Apologies for the lack of a prompt last week. Didn’t mean to leave you all out in the cold.
About Bartholomew Barker
Bartholomew Barker is an organizer of Living Poetry, a collection of poets in the Triangle region of North Carolina where he has hosted a monthly feedback workshop for more than decade. His first poetry collection, Wednesday Night Regular, written in and about strip clubs, was published in 2013. His second, Milkshakes and Chilidogs, a chapbook of food inspired poetry was served in 2017. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he lives and writes poetry.
Living Poetry 
She sat …
in isolation
alone
save for the frozen cold
of icy indifference all around.
Her beauty …
unfased by it all,
glowed, as a torch,
yet, her heart,
questioning, ached on.
My god, if there is a god,
sit by me now.
My god … if you hear, if you care,
My god.
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Posted by Dennis or Donncha as Gaeilge | December 12, 2022, 9:19 AMWonderful plea for comfort in the cold contrast of the warm heart of the bird and the white world.
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Posted by ts19page | December 12, 2022, 11:13 AMLovely and sad. Thanks for sharing!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | December 12, 2022, 7:07 PMSummer’s Time
Finland’s fens are pale
ice blue and white.
Forests stride the shadows
and defy the sun on Sundays.
Warm heart of home, daisy charmed,
where the scooped polished cup
reflects deep inside the leaves of fortune
like trails through snow.
Time lies heavy here
at the curving summit of the world,
and lists north,
toward blue ice.
Here fire is life,
and smoke a
beckoning,
reckoning worth the burn.
Fire burns in the stove
in summer,
when heat is is at the back,
warmth in the mouth.
For who can say man lives
by bread alone under the
looming run of days when
summer is a reverie,
A minuscule repast,
shattered shell, a crumb.
The white smoke takes
the form of breath,
Rises, disperses from the glow,
and is gone as if it never was.
No time is time
for summer in the mind.
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Posted by ts19page | December 12, 2022, 11:11 AMI love that you took me to a place – so unexpected. And then, having arrived at the destination you chose for me, guided me thru a gallery of beautiful scenic paintings of this ‘curving summit of the world,’ Thank you!
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Posted by Dennis | December 12, 2022, 11:24 AMThank you for being a reader to whom a poet wishes to write.-S.
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Posted by ts19page | December 12, 2022, 10:05 PMLove those last two stanzas, especially the smoke/breath. Great work!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | December 12, 2022, 7:12 PMAlways dressed to party
the cardinal defies winter
and calls me into the snow
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Posted by JeanMarie | December 12, 2022, 2:17 PMGotta watch out for guys in red. Great haiku!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | December 12, 2022, 7:15 PMYes but Santa wears red. 🙂
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Posted by JeanMarie | December 12, 2022, 7:32 PMHa I am certainly not shivering 😁
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | December 12, 2022, 3:55 PMLikeLiked by 1 person
Posted by Bartholomew Barker | December 12, 2022, 9:00 PMWhat I very much like about the monthly prompt – is NOT thinking, or not too much anyway. Exposed to the random image or word, something immediately comes to mind. But not a thought – they’re too dry, hard, weighty … no, more like a feeling, a humour, which pops into mind – and with that, words and other notions take form. It reminds me – why, I don’t know – of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.
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Posted by Donncha | December 13, 2022, 8:27 AMA bit prosey but here it goes:
=======================
I saw you the first time
at Kevin’s “Frost Faire”
dressed in black
with a red cashmere coat
stolen from your mother’s closet
a jaunty hat topped your head
as you fought to open your bloom
in the cold night air
with that scared Peddie boy
a newfound wildness in your eyes
a bottle of Jack in your gloved hand
as you looked for more ways to roar
I heard that you caused some stir
and Kevin threw you out in the snow
they laughed afterward
practice for their legal careers
in the years to come
and left you passed out in the back
We took you home and
from a safe distance
made sure you were safe
in the warm of your house
I never saw you again
I’d heard you died
on the shore of Lake Mendota
several years later
I also heard you died
trying to give your husband
a boy after four “failures”
But I knew you were gone
when I saw you
Red coat over black dress
sitting in the hoary white theatre
perched on a dormant throne
a resplendent wonder
all these years later
roaring in absolute silence
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Posted by Chris Clarke | December 13, 2022, 2:54 PMLove the line “as you looked for more ways to roar” and how you brought it back in the last line. Well done.
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | December 13, 2022, 7:10 PM