1382 - The Letter with No Date

 

 Image by ChatGPT & PhotoShop

Elephant's Child presents words for us to use some or all in a creative writing piece.  

This week's words are bloody tricky!

Tennis, Turkish, Delight, Melon, Brook, Officers, Steps, Conclusion, Earliest, Pan, Asparagus, Yellow.

The Letter with No Date

It spoke of asparagus.

What was that all about?

And melons, eaten in the sun?

The vague mention of feathers,

Ruffled during a tennis game.

The crossed-out word: Turkish.

Delight?  Coffee?  Baths?

Seems out of context.

Handwritten. It had no date. 

A woman’s writing, neat.

The paper brittle and yellow.

The ink faded and barely legible.

It had been carefully folded

And put at the back of the book.

That book.  The one with the ribbon.

The sort given to officers

Receiving their commission.

It spoke of love, of separation,

It spoke of flowers and candles,

Of brooks and ferny glens.

It spoke of Pan and his flute.

It spoke of desire to reunite.

It spoke of the steps to take,

Places to go, even when to go—

The earliest opportunity, it said.

It sought a conclusion.

I wonder…

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1381 - The Almanac Keeper

 

 Image by ChatGPT

Elephant's Child presents 5-10 words for us to use some or all in a creative writing piece.  

This week's words are:

Almanac, Vegetables, Smoke, Rocky, Pursuit, Tide, Data, Pearly, Block, Hedge, Yellow

The Almanac Keeper

It lives in his back pocket.

Battered, crumpled, well-thumbed.

Its pages guide his life.

The tides come and go

As the pages predict.

The moon and stars follow

The stated arcs of time

As foretold in the yellowing pages—

The data of his life, of his being.

He scribbles in pencil—

Margin notes that embellish

The records of the relentless 

Movement of seasons, of time—

When to plant vegetables,

When to prune hedges,

Small bon mots to ease 

The approch to the pearly gates

But silent on the reason to use pearl.

Good advice on the smoking

Of a recently slaughtered pig,

On blocking out crops

For ideal rotation.

On the habits of wildlife.

Towards the back

A prayer of thanksgiving.

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1380 - The Labyrinth

Image by ChatGPT

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

 

This week's words are:

Wordle 709

prowl, beast, claws, shift, mask, strands, twists, temple, wandered, underworld, map, thread

The Labyrinth

“The seeker is the sought.” 

— Rupert Spira

The path winds around

Not outward, spiralling in.

No need for Ariadne’s thread here

He’s not trying to get out.

Getting out is not the end,

Not the goal he’s searching for.

So, when his focus shifts

From the temple to the paths

That twist and turn, seemingly at whim.

It slowly dawns upon him—

The underworld is not below,

It is found to be within.

There is no map to guide him—

He is the map, it seems.

He had wandered, prowled

Around the edges of this maze

In the earlier days of his quest

But fearing the enclosed beast,

The Minotaur of fear and doubt,

That prowls the darkened corridors

That traverse across his mind.

The eyes of fear, the claws of doubt,

They pulled him from the edge.

Now, denying Ariadne,

The strands of silken threads

Lead him further in, not out,

And there, in the silence 

That was always there,

The mask finally falls away.

He is the temple.

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