Thursday’s Poetry Pub Poem a Day Challenge prompt was “currents.” Here’s my response.

“Only dead fish go with the flow.”
Unless of course, you’re caught in a rip tide
Which means if you fight it, you’re hosed
Don’t you dare swim against it,
You have to ride it out
Angle your escape, and
By the slant of words spoken, bisect it
Swimming askance,
Speaking truth slight
Is sometimes the best way
To turn on the light,
Get out and home alive.

© Randall Edwards 2022
#NovPad #PoPubPAD Challenge hosted by @poetry_pub 

Yesterday marked the beginning of the November Poem a Day Challenge #NovPAD and The Poetry Pub has offered a set of prompts for the event, #PoPubPAD. Day 1’s prompt to start us off was: Hello.

Here’s my attempt.

“Hello,” from halouen, “to shout in chase”
Or  hala “to fetch” in old high-German
A cry from one bank over the water
To get the crossed ferryman’s attention.

And though it was Mr. Bell’s invention,
Thomas thought, “Hello” was better to greet
The other in conversation, to tell
The receiver, I’m here, ready to speak.

“Hello,” is now a word of greeting
And in that way it may bring one to
the end of waiting, an invitation 
To say I am here and glad to see you.

Hello! I see you there. Do you hear me?
Can you help me across this divide,
Rivers of experience, years made wide,
By the current of circumstance and trial?

Hello! I call to get your attention
To catch your eye, to fetch your ear
Possibility calls with connection
What shall we say? Where go from here?

(c) Randall Edwards 2022

Here’s this week’s #twentywordtuesday poem which is a re-working of C.S. Lewis’ last sentence from his sermon, “The Weigh of Glory.”

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve joined in posting short verses as a part of #twentywordtuesday. Here are a few of those.