Written in the Stars

Starlight by Maria L. Berg 2023

Today’s prompt for Quadrille Monday at dVerse Poets Pub is “star.”

I’ve been playing around with creating found poetry from The Complete Herbal by Nicholas Culpeper (1653), one of the texts suggested for submissions to the next issue of Heron Tree.

Culpeper believed that the medicinal properties of herbs were connected to stars and planets, writing, “I knew those various affections in man, in respect of sickness and health, were caused naturally (though God may have other ends best known to himself) by the various operations of the Microcosm; and I could not be ignorant, that as the cause is, so must the cure be; and therefore he that would know the reason of the operation of the Herbs, must look up as high as the Stars, astrologically.”

The book is a really fun read, and the man was very poetic in his description of herbs and remedies, so I’m enjoying using the text for found poetry. I am also continuing my study of drumbeats in relation to poetry and this week I’m looking at 1, 2 &, 3, 4 &  and 1 &, 2, 3 &, 4. For fun, I decided to combine the two and attempt to tame some of Culpeper’s words into my drumbeats for today’s quadrille.

Let Her Be With a Fixed Star

Upper crust of the earth, shooting forth like a star,
the planet that governs, the stronger the better,
written fixed before the nature of planets, take notice
those houses, they delight star fashion, smell somewhat sweet
up as high as the Star under them.

Stone Soup Poem

Steadfast-slab Soliloquy

set in stone
a tome, a tomb
slow to erode
unmoved by storm’s
wet starved moan
leftovers torn
forlorn, stone cold
bones hold known tones
strummed by the stubborn
turned to stone
struck, stuck outta luck
stored enduring alone
a stone’s throw
from home

Today’s Quadrille #137 prompt from De Jackson at dVerse is to “carve a poem out of the word stone.” The Quadrille is a poem of 44 words. (Images taken by me this evening. The light was really nice. Glad I went searching for stones)

A Wine-tinted World

The World through Grape-colored Glasses

Peering out my wine
windows tinted
and clouded
at a swirling landscape
of bitter-sweets
the view skewed
by tannins and cork
floaters among
the cloudy
reveries
shuttering my
wine windows
I delve
the cellars deep
for lofty thoughts
and epiphanies
before the heady
kerplunk

This poem is a response to today’s Quadrille prompt at dVerse Poets Pub.

Pondering Possibilities

I felt inspired by dVerse poets pub’s Quadrille prompt today to ponder possibilities. My quadrille came to me almost complete (short one word) in the shower.

Imagination’s Playground

The imaginative life
is a playground of possibilities

until all the door and windows
are locked and the bed
is on fire

then there are only two possibilities:
to dance or to cower

and soon there is one:
to face all the unimagined possibilities