Standing Helm Watch Today (JM)

 

(Joseph MacRae, August 28, 2024, feast day of the Dormition of the Mother of God (old calendar) and Our Lady of Kiev. Image from here.)

Standing Helm Watch Today

Standing Helm watch today

one hand on a tiny joystick

watching a Dell computer screen.

See a red line scrolling through a digital map.

No need for a compass.

Just like a computer game, just like a computer game.

Not many of us remember 

running on dead Reckoning.

I long to be back on an old wooden vessel

standing my watch as the propeller turns.

Thrusting water against the rudder, can feel it against the wheel.

Gently rocking in your hands, gently rocking in your hands.

Steering by a compass

Reading your charts

Using the aid of lighthouses, landmarks

Reading the buoys

Using radio direction to find beacons

No need for them today, no need for them today.

Now we have GPS

Global repositioning system.

A plotter on our onboard screen.

So with the passing of time

is the passing of a romantic era

In an old Sailor's life, in an old sailor's life.

*From prompt: Write of something longed for, past, present, or future (in this case the longing for miracles). Daisy Barrett-Nash’s Legacy Lines (Writers at Play), August 28, 2024.

I: I Could Write About (JM)

 

(Joseph MacRae, July 6, 2022. Image is of The Merc, from Joseph MacRae.)

I: I Could Write About 

I (pronoun): …12th century, a shortening of Old English ic, the first person singular nominative

I could write about living in our tiny rural town, Alsea, Oregon–-just 234 souls. Unincorporated, and like being in the 50’s. There’s John Boy’s Mercantile (the Merc), an old timey general store. History murals fill the outer walls, inside there’s fishing and hunting gear, fresh local meats at the deli. Though remote, we’re on a big cycle route. Sometimes the Merc’s little parking lot near bursts with Harleys, their riders scoring coffee for the road. Or there's Deb’s Cafe (true confession can’t get enough of the biscuits and gravy). There’s a library, out its window can see cows a stone’s throw away–- if you stare they’ll stare back! There’s the Church, school, medical clinic, post office, fire station, grange, organic farm, park, mountains round, birds roaming about--otherwise a whole lot of quiet--and the Alsea river running through it all. And that’s about it. But then, what more do you need?

 

*From Prompt: Create a “Telling Trails” piece (basically to take a letter/a word beginning with that letter/a definition of that word/a picture drawn to/maybe a song drawn to--and write what comes); from Iris Jackson’s Finding Your Storyteller’s Voice with Telling Trails (Pat Conroy Literary Center, Beaufort, SC), June/July 2022.

August Ventures (JM)

 

August Garden (JM)

July Blooms (JM)

  

Carnations from our garden, for Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Her feast day, July 16, 2024. Image is my own.

So the Flowers Grow (JM)

 

(Joseph MacRae, shorter version of previous poem, June 3, 2024, feast day of Our Lady of Vladimir (above) and Saint Clotildis. Image from here.) 

So the Flowers Grow

When the gutter fills with falling rain

stream’s flow lets the flowers grow.

Sense the cooling of a spring storm

pulse of life newly bestowed.

Such beauty I must admire 

pale green leaves, sky rimmed with gold.

Heads up from the sands, open your

eyes. What was hidden — unfolds!

 

*From prompt: Freewrite as inspired by Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall’s quote “The world hid its head in the sands of convention so that by seeing nothing it might avoid truth”, then format after Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall’s “Tramping Poem”, with an eye to using the comfort of rhyme scheme to make the expression of charged issues easier for readers to receive. From Daisy Barrett Nash's Writers at Play, Legacy Lines series, June 3, 2024.

To Let the Flowers Grow (JM)

 

(Joseph Macrae, May 27, 2024, Memorial Day, and feast day of Our Lady of Naples (above), Our Lady of the Sick and Saint Melangell Image from here.)

To Let the Flowers Grow

When the gutter flows

from falling rain

on the ground it goes

to let the flowers grow.

I sense the freshness of 

a cool morning rain

that Heaven bestows

to let the flowers grow. 

So in admiration we watch

the beauty unfold

in shades of red and blue

purple and gold.

Lift up your heads from

the sands and open

your eyes–-See the

seed that was hidden

bloom, sweet and bold!

*From combined prompt: Freewrite as inspired by a series of three words, given one at a timse, letting the next word naturally continue the piece, without overthinking it. The three words were: gutter, sense and admiration; and freewrite as inspired by this quote from "Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall: "The world hid its head in the sands of convention so that by seeing nothing it might avoid truth." From Daisy Barrett Nash's Writers at Play, Legacy Lines series, May 27, 2024.