I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say, ‘He feels deeply, he feels tenderly.’ — Vincent van Gogh
A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope of the world. — Inscription from a church in Sussex, England, 1730
For Day 3, NaPoWriMo wrote: “Today I’d like to challenge you to write an elegy – a poem that mourns or honors someone dead or something gone by. And I’d like to ask you to center the elegy on an unusual fact about the person or thing being mourned.” I had a few other ideas but went with this, a first draft for Dad.
Mostly gentle,
hard-working,
devoted to family
and to his work.
Soft-singer by campfires
his voice deep as
we listened to his
unexpected songs in the dark. Continue reading →
Threw a little bit of Wales under the sky I’d started the other day. The foreground is as it was but I probably would leave it out on a do-over.
Bear with me while I expound a mite. The suggestion from NaPoWriMo/FB was “Today’s Prompt: Write a poem inspired by your favorite painting or piece of art (feel free to post that image with your poem)”
On the website, the challenge was “write a poem inspired by, or in the form of, a recipe! It can be a recipe for something real, like your grandmother’s lemon chiffon cake, or for something imaginary, like a love potion or a spell.”
Sorry, didn’t quite do either of those but was perhaps inspired by the first. I call bonus points for a Latin title!
Nullae apologiae
I am fond of my tools. No apologies.
I have made others swear
not to touch my scissors.
I am loathe to let the unwashed
use my cast iron pans.
This is not to say that I care for all
my tools equally. That would be a lie.
Many tools are just here
because of something broken,
something that required a
larger pry bar or higher step.
But my real tools… Continue reading →
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
