Day 7.

-Gaynor Kane – Crow And Key Sculpture

-Anjum Wasim Dar – Gemini

-John Phandal Law

Perspectives
(inspired by all three images)

It’s rarely black or white,
blazing summer or winter frost,
a burst of life or cold death,

glasses are both half full and half empty,
the past is with us and gone,
the aurore butterfly is snow and sunshine,

birth is the start of dying,
dawn the prelude to sunset,
laughter what comes after tears (and vice versa).

Everything is nuanced,
a subtle shade,
a declension of hues,

nothing is so deep and dark,
solidly steadfast, so unambiguous
and unflinchingly certain that it never changes,

except crows.

-Jane Dougherty

Butterfly (JPL7)
A flash of colour
catches my distracted eye;
a trick of the light.

-Tim Fellows

AWD7 Gemini

Twins

My sis and I
Identical in every way
Except for her
Multi-personalities

-Carrie Ann Golden

Gemini
(After Anjum Wasim Dar)

This garden guardian contains multitudes –
its age rings planetary.
Oh, to be able to hold so much
With so much grace.
To be both lightning rod
and blossom cloud.
To harbour storm traumas, and yet
to be a safe place for the birds.

-Jen Feroze

In the Basement Playroom (JLP7)

Our daughter litters card table
and concrete with Barbie dolls, plastic
wigs, and a paint by number kit—
black outlines on canvas and cardboard.
Each cellophane leaf, stalk, and
flower petal waves its ticket to glory,
to paint puddled in numbered
plastic pots. But Thursdays, when
the peace lilies and hawkweed
refuse their colors, she stains glass
wing butterflies, transforms
them to yellow orange-tips
that whisper-kiss the sky.

—Lynne Jensen Lampe

The key

You battle through life
like it is purpose, intention

You break through the doors
that stand in your way

Yet sometimes it seems
you’ve forgotten to notice

When welcome awaits
where accord turns a key

-Vicky Allen

AWD7

On the eighty-third day
spring sun split black winter’s heart
goldfinch, chaffinch, wren
outsinging the popping of buds

-Simon Williams

Crow with Key
To Gaynor Kane – Crow And Key Sculpture

Key to the car
Where am I driving
Key to the door
Am I coming or going
Key to a solution
What am I solving
Key to healing
What made me sick
Key to a cell
What was my crime
Key to a gate
What am I protecting
Key to success
Why am I failing
What counts more
The key or the lock

-Barbara Leonhard

AWD, GK 7
Sheltering in a theatre, surrounded by children,
And declaring sanctuary writ large for those whose satellites know it all,
the columns topple on us,
Holding our children, even as they are written all around us.

-Lesley James

Distracted
(after JPL7)
I’m easily distracted.
And I’m genuinely sorry.
You can put in all this detail
and choose the finest vellum
it won’t matter to me
what you do in monochrome.
You know how kids will sometimes
choose the box instead of the toy?,
If you show me something bright and bold,
orange, in motion, I fly away with it:
drunken stumbling on the breeze
leaves the ground just a backdrop to wonder.

-Jamie Woods

 

-Math Jones

Butterflies and Crows (Inspired by all three works of art)

In the time of before
when color emerged from grey,
and butterflies swayed, seeing
blue, green, red, and yellow,
when storms erupted, and branches grew
and everything had a counterpart
in nature’s art of fractals, circles, and stars–
the sun and moon, the night and day
kept earth balanced, though
a small-winged tipped could cause a shift,
but mostly that was righted.

Now ice drips, and winds drift
in wayward tempest gales,
the trees are split, their roots cry out
and mycelium networks ache as they transmit
arboreal dying sounds.

You dream of the past, you dream of now
and in your dreams, you understand

that crows carry wisdom’s key—they warn
with caws–
even if nobody listens.

-Merril D. Smith

GK7 crow and key

No one claimed it an easy task
to find enduring truth

Neither were you told mysteries
would be unknowable

Do not carelessly miss clues which
unlock enlightenment

-Peter A.

Bios And Links

-John Phandal Law

is 68. Lives in Mexborough. Retired teacher. Artist; musician; poet. Recently included in ‘Viral Verses‘ poetry volume. Married. 2 kids; 3 grandkids

-Gaynor Kane

Gaynor Kane lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she is a part-time creative, involved in the local arts scene. She writes poetry and is an amateur artist and photographer. In all her creative activities she is looking to capture moments that might otherwise be missed. Discover more at gaynorkane.com

Twitter @gaynorkane

Facebook @gaynorkanepoet

Instagram @gaynorkanepoet

-Anjum Wasim Dar

started drawing at St Anne’s Presentation Convent High School, Rawalpindi.
Drawing was taught as a Core subject from  Kindergarten.
Anjum learnt the  skill of  Still Life, Sketching,  Landscape Drawing, Coloring  and Shading  She recalled the scented wax crayons and black  paper sketch books vividly.

Subject of Fine Arts at Intermediate level at Govt.College for Women Rawalpindi,   was stopped by the Indo Pak War of 1965. Anjum continued her passion for art privately.
Her job as a Teacher Instructor allowed her to pursue Art work designing and preparing  Thematic Bulletin Boards and Low cost teaching Aids with the Fauji Foundation Teacher’s Training Institute Rawalpindi. www.faujifoundation.org.
This won her the National Education Award 1998.
 
Completing  a Course in Graphic Designing  at NICON Academy Rawalpindi , Anjum began working as a Digital Artist, On Line, registered her Own Firm CER Creative Education Resources 2004 and is a Member of DRN Drawing Research Network UK  and www.bigdraw.org.uk
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/tracey/drn/
 https://sites.google.com/site/cerprofessionaldevelopment/
With her artistic skills she plans and conducts “Environment Awareness Workshops for Children” and is a member of www.unep.org and www.earthday.org
CER Participated in World Environment Day and Earth Day Programs 2011-2013
“Face of Climate Change”
Anjum  loves Nature, landscapes and abstract imagery. Works with pencils, crayons and  the Software ArtRage 2.0  and MyPaint.

Anjum Wasim Dar’s Art Portfolio  can be accessed  here:

https://www.artwanted.com/anjuartwriter/gallery/

-Merril D. Smith

lives in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. Her poetry has been published in several poetry journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic,  Fevers of the Mind, and Nightingale and Sparrow. Her first full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts, is forthcoming from Nightingale & Sparrow Press.  Twitter: @merril_mds  Instagram: mdsmithnj  Website/blog: merrildsmith.com

-Lesley James(she/her)

is a teacher and writer. She was shortlisted for Love Reading UK’s 2022 Very Short Story Award. Featured flash can be found in The Broken Spine, FullHouseLitMag and RoiFaineant. Kathryn O’Driscoll selected her poem Empty for Full House’s 2021 mental health live reading and forthcoming podcast. Brian Moses, The Dirigible Balloon and Parakeet Magazine have published some of her writing for children.

-Lynne Jensen Lampe

has poems in or forthcoming from Figure 1, Olney Magazine, Yemassee, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Also to come is her chapbook Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022) about mothers, daughters, and mental illness. She was a 2020 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize finalist. Born in Newfoundland and raised in the Deep South, she lives in mid-Missouri where she edits academic books and journals. Visit her at https://lynnejensenlampe.com. Twitter: @LJensenLampe.

-Math Jones

is London-born, but is now based in Oxford. He has two books published: Sabrina Bridge, a poetry collection, from Black Pear Press (2017), and The Knotsman, a collection of verse, rhyme, prose and poetic monologue, which tell of the life and times of a C17th cunning-man. Much of his verse comes out of mythology and folklore: encounters with the uncanny and unseen. Also, as words written for Pagan ritual or as praise poems for a multitude of goddesses and gods. He is a trained actor and performs his poems widely.

-Jamie Woods

Jamie Woods is a writer from Swansea. He has had work published by Poetry Wales, Evergreen Review and The Lonely Crowd, and his poem ‘Ring the Bell’ was commended in the Hippocrates International Prize for Poetry and Medicine 2021. www.jamiewoods77.com

-Lesley James (she/her)

is a teacher and writer. She was shortlisted for Love Reading UK’s 2022 Very Short Story Award. Featured flash can be found in The Broken Spine, FullHouseLitMag and RoiFaineant. Kathryn O’Driscoll selected her poem Empty for Full House’s 2021 mental health live reading and forthcoming podcast. Brian Moses, The Dirigible Balloon and Parakeet Magazine have published some of her writing for children.

-Tim Fellows

is a writer based in Derbyshire. His debut pamphlet, Heritage, was published in 2019 by Glass Head Press.

-Carrie Ann Golden

is from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in the Red River Valley of North Dakota (USA). She writes dark fiction and poetry. A Deafblind, her work has been published in places such as GFT Press, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, Asylum Ink, Piker Press, Edify Fiction and others. You can find her on her writing blog as well as Medium and Twitter.  

-Paul Brookes

is a shop asst in a supermarket. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. First play performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull.  His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews, book reviews and  challenges. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and, videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions. Most recent is a poetry collaboration with artworker Jane Cornwell: “Wonderland in Alice, plus other ways of seeing”, (JCStudio Press, 2021)