way back inside

Ready to wash and lie down.

Looking into the bathroom mirror

With no reflection looking back

I realise I am the intruder…

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