Tag: Memories

Not Welcome – A Quadrille

Not Welcome

Old photographs
familiar scents
A forgotten song 
sending me to 
where you still
hover on the perimeter
of my life
Popping in and out
as if still welcome
Memories were good
until they weren’t 
Where is the pop-up blocker
when you need it most?


Copyright © 2023 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved


ish is hosting Monday Quadrille at D'Verse Poets.  Her prompt word is 'Pop' on its own or in any form.

A Quadrille is a poem of exactly 44 words excluding the title.

Graphic - Pixabay

All Said and Done

All Said and Done

It is said and done
What else is there?
A new broom sweeps away
feelings of two lives trying to be one
Some still caught
in the corners of the mind
Buried deep in grooves
Where time has washed over
Unable to flush them all out
Yet there they are

Every once in a while
words from a song 
will disturb the embedded memories
A fragrance in the air will stir
old familiar feelings
and you question if it is
 really
all said and done
You know the answer
Dust particles
carry only the happy times

Miraculously the mind
has let go of the hurt
Allowing you to move on
But, oh those
never-to-be-forgotten moments
Will not leave 
They are needed to remind you
love is again possible
Because you can still feel
and your heart remains open


Copyright © 2023 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved



For Linda G. Hill's Stream of Consciousness - Use the word 'One'

Image by Marisa04 from Pixabay

Childhood Memories – A Haibun

Early memories that stick in our minds are significant.  They stay with us for a reason.  Perhaps for us to remember them fondly or maybe they are glimpses of what our future holds for us.

I often have flashbacks from childhood of things I enjoyed doing and to this day I still do.  Growing up London I loved going to parks and other green spaces where I could look at trees and lakes.  I would collect leaves and grasses and paste them lovingly into a scrap book where I would catalog them along with descriptions.

My other fascination was with birds.  Seeing a small red-breasted Robin at Christmas time, especially if it snowed, was thrilling to me.  I also remember the excitement of going to Trafalgar Square as a child with my mother.  She would buy these little containers of corn from vendors so we could feed the pigeons.  The sheer joy of having them land on your shoulders, sometimes your head, and feed directly from your hand was exciting to a child. 

Childhood memories
Birdwatching and collecting
Still close to my heart


Copyright © 2023 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Frank Tassone is hosting Monday Haibun at D’Verse and his ass with “Significant Memories”

Unforgettable – Flash Fiction

Unforgettable

In the warm morning air I walked along the beach. My footsteps the only ones visible after the previous night’s storm. Kicking through seaweed and the empty shells of horseshoe crabs I let my mind wander back to you. It was here we built our love on a foundation of sand, ignoring the risks. We’d lay in sunshine as it darkened our skin and tingled our noses. At sunset, when night devoured the day, we made love under a moonlit, starry sky. Our promises were made to be broken. Time stood still as we constructed sandcastles dedicated to a summer love that neither of us wanted to end. Inevitably it did and we went our separate ways.

So long ago but in space in time I sit thousands of feet above the sea and I am still able to conjure an image of you.

Copyright © 2023 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Merril is hosting Prosery Monday at D’Verse and has prompted us to write a piece of flash fiction or non-fiction that includes the following line:

“In space in time I sit thousands of feet above the sea”
From May Sarton, “Meditation in Sunlight”

Prosery is to be no more that 144 words excluding the title.

Happy as a Lark – Flash Fiction

Happy as a Lark

Time of no consequence on this summer afternoon.  Reclining comfortably on the cool grass, my back against the shady oak.  Around me gossamer wings of dragonflies work overtime returning my incredulous stare.

Birdsong fills the air as buttercups wave in the breeze.  My mind wanders wherever it wishes and I remember childhood family walks through these fields.  Being the youngest I’d sit atop my father’s shoulders. My siblings carrying the makings of a picnic our mother would set on a tartan blanket.  After, we would play hide and seek and make daisy chains to wear.  Happy as larks we would run until exhausted and collapse in a heap under a tree.

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings.  Unrecognizable at first but then as I stir it becomes clearer.  The beautiful sound of a summer lark completing my reverie.

Copyright © 2022 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Lisa is hosting Prosery Monday at D'Verse Poets tonight.  The line we are to use in our piece of Flash Fiction or Non Fiction is by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., from The Chambered Nautilus "Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings"
Prosery is exactly 144 words excluding the title.  It cannot be poetry.

Time Stands Still – Rima Dissoluta

Le Vieux Port – Marseille

Time Stands Still

Seventeen in nineteen sixty nine
Hair blonde, straight and long
all the way down to the waist
Skirt tiny with a pleat
Way above the knees

Limbs stretched supple, lean and fine
Pushing through the throng
A girl on a mission makes haste 
Never missing a beat
Excusez-moi if you please

Le Vieux Port, Marseille, said the sign
heart skipping it won’t be long
She’ll see him, not a moment to waste
Slipping into her seat
Waiting fifty three years, a breeze


Copyright © 2022 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Sanaa is hosting D'Verse Poets tonight and has prompted us with
a French form called Rima Dissoluta.  It is a poem of three five line
stanzas and the rhymes would work as follows:

(1-a, 2-b, 3-c, 4-d, 5-e) (6-a, 7-b, 8-c, 9-d, 10-e) (11-a, 12-b, 13-c, 14-d, 15-e)

I lived in Marseille when I was younger and have fond memories 

True Love – A Cadralor

True Love

Shivering, the young woman stepped outside
pulling on the toggle of her duffle coat
shielding herself from the blistering wind
Just after five and darkness had already fallen
as she headed west on the tree-lined avenue

An old man sat quietly in the corner of the café
Staring into his bottomless cup of coffee
Ignoring hunger pains, twiddling with the
hole in the left finger of his old gloves
His head filled with memories suppressed

An elegant woman sat upright with a fixed smile
He, a puffed up blowhard, at the microphone
Commanding attention with his loud voice
and phony diatribe as kiss-asses drooled
Her body ached and her mind lived in the past

A lifetime ago two kids had clung to each other
Inseparable, joined at the hip, in love
She from the house on the hill, privileged
He from the other side of the railroad tracks
His intellect and her beauty, a winning combo

The young woman saw him in the cafe, head lowered
It had been a long time passing before her call to him
Entering he looked up at her, eyes clouded, and she went to him
Her father embraced her and she clung to him tightly
He needed to know his one true love was dying


Copyright © 2021 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Bjorn is hosting D'Verse Poets and has prompted us with a form
called Cadralor.
The cadralor is a poem of 5, unrelated, numbered stanzaic images, each of which can stand alone as a poem, is fewer than 10 lines, and ideally constrains all stanzas to the same number of lines. Imagery is crucial to cadralore: each stanza should be a whole, imagist poem, almost like a scene from a film, or a photograph. The fifth stanza acts as the crucible, alchemically pulling the unrelated stanzas together into a love poem. By “love poem,” we mean that your fifth stanza illuminates a gleaming thread that runs obliquely through the unrelated stanzas and answers the compelling question: “For what do you yearn?”

Image by Please Don't sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

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