These Four

Fertile light
Which nourishes
Every living thing,
Letting healthy energy
Pour over all life
Existing and growing
Full within common
Circles of influence.

Water, bearer, builder,
Giver, in everything,
The element of cells
Binder of creation
Healer of random hurts
Companion on the journey;
Life contains a thirst
Deeper than any ocean.

Air, holding breath
Loss, immediate death;
Containing space,
Spirit, dreams
Where time meets
Being – quiet, soothing,
Invisible nurture,
Life bringing fullness.

Earth, the surface,
Ground, beneath all feet
Remaining, sustaining
Though civilization
May timely turn
Into its overwhelming
Dust – there lives trust
The base providing
What fuels living
Enough to retain foundations
Raising survival, life.

I am aware most use fire instead of light in a presentation such as this, but light is how it began in this instance. What I am given I usually keep.

Blue

Blue of a crisp
Cloudless
Sky seeming
A rich robe
Wrapping
To a distant horizon.

Clouds encroach
Shedding plenteous
Tears rolling down
Spilling as lightning
Releases cries of
Intense thunder
Unleashing
The held hidden hostage.

Anxiety, doubt, fear,
Tension filter like
Torrential rain filling
A hole in reality;
Swallowing
It all benign in
An effort to become,
Become relevant.

Gardens grow vibrant
As rainbows, delicate
As butterflies winging
Across the bruised
Evening
As the sun slowly
Sinks, a vessel
No one can bail.

Relentless people
Compel stories told
Before grudgingly
Retiring into
Comforting downy
Covers whose cost –
An unknowable secret
Paid by those who
Gave enfolding safety
Out of the blue.

Prompt:

Take what time you will and free-write.
Keep going for the period you have chosen.
Do not worry over correctness; get the words out. You can come back later and edit.

Kept

Forbidden entrance
The remains
Though shattered
Survive, alive
With curiosity,
Wondering
How reason
Keeps pace when
Alone all is
Nothing.

A steady fall
Of rain
Washing recollection
Into ditches
Run with clay.

A deep ocean regret
Roars a forward tide
Booming a cave
Where mysteries
Like ghosts hide;
A twine of trellis
Roses with bloodied
Thorns
Upward climbs.

Language aspires
To expand intellect
With fine rhetoric;
Somehow
Encouraging noisome
Ravens to disperse,
Shades, shadows depart.

Love ransomed,
Life sparkles.

© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan

Prompt: Create something about a circumstance you overcame or would like to go beyond.

Whilst

I am neither
Convinced it exists,
Nor certain it does not.
It is perhaps something
Like the proverbial cat
Who may escape
Judgment until
By a concerned party
Observed;
But life, generally,
Is not in strictest sense
Measurable.

There obtain multitudes
Of variables of which
All cannot be ignored.
A mind may
Ascend or descend
According
To the temperments
Of the heart which
Is in best of times
Begged askance for
Tendency
To ride the fickle whims
Of ungovernable passion.

All, blind and unknowing,
Believing liberty abounds
While charmed by aspects
Of affinity only illumined
By creativity, which we
Purport to control,
But, reality,
If it be,
Assaults us with falsity.
The cat upon the sill
Cries
Its soul, besieged,
By want to
Exercise
A given instinct.

Not the Roses

Roses weep their
Jeweled blood
Upon deserts of
-Complaint-
No love we reap
With thorns of
Doubt,
Vicious fear,
Pricked hearts
Without restraint.

Love may in
A flood of tears
Wash into seas
Of time,
Where smiles
Decorate
Parting years,
All things set
Aright,
As gentle dew
Bathes
The roses
And the sun
Kisses
Pleasant gardens
With fantastic
Waves
Of delight.

Still, lifeblood is
Expended in fields,
Roses
Come to rest,
Creativity becomes
The hope to save
From rending;
Infinite test.
We are and are
Not
Known for inside
We lie hidden
Weeping
Often for what is
Forbidden.
Love and fear
Entwine
Become one, the
Same,
Edges cut, glass
Ensnares,
Inside alike
Yet, the time
It takes
More impossible
To reclaim.

What some call impossible is never far from mind.