The sun doesn’t rise here, it comes, overdressed, spilling molten gold like it missed the cue and is improvising redemption.
Trees stand tall and severe, a parliament of wooden philosophers pretending not to gossip about the reckless creek that keeps talking over everyone.
Oh, that creek,
a liquid conspirator, slipping secrets over mossy stones, braiding light into its hair, more like planning to elope with the morning.
Mist hangs around like an unfinished sentence. I think the forest forgot what it was saying, mid-thought and decided silence was more dramatic.
Ferns fling their green fingers open, jazz hands for photosynthesis. A stump broods at the water’s edge, half memory, half throne, still claiming sovereignty over a kingdom of ants.
Everything here feels slightly enchanted and slightly unhinged, perhaps gravity loosened its tie and said, “Do what you want.”
Light ricochets off the stream in bright, unruly syllables. The shadows stretch long and theatrical, practicing being ghosts before the sun sobers up.
And the forest, this breathing, blinking, gold-drunk cathedral leans close enough to your pulse just to whisper: Stay strange.
Even the quiet is electric here.
I love the days when I have no ideas on what to write about yet I sit down anyway and dare myself to write. Sometimes, staring at a picture long enough, somehow, pulls me under and in a blink, I’m no longer just looking but inside it. The world in the frame opens, and poetry finds me there.
Those are my golden days. They don’t come often, to put it straight, I get that four to five times a year, if I’m lucky. When this happens, it feels like slipping into a trance, like the image hands me words one by one and trusts me to place them carefully. Then I just write without second-guessing. I don’t overthink it too. I just go, until something interrupts me or I finally run out of breath and language at the same time.
Today was one of those days. I hadn’t planned to write. Nothing was coming through, and I was ready to let the day pass. But then I was scrolling through Pixabay and stumbled on the photo that now sits as this post’s thumbnail. The moment I saw it, something shifted and I stepped into the scene almost instantly. I’m not entirely sure how the poem turned out but I think I like it.