THIS WEEK'S QUOTE PROMPT:

My biggest excuse to others and myself was that I had writer's block, as if it was some kind of illness. Mary Garden

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

#41 - Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off. Franklin D. Roosevelt

TWO DIFFERENT ROADS

Two different directions, two different roads.
Approaches to life not the same.
Is it just competition that carries our load
or that keeps inner fires aflame?

Two different directions, two different roads.
Expounding on what we believe,
yet panic sets in when our values implode
to which we unceasingly cleave.

From unlikey places comes burning unrest,
discord where once unity glowed.
The embers are killing the need for a quest
to different directions, to different roads.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

#40 - Forgiveness is the economy of the heart ... forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits. Hannah More

THE POWER

Held against our breast
like a cold, jagged rock,
anger waits,
ready to be thrown
on a moment’s whim
toward the enemy,
real or imagined.
The cloak of hatred
weighs heavily upon us.
The veil of division
blinds us.
Forgiveness seems
illusive.
But to continue to live,
the breach of discord
begs to be removed.
When hands devoid of fury
reach across the divide,
wounds begin to heal.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

#39 - We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature. Robert Louis Stevenson

REROUTED

New challenges,
far removed the route we charted,
have the power to define us.
We either rise to the occasion
and stay the course,
or we crumble beneath
the whims and fancies of daily life.
Instead of wallowing in the
fear of uncertainty,
we are stronger when
we not only accept the detours,
but gracefully allow them to guide us
in a completely different direction.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

#38 - Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm. Murray Gell-Mann

EMBRACING TOMORROW

The calendar pages fly in the wind.
Today burns a hole in the past.
The future, unwritten, creates a clean slate.
And although the renewal won’t last,
new memories eagerly wait for the dawn
to give birth to the life that will come.
While some take advantage of what lies ahead,
the route will be challenged by some.
The optimist savors the course of the tide
through prisms sublime and abstract.
The daring embrace both the known and unknown
and adjust in the manner to act.
When life disappoints and spins out of control,
the force of a vision takes hold
and fashions the future around the distress,
moving forward when new becomes old.