Some. One.

Right now there are Tibetan Buddhist monks in a temple in the Himalayas endlessly reciting mantras for the cessation of your suffering and for the flourishing of your happiness.

Someone you haven’t met yet is already dreaming of adoring you.

Someone is writing a book that you will read in the next two years that will change how you look at life.

Nuns in the Alps are in endless vigil, praying for the Holy Spirit to alight the hearts of all of God’s children.

A farmer is looking at his organic crops and whispering, “nourish them.”

Someone wants to kiss you, to hold you, to make tea for you.

Someone is willing to lend you money, wants to know what your favorite food is, and treat you to a movie.
Someone in your orbit has something immensely valuable to give you — for free.

Something is being invented this year that will change how your generation lives, communicates, heals and passes on.

The next great song is being rehearsed.

Thousands of people are in yoga classes right now intentionally sending light out from their heart chakras and wrapping it around the earth.

Millions of children are assuming that everything is amazing and will always be that way.

Someone is in profound pain, and a few months from now, they’ll be thriving like never before. From where they are, they just can’t see it.

Someone who is craving to be partnered, to be acknowledged, to arrive, will get precisely what they want — and even more. And because that gift will be so fantastical in it’s reach and sweetness, it will quite magically alter their memory of angsty longing and render it all “So worth the wait.”

Someone has recently cracked open their joyous, genuine nature because they did the hard work of hauling years of oppression off of their psyche — this luminous juju is floating in the ether, and is accessible to you.

Someone, just this second wished for world peace, in earnest.

Some civil servant is making sure that you get your mail, and your garbage is picked up, that the trains are running on time, and that you are generally safe.

Someone is dedicating their days to protecting your civil liberties and clean drinking water.

Someone is regaining their sanity.
Someone is coming back from the dead.
Someone is genuinely forgiving the seemingly unforgivable.
Someone is curing the incurable.

You. Me. Some. One. Now.

-Danielle LaPorte via Mary Standing Otter

I thought I’d share Mary Standing Otter’s poem. It is so full of life, riddled with ubiquitous activities that turn delightfully meaningful as one realises this is life itself unfolding, through our connection with one another.

June 14, 1941

PHOTO PROMPT © C.E.Ayr

All those summer nights

closing spun-out days of waiting tables

blistered feet, merry hearts and

cheery faces in creamy cafes and yellow-lit clubs.

Hope was never a fragile thing.

Together, we would make it through.

Starlight in the skies

turned to fires burning high

over our heads, we were lost in flames.

The sirens screamed long into the night.

Our stricken hearts would never give up this fight.

When the daylight came to clear the smoke away,

the words on our lips met the tears on our cheeks:

Paris has fallen. Paris has fallen.

94 words

******

(Update: As Neil pointed out, try reading it backwards. It kinda almost works 😉 )

This is a story of how life never goes as planned. Take 2020 for example.

That’s how the poem began and it developed into the Nazi-German siege of Paris on June 14, 1940. I took some creative liberty in my poem.

After four years of Nazi occupation, Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944.

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Armed fighters take part in the liberation of Paris. Who might these young people have been before the war changed everything? (Keystone/Getty Images) Sourced from Washington Post

Written for Friday Fictioneers hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Write a story in 100 words or less, click the frog to submit your flash fiction and read what others have written. Enjoy!

bigfred

Sailboat

 

I was a sailboat drifting upon your seas.

Navigating towards distant places,

behind the mists of your horizon.

Sun-beat, fresh varnish,

maiden voyage.

 

You were the ocean rippling

beneath me, reflecting infinities of overhanging skies.

Bahamas blue, glassy calm and

endless.

 

You became the tumultous waves

crashing on my bow,

ripping apart my sails.

Stinging saltwater seeping into my cracked hull.

Midnight blue, marbled through

with froth.

 

Sunken anchor.

Placid seas.

 

You spoke of love.

I hid my fear.

 

*****

 

Shared with dVerse Poets Pub in a poetry challenge using metaphors.

DSC_0493

 

 

 

photo: my own

Image from pinterest.

Picnic day in a Cape Town forest

We walked in groups in the sprawling forest that clung to the foot of the mountain. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and neighbours gathered for the hike, trampling over pine needles and tripping over knotted roots. Animals squirreled out of sight and up into higher branches to give way to the invading human swarm that was us. We picked pine cones from the musty ground and plucked out the nuts. Tasting sweet and tangy on our childish tongues. Grown ups carried baskets full of baked chicken, corn on the cob, green salads and garlicky bread. We stopped to eat at the stream that bubbled and whistled over pebbles and crawling roots.

Summer’s sun winked

through tree tops.

Smiles and chatter.

We were all together.

 

800px-pine_trees_planted_for_timber_at_newlands_forest_cape_town_3

 

I remember a massive community hike in what I think was the Newlands forest in Cape Town, when I was about seven or eight if not younger. The hike ended in a picnic. I remember it as one of the most spontaneous and memorable occasions of my life, as it was a spur of the moment thing for me. I suppose that is what life seems like for kids who are unaware of the plans adults make and find themselves in surprising situations.

In my memory, I clearly remember a lot of pine trees and pine cones. They are not indigenous trees. Settlers to the region created pine plantations that still form a large part of the forest.

The featured image shows what the indigenous forest looks like, more lush and tropical-looking.

Shared with dVerse for their haibun Picnic prompt.

 

***Images from wikipedia

 

Creatures of the night

 

 

Men wander dim avenues in search of

gin and Jezebel’s to escape

a personal hell.

Steel-toed workers rise with the moon,

shifting the night into the early morn.

A young mother, weary and bleary-eyed,

fingers running over the keyboard

chasing an elusive word count

 

 

Written for the dVerse prompt using the word rise or its derivative in a quadrille form.

**Image from https://art.alphacoders.com

 

Water reflections

 

 

Water

within you, within me

in our cells, in the atmosphere

Water

reacts and interacts to paint

rainbows and spark lightning

Water

flowing red in our veins and clear down rocky slopes

rising up invisibly into our skies

in cottony cloud collections

shifting resources from lakes to land

tumbling in drops towards earth

onto leaves and soil

and skin and fur

Water

Dammed and bottled

but never contained

Water

everywhere and in

everything

a three dimensional manifestation

of the flowing

sustaining

higher

energy of Love

 

 

*Shared with dVerse prompt on Water.

 

***Image from kyhealthkids

 

 

Antarctica

 

Here, everything is preserved in time.

The landscape frozen

in its final expression.

 

Caves gape at some distant surprise

where cornflower skies kiss sapphire seas,

time after time.

 

Icicles drip over the cliff’s edge

like the cascading crystalline hair

of a slumbering, frozen

 

Ice Queen who cares for

naught but her beauty sleep.

And a tender glowing expression.

 

 

quest-for-the-antarctic-circle-14-days-17981

 

I’m just about getting this in before the link closes!

Written for dVerse Poets Pub open link night. I missed the chance to post on Amaya’s Cascade challenge earlier this week so getting a two in one. It’s not in the exact form, but learned a lot in the process!

 

Images from hideawayreport.com (1) and wildfoottravel.com (2)

 

 

 

 

 

Birka

 

Maybe what I miss most

Wasn’t the beige dwellings

housing our belongings.

Though I protected them with all my might

I longed to escape their confines.

 

Maybe what I miss most

wasn’t the calm lake that spilled

into the Baltic Sea.

Though it was a silent witness

where Solveig and I made secret love

beneath the twinkling eyes of the gods.

 

Maybe what I miss most

was a curl of Elin’s yellow hair

wisping up into the air

as she loosed her lethal arrow.

Cheeks flushed.

Eyes ablaze with the glory of war.

 

Maybe what I miss most

were sounds of military merriment in the tavern.

Victorious and raucous.

While I washed the blood off of my axe

in the quietness of the lake

that swallowed our stories into the water.

 

Maybe what I miss most

were the sounds of twenty boats

breaking a path through the Baltic Sea.

The promise of fortune and fate

drawing out the heaving breaths

of my army, working the oars through the black water

towards a destination far beyond

what we could see.

 

800px-birka_sweden_viking_grave_bj_581_by_hjalmar_stolpe_in_1889

 

Inspired by the very real historical Viking Warrior, who was first assumed to be male upon excavation in 1878. (And also inspired by a song with the same refrain). Due to the remains being buried with an arsenal of weapons and a game set, used in strategic thinking, it was clear that it was a warrior’s tomb.

It took more than a hundred years later for someone to examine the bones and confirm that the lack of Y-chromosomes indicates the remains were female. This caused much controversy. But the evidence speaks for itself, and the myth of the female Viking warrior became fact.

The artifacts in the tomb indicated she was a high ranking warrior. My poem tries to capture life through the eyes of this dead warrior, in the Viking village of Birka.

Geography plays a major role in the activities and organisation of a community. In this case, Birka (located in Sweden) was a major trading post between Northern Europe and the rest of the world.

Anthropological and historical studies show that much of what the modern world perceives as uniquely masculine or feminine gets debunked by findings such as these. Where medieval and sometimes ancient customs do not have the same roles and customs assigned to specific genders as we do today.

 

Written for dVerse Poets Pub

 

**Images from Smithsonian.com. Featured Image: (Antiquity Publications Ltd./drawing by Tancredi Valeri)

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
A reconstructed Viking Age house in Birka. Image source: http://www.worldsheritage.travel.wordpress.com

 

 

 

The covenant

Long ago we made a promise

to meet under the blue skies

beside the acacia grove.

You asked me to search my heart for justice

when fear clasped its chains around my feet.

And as I turned and stumbled away

you promised me unconditional love.

 

Separation began.

 

You knew in time I’d learn to trust my feelings

in the season when cool winds scatter dust around.

Apart from you, I found myself.

Who I really am.

 

Though there’s nothing in life to be certain of

I looked inside and found the answers

amidst the memories.

That love is truth and truth is justice.

And in my heart I found all three.

 

 

 

**Shared with dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night #239**

 

 

*Image from twinflames1111.com