Words are marvels! Words on a tongue, or typed / inked:
written (pictured) as on a page or screen, see!
Words are the most miraculous musics; words sing
even when mute (apparently) – shown, not said.
Still we can hear, loud.
Written for Friday Writings #187 at Poets and Storytellers United: a celebratory poem in the form of a Sapphic ode.
We Goddesses of Shining Light – who do not
claim to be ourselves divinities, only
that we seek to embody, as best we might,
Her good qualities –
have been slowly ageing, over all these years
of meeting and sending out our love as light
to the whole community, and thence the world.
Now we’re old and few.
We no longer dance in circle when we meet,
nor sing to Her, but still we breathe in, breathe out
a flood of light, which first we see as a star
and then as our torch
beaming wherever needed. We have become
a small circle of elders, the grandmothers
who, someone on facebook said, are needed now.
Well then, here we are!
How will you use us, world, before we leave you?
That is not ours to know or even to ask.
It is enough that we meet, as do other
small wisdom circles.
The world has no listening for our wisdom.
We are wise enough to understand this fact,
wise enough to know our only task: send light,
continue sending.
This is loosely based on the Sapphic stanza (aka Sapphic ode). I was inspired by Rajani Radhakrishnan's recent use of the form. Named after Greek poet Sappho, this form (in its 'lesser' version) has 38 syllables in four lines in a pattern of 11/11/11/5, which I have followed. However, I have ignored patterns of long and short syllables which are also classically used.
Written for Friday Writings #165 at Poets and Storytellers United, in which we are asked to use the word 'torch' in a piece of writing.
Accepted for publication in Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads, 2026 anthology from dVerse.
You’re natural – but filled with wool, not feathers.
No swans died to create your nurturing warmth.
Your exterior’s colourful, beautiful.
I crave your embrace!
It’s autumn again. Welcome back to my bed!
This is our time. How faithfully we return
to each other, our long connection always
blissful to renew.
I remember when Andrew and I found you,
almost disbelieving our great good fortune.
You were such a rarity, such a treasure –
now even more so.
You have comforted me in my aloneness
now that Andrew is no longer here to share
my bed, nor share your handsome presence thereon.
Thank you, my doona.
The NaPo prompt this time was to write an ode to something ordinary. The PAD prompt dovetailed nicely, being to write a love poem (and/or an anti-love poem, but I ignored that option). We were shown some irregular odes by Neruda, but I decided on a Sapphic ode, extending it from a single stanza to several verses.
