Desert Places by Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
WIth no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

The Head Dress by G. de Forest Brush

small stone 3

the children are woken up by the bin falling over in the wind, they think it is thunder

small stone 2

the night sky is clean as a bleached wound,
I can feel the bone white
                               cut of the half moon

Wave, Night, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1928

small stone 1

The bare tree outside the window looks far more beautiful than the decorated one in our sitting room.

Winter Apple Tree 9 by Sunghee Park  view more wonderful pictures by Sunghee Park here...

A writing challenge for the New Year

I joined in with the river of stones last New Year and it was a wonderful experience. It helped me to pause and focus on things I would normally ignore. It prompted me to turn some of my small stones into longer poems and short stories. It helped to get my writing flowing and introduced me to many other talented writers. Join in, you won't regret it!

river of stones

Rum

Taking the rum bottle you rinse
out the sweet sugar film and force a red
candle into the void

Each evening we light the wick, replace
it when flame melts into nothingness,
only the wax

remains, the liquid drips hardened
around the neck like the frill
of some long extinct lizard

I nurture the long drops like children
noting the growth and checking
for weeping fragility

What are poems but the flickering
huff and waft of the smoke
when the candle

gutters in the coil that sneaks past
reason and sense, the spaces
where emotion gets in

through the gap of the window frame
and my glass is tilted in the hand,
the liquid is burning amber

and the flame in the eye
is burning amber