Failure

Today’s post on Blogging from A to Z has some quotes to help us focus on a successful future. Two of them are about failure:

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” –Winston Churchill

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember, that’s where you will find success.” –Thomas J. Watson (CEO of IBM from 1914 to 1956)

Every time I post a photograph that I consider a success, there are many photographs that I consider failures. Like beauty, failure has to do with the perception of the beholder. Thinking of failures as stepping stones to success, I created a filter that represents a stepping stone then I looked for ways to break some of my stones using the string between the lights in the mirrorworld.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is to argue against or question a saying or proverb. To go with my theme, I chose “Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.”

Poem A Day

Today’s prompt is to write an abundance poem.

dVerse Poets Pub

For today’s MTB: Critique and Craft prompt, Laura challenges us with an aubade. To include “Morning” or “Aubade” somewhere in the title, and to write either:

1. a poem evoking daybreak/greeting the dawn, or
2. a poem about lovers parting at dawn

The Poem

Aubade for an Abundance of Failures

Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up
unless your goal is falling itself
an abundance of falling like a skydiver with a
parachute packed on her back
refusing to jump from a plane
or a climber who like a cat up a tree
won’t repel from the cliff climbed.

Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up
unless your goal is to stay prone
like a yogi in corpse pose
in an abundance of lying still
or a fighter who cannot take another hit
waiting for the slow count of ten
a glorious end to fight another day.

Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up
unless you’re desperate for a full night’s sleep
like me, and dawn has arrived once again,
forcing another failure, another red-eyed morning
an abundance of half-waking hours
Success would be refusing to get up, but
Dream lovers never arrived or slipped out
with the blur of fur when I slid open
the glass and was met by frozen dew
Perhaps I’ll get a glimpse of dreams unseen
as a fleeting memory in the afternoon.