Tag: 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 built 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

Hotter Than Hades

Hotter Than Hades

That summer when I was seven was hotter than Hades
The earth dry and cracked like a moon crater
I remember Grandma sitting on her porch
Snipping the green beans into her apron
Wiping the sweat from her eyes
with the damp cloth permanently wrapped around her neck
We spent most days down in the swimming hole
Swinging from the tree and jumping in the water
or floating in tire tubes just to stay cool
When the sun went down we'd catch fireflies in jars
and watch the June bugs spinning on their backs
by the kitchen door
The days passed slower than molasses
Daddy used to say it was hotter than a stolen tamale
I remember the swarm of grasshoppers that came
They were bigger than Texas.  Billy said they were locusts
They ate momma’s sunflowers,
making her madder than a hornet
There were so many in the air they would land on your legs
while you were riding your bike
Grown-ups were bad-tempered and us kids stayed well away
It seemed as if it was never going to rain
Until that day when big fat drops spotted the pavement 
Like the polka dots on my Sunday best dress
It was a Saturday
Finally, the heavens opened
and the rain came down in buckets
We danced in the street until we were soaked to the skin
and Grandma chased us in with her broom
The next day we all went to church to give thanks 
 
 
Copyright © 2021 Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing
All Rights Reserved

Grace is hosting D'Verse Poets tonight and she has
prompted us to write a poem incorporating setting (specific or descriptive) in our blog.

Word Prompt

Swim - FOWC

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Tryst

Tryst


Could it be?
Surely not
After a lifetime
of travelers passing by

Was it still
in the same spot?
It was worth a try
 
In the crevasse
Down below
A keepsake
marking the day

A token of love
left there long ago
Buried under the clay 
 
With determination 
it was recovered
Invoking feelings
long forgotten

Lost in thoughts
Recollections stirred
All wrapped up in cotton
 
He had never returned
She was now certain
Their tryst
a faded memory

Faces become hazy
Promises spoken and broken
Conjured in a sweet reverie
 
 
 
Christine Bolton - Poetry for Healing ©

In response to Sue Vincent's Thursday Photo Prompt

Word Prompt:  Haze

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