Witch & Skeleton [Free Verse / Senryū]

Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre; Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1844)
PREMISE:
Princess Takiyasha
 summoned a skeleton to
  kill a samurai.

MORAL?:
"Don't bring swords
 to a giant skeleton-ghost 
  fight!"

CONCLUSION:
Yet, in settled dust,
 the world was less one
  Princess-witch.

DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from Charyn Canyon

Faun by Moonlight [Haiku]

Faun by Moonlight (1900); Léon Spilliaert
what shenanigans
 goes on in milky moonlight,
  unseen by sleepers?

Summer Clouds [Haiku]

thick summer clouds 
look as dense as the woods
they float over.

DAILY PHOTO: Rafting the Zambezi

Mermaid [Lyric Poem]

Waterhouse, John William; A Mermaid; Royal Academy of Arts
So many miles of coastline,
   of rocky coves and outcrops.
 Where none can see a straight line,
   and water sloshes and slops.

Oh, might one miss a mermaid
    hidden among the inlets,
 so snug in stone palisade -
    a lair of shells and torn nets?

If you say that you've seen one,
    I'll not call you a faker.
 I rather think it's great fun
    to flirt with claims, wiseacre.

PROMPT: Self-Care

Daily writing prompt
How do you practice self-care?

1.) Move my body often and with vigor. 2.) Eat my veggies. 3.) Rest as though it’s an essential part of the process of living (i.e. not as though it’s goofing off between “doing stuff.”) 4.) Drop anything without value, making personal development as much a process of stripping away as it is of adding to.

Vegetive Ambiguity [Haiku]

barren trees say Fall,
 but the verdant undergrowth
  says Spring.

Statuesque [Haiku]

an egret stands:
 still of body,
  but not of eye.

DAILY PHOTO: Frankfurt’s Old Town Square