Trails [Kyōka]

wildlife trail:
a subtle part in the grass;
human trail:
a bald and dusty line..., but
a buck 'd be hell on your rug, too!

PROMPT: Lose Track of Time

Daily writing prompt
Which activities make you lose track of time?

Reading, thinking, and learning.

“The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants” (1350) by Emily Dickinson

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants --
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot

As if it tarried always
And yet it's whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake's Delay --
And fleeter than a Tare --

'Tis Vegetation's Juggler --
The Germ of Alibi --
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie --

I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit --
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer's circumspect.

Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn --
Had Nature an Apostate --
That Mushroom -- it is Him!

Raptor Rides [Haiku]

raptor rides updrafts:
head & eye swivel-pivot;
all else, glides.

DAILY PHOTO: Green & Rocky Hilltop, Uttari Betta

Making Waves [Haiku]

hilltop puddle
catches gusting winds:
patterns turn chaos.

PROMPT: Bothered

Daily writing prompt
What bothers you and why?

The second half of the question is quicker and simpler to answer. Things bother me because I — through conditioning and petty impulses — allow them to bother me. I neither blame external circumstances, nor accept that said externalities can be responsible for my state of mind. I could remain unbothered by the things that bother me, with enough work to break engrained patterns. I should also note that I could choose to be bothered by a great many happenings that don’t bother or offend me in the slightest.

As for what bothers me, the list — sadly — remains many. That said, I don’t think it’s wise to broadcast the things that get under one’s skin out into the universe. Just like I wouldn’t announce if I had a gimpy knee or a weak jaw to a general audience that might include those who wish me ill. It just seems strategically unwise.

“Untitled” [Pronunciation Poem] by Anonymous* [w/ Audio]

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead -- it's said like bed, not bead.
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose
Just look them up -- and goose and choose.

And cork and work and card and ward.
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five!

* This poem has come to be attributed to a T.S. Watt with a date of 1954. However, the broad divergence of titles and lack of other publication information suggest the alternate possibility that attribution was invented after the fact and has just been mindlessly copied across the internet. I don’t wish to cheat T.S. Watt, if he or she was an actual person who wrote this clever poem, but I also don’t wish to contribute to the spread of false information that happens regularly across the internet. Hence, this note.

Feeding Frenzy [Haiku]

frenzied pigeons: 
a tight, geometric horde—
until food’s end.

DAILY PHOTO: South Karnataka Farmland