PROMPT: Fruits

Daily writing prompt
List your top 5 favorite fruits.

As my personal philosophy precludes having stable favorites, I’ll go with the fruits I had at breakfast (in no particular order): Mango, Banana, Leechee, Watermelon, and Cantaloupe.

Stout Clouds [Haiku]

stout white clouds
drift low over mountains
as if they might crash.

DAILY PHOTO: Church of Maca, Peru

“Lament I” [感遇一] by Zhang Jiuling [张九龄]

A lone goose flies in from the sea,
Not daring to land in water.
Glimpsing a pair of Kingfisher --
Nested Three Pearl Tree squatters --
It asks, "High up in that rare tree
Of gold spheres, are you not afraid?
Fancy clothes incur points and jeers
And those high up are harshly weighed.
As I roam dark rivers and hills,
Envious hunters give me chills."

This is the first of the 300 Tang Poems [唐诗三百首] and it is also the first of a quartet of poems. The original poem in Simplified Chinese:

孤鸿海上来, 池潢不敢顾; 
侧见双翠鸟, 巢在三珠树。
矫矫珍木巅, 得无金丸惧?
美服患人指, 高明逼神恶。
今我游冥冥, 弋者何所慕?

PROMPT: One Small Improvement

Daily writing prompt
What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

Use a timer to create distraction-free zones in your day. When you’re working on a task, set the timer for some reasonable time (say, 1 hour.) [Do not try to do many hours at a time, you should move and ruminate on a regular basis.] Until the timer goes off, social media doesn’t exist. YouTube doesn’t exist. Snacks do not exist. Visitors do not exist. Phone calls don’t exist. Texts don’t exist. Only the task at hand exists, and only dire emergency should be allowed to interfere. This facilitates Flow.

City Winter [Haiku]

trees, straight & bare, 
line the boulevard. one leaf
blows across the walk.

All Eyes [Haiku]

yellow fluff
clamped in a bird's beak -
now, the new leader.

Salmon Skies [Free Verse]

Sun dips below the hill;
Light rises off the roof,
And the lowest clouds
Glow in salmon hues.

DAILY PHOTO: Buda Palace in Winter

“A Question” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.