1609 - The Temple

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are:

Forget, church, dancers, tea, robes, weed, sing, exultation, hope, squirrel, nuts, amen

The Temple

Forget the bricks and mortar,  

Forget the incense and incantations,  

Forget the pious gentlemen in crimson robes,  

Forget the singing and lamentations  

That fill these cavernous halls  

With exultation and misplaced hope.  

Step away from the pomp and ceremony,  

Step outside, into the real world,  

Into the forest, among the trees.  

Smell the eucalyptus, just be there.  

Even the weeds have flowers.  

Smoke drifts through the trees,  

Someone is boiling a billy, making tea.  

Possums, once thought to be squirrels,  

Timid dancers in the twilight, frolic. 

 

Nuts to the bricks and mortar.  

This is a church to embrace.  

Amen.

◊

1608 - Pythia

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are:

waves, slip, void, soul, restless, dark, chanting, flickering, pulse, chance, marble, fan

Pythia

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely.

You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

-- Henry David Thoreau

The fumes come in waves

From cracks in the rock.

Attendant priestesses chant,

Hypnotic, rhythmic, throbbing—

In time with the pulse of the oracle.

There, seated on a tripod,

In the moonlight, flickering,

The petitioners, restless, wait

For their answer. Is it war?

Do we chance our arm? Or not?

Lives are at stake. Fortunes.

She sits quietly, surrounded

By the protective and the anxious,

A reflective soul in a trance,

Her mind mingling with the divine.

Oblivious to those around her,

She slips in and out of their world,

Their concerns, the dark voids

Of their fears and ambitions.

Cloistered in her marble temple,

Where flickering torches dance on stone,

Her answers ripple through the empire,

Like shadows cast and then gone.

And so she sits. And thinks.

Surety brings ruin.

◊

1607 - The Journey of a River Stone

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are:

pebble, shiny, laden, ghost, mingled, blisters, gasping, vanishing, empty, scatter, forest, shadows

The Journey of a River Stone

In matters of style, swim with the current; 

in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

--Thomas Jefferson

Forged by the earth,

My start did not direct my end.

I was bigger then, rougher,

Laden with hope, perhaps,

Hope mingled with expectation.

I am bold and boulder. 

Weather played with me,

Bits blistered off, scree, pebbles,

Slowly parting, vanishing.

Cracks formed in me, I broke,

I parted with myself.

All families disperse, scatter.

No time to feel empty.

A river embraces me, rushes me,

Tumbling, gasping through rapids,

Tough times polish us.

I become smooth and shiny.

Eventually the river calms

I too calm, shallow waters

Beneath a forest canopy.

Sunlight and shadows flicker.

They say I have spirits, spirituality

Possibly even ghosts.

◊

1606 - The Forest

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  
This weeks words are:

vast salty simmering habits mind trickle secretive brim axe roots shadows stones

The Forest

“If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, 

you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.”

― Alan Watts

Beneath the vast canopy, 

Encased in green velvet,

The forest embraces us.

Roots and branches mesh

Shadows and clearings

Animals, secretive, furtive,

Captives of their own habits.

Birds heard, seldom seen.

An axe, leans agains a tree,

Rusty, abandoned but for the moss,

Moss shared by the stones, logs.

A creek trickles and tinkles,

Fresh, clear, not salty

Part of the orchestra of the forest.

Brim full of sounds, adagio

Simmering, interlaced.

If you have a mind to listen,

A mind to connect.

-x-