DAILY PHOTO: A Few Views of the Malacca River

PROMPT: Phase in Life

Daily writing prompt
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.

I guess it’s a confession of antsiness to admit that I haven’t experienced such a time. I left home a week before my high school graduation ceremony. I never gave reenlistment serious consideration when I was in the military. There was a several year gap between my undergraduate studies and my first graduate degree. I’ve never left a job teary-eyed.

If it’s the case that everyone experiences such a time, then mine is yet to come.

“Aftermath” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]

When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.

Hermit [Senryū]

mountain hermit
looks over the city…
turns, walks back to hut.

DAILY PHOTO: Three Views of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Tbilisi

Crimson Fig [Haiku]

sunbeams pass through 
a reddened Sacred Fig:
one hundred warm hues.

Forgotten Mountains [Haiku]

socked in for weeks:
clouds dissipate to reveal
forgotten mountains.

“Lethe” by Walter de la Mare [w/ Audio]

Only the Blessed of Lethe's dews
May stoop to drink. And yet,
Were their Elysium mine to lose,
Could I, sans all repining, choose
Life's sorrows to forget?

Slow Fire [Lyric Poem]

Explosion in slow motion
Rocks the boats that line the ocean:
Swaying, swaying, they swing to and fro!
Metronomic masts set to tempo, s l o w.

DAILY PHOTO: Sevan Lake, Armenia