Category Archives: prose

January 17, 2023 · 2:27 pm

Love Is The Fabric – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lisa is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to write prose and include the line “Everything I do is stitched with its color.” from ‘Separation’ by William Stanley Merwin. For more details follow the link below.

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Everything is Stitched

Image: Nareeta Martin at unsplash.com

“Love is a fabric which never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the water of adversity and grief.” Robert Fulghum

Love Is The Fabric

I want to claim its orbit, its grand, beautiful reach into my heart of hearts, and onwards into the vast world of everything. Love is just that, like dry sand through my incapable fingers. the ache, the indescribable thing that it is, the pain so sweet and the joy, always searching for that feeling which seems just beyond, out of reach. And the more I reach the further away I become.

And so the grand hunt continues even within this cell of yearning, just as the early riser waits for the crest of dawn, knowing that it is there, though not yet here. There is a faint memory of the experience I want to return to, perhaps to capture and hold. Elusive as it is, in its fulness I know that everything I do is stitched with its colour. Love is the fabric of me.

Copyright 2023 ©Paul Vincent Cannon

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January 3, 2023 · 2:58 pm

The Great Adventure – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Kim is hosting the Haibun (prose + haiku) – the first for 2023 and the first pub event for 23 too, with an invitation to write about our feelings for the new year.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Fireworks and a Dripping Tap

Photo: Summer in the bay, one of several local bays, Hamelin Bay.

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Albert Einstein

The Great Adventure

So, it’s a new year? I guess we need such a boundary, perhaps life would be difficult if it felt open ended, a kind of nihilist enterprise. Perhaps, too, beginnings and endings provide a sense of continuity. But does continuity connote purpose or self understanding? I wonder. At the very least a year is a frame to hang my process of life on and make my way. I prefer to order my years around celebrations and gatherings, for me a year is about community, I need that.

Perhaps it’s about telos? A year offers beginnings but also conclusions that enable the mind to adjust to a time continuum. A proscribed year offers a place to aim for, a safety valve enabling a break, time to stop, an opportunity to change pace, or even direction. I find such rhythms helpful in navigating energy and health.

My days ahead are very full, it will be challenging, in the best possible ways. I will be stretched. I have come far, I now know that new years are just years and they simply my years as I make them, mother nature not-with-standing. I have also learned that I am enough, I am who I am and that is a good thing. For the most part a year is something to be grasped and lived as an adventure. Perhaps this year there’ll be for me an annuation?

time so neatly boxed
fireworks a beginning
the year resolves.



Copyright 2023 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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November 8, 2022 · 1:19 pm

Poems From The Night Sky – prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Linda is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to write using the line “In the street of the sky night scattering poems.” from ‘Tulips and Chimneys’ by e.e. cummings.

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Tulips and Chimneys

Photo: EvgeniT at pixabay.com

“Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks wall down.” Mahmoud Darwish

Poems From The Night Sky

I look for the day as if I were a village watchman tired of his shift, having danced with the moon and the stars, ready to drop. The goats stir not. The sky is clear. The only cloud is in my heart which moods a longing for resolution for feelings I cannot as yet name. But would I name it anyway? Not immediately. Surely longing is a kind of ecstasy that when ended leaves an emptiness? who knows? But I am not ready to address this, for I do not know yet what it is.

What I do know, or rather, what I can do, is hymn the night sky and listen to its wisdom, see its language of beauty, its rhyme of reason. There, then, I will open, for in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems that will set me free.

Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon

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October 11, 2022 · 3:48 pm

Where Death Fades – Prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Bjorn is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to take his suggested line from Dylan’s song Desolation Row (from Highway 61 Revisited) – the line is: To her, death is quite romantic.

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Bob Dylan

Image: wallpaperaccess.com

“To her, death is quite romantic.” Bob Dylan

Where Death Fades

She often talked of death as if it were sublime. Some mistakenly thought she meant the passion of the little death but in fact it is something more, to her, death is quite romantic. It called out to her from every fibre of nature’s breath. She sensed doors and windows, secret gardens, forest paths. For her this was a journey to life where death fades.

She was no tragic Ophelia seeking to lie down early, death was no surrender, this was life free of burden and furrow. She was quite sure that day would come as prophesied by Donne, Keats, even Blake she mused. A day when the living was lived and the leaving was relief, where ending became beginning and nothing was final, the greatest adventure. On that day she would wear white, and the wedding dance would be sweet like the fragrance of jasmine.

Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon

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August 16, 2022 · 1:38 pm

Being Sung To Life – prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lisa is hosting Prosery with an invitation to write a piece of prose (144 words) including a line from the ‘Chambered Nautilus’ by Oliver Wendell Holmes Snr.

The line is: “Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings.”

dVerse Poets – Prosery – A Voice That Sings

“Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions, be curious …” Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Being Sung To Life

I’m not sure how long I sat, or conscious of the passage of the sky twins, sun and moon, or that I’d strayed from where I’d begun. Neither hunger nor other need pressed upon me as I Travelled my mind freely. Having lost my original intention, which I noticed was neither good or ill, it just was, I lost myself in myself seeking pieces of something that would make a picture, no matter how abstract.

I sifted and rolled thoughts as sweet things on my tongue, taking pleasure with each one. Initially this maze was a swirling mass, then suddenly, through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings my secret name. Just that. Nothing else was sung, but I implicitly understood its energy. Nothing was given, yet I received so much. There is a wholeness when being sung to life.

Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon

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July 19, 2022 · 12:48 pm

Accepting The Tears – Prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Sarah is hosting Prosery (144 words of prose) with an invitation to use a line from a poem by Michael Donaghy called ‘Liverpool.’

The line offered is: “she’d had it sliced away leaving a scar.”

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Slices and Scars

Photo: gharpedia.com A tree wound healing.

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Rumi

Accepting The Tears

Unnerving she thought, when we realise how parallels weave their way through our lives. Here among her trees she was confronted with last autumn's pruning. The liquid amber had suffered in the winds and one of its beautifully shaped branches had split and she'd had it sliced away leaving a scar where the limb had once protruded. She hadn't connected it before, but at the same time her father had died. Only now she sensed that she had a scar of grief about her, the tears welled as she remembered the pain she'd excised. She touched the healed callus fibres and felt the ridge where the cut had been, noticing the feelings in herself. The tree was making good progress. Not that she wasn't, but she felt the rawness of the premature cut, maybe now was the time to feel, to finally accept the tears.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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June 21, 2022 · 4:02 pm

Stilled – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting the Haibun with an invitation to write about the summer/winter solstice depending on which side of the equator we live.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Solstice

Photo: Winter clouds make for accentuated sunrises over the Blackwood River.

“One way of celebrating the Solstice is to consider it a sacred time of reflection, release, restoration, and renewal.” Sarah Ban Breathnach

Stilled

For the first time in a long time, a very long time it seems, I have simply stopped completely for a few days. I no longer miss my race around the sun to make meaning for someone else’s fortune, I long to make meaning for my own. there is something precious about distilling the day, spending time in recollection at evening and savouring the good moments, panning for the gold of the day.

There is a wonderful feeling that comes with stopping, slowing, taking time, knowing that the horizon is there, but also knowing it can wait. The wisdom of age is knowing when to stop, slow and take time, and when, even how, to move again and in which direction and when to be excited by a new horizon. For as surely as the earth turns, new horizons are aplenty. Right now I am still and awaiting my next step.

The world is turning
humans race to the finish 
stillness brings blossom


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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June 12, 2022 · 3:30 pm

Don’t Mess With Red – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: found on pinterest.com

“Many bowdlerised versions indicated a Victorian-minded censorship, which feared that Little Red Riding Hood might some day break out, become a bohemian, and live in the wood with the wolf.” Jack D. Zipes

Don’t Mess With Red

As the wolf, that teddy-boy with slicked back quiff and leather jacket, so rugged, so volatile, disclosed his true nature with the flick of his switch-blade, Red took to him with a broom handle forcing him from her house. As she chased the wolf out through the front gate she noticed a woodsman with a clip board , all suited up and frowning.

Exasperated, Red asked him why he hadn’t intervened, to which he replied, with an air of arrogance, “I’m here to effect your detention before the committee.” “O! Really, on what charge?” Asked Red. “On several charges in fact” said the woodsman. “Name them” said Red, annoyed and gripping the broom handle tightly. “Well, you’re so young and you were out after curfew, you were unchaperoned, you entered the woods alone, your clothes, they are inappropriate and provocative, you also beat an animal, and you’re a girl. What do you have to say for yourself?” With a snarl she hit him hard.

There’s a fruit tree in her yard that is thriving, and once a week she takes tea with the wolf.

Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon

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June 7, 2022 · 5:31 pm

The Pain – Prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lisa is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to respond to a line from a poem ‘Notes On Uvalde’ from Girl Du Jour. To read that full poem follow the link below. The line offered is “These are the things they don’t tell us”

dVerse Poets – Prosery – How Many More Will It Take?

Photo: http://www.gettyimages.com (found on Bing) High school students in the US protesting gun violence.

“This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the world. It doesn’t solve any problems.” Martin Luther King Jr

The Pain

I grew up torn by love, when the world was bruised by war and violence I was in pain, and I still am. When people are marginalised, hated and discriminated against I hurt too. Sometimes my anger boils in frustration. Why? Why can’t women determine their bodies? Who decides someones sexuality? Why Poverty? Why war? Why guns? Grief can be overwhelming even when it is vicarious. But we’re all in it together, it affects all.

The real pain of it all is the pain that comes from love, compassion and empathy. The alternative is to stoop into that gutter I am calling out. There is a cost to positive, non-violent action, to standing with the underdog, to protest, to speak out. Sometimes the cost is loneliness, sometimes it is wrangling with the impotence to effect change. These are the things they don’t tell us.

Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon

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May 24, 2022 · 3:53 pm

Summer – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting Haibun (prose plus haiku) with an invitation to write about summer.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Summer

Photo: ratemds.com

“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” Sam Keen

Summer

From my youngest days this has always been a time when the earth catches fire, when my skin burns and I can feel the strength of the air around me pushing down as it falls to the ground. My breathing is heavier , though I move from shade to shade I cannot escape the heat of this day. Even the cicada chorale chant at the sun is to no avail, the light blindsides me bouncing off every surface, dazzling, relentless.

It feels like a furnace, the garden bows after noon, the bitumen is melting, my shirt is dark down the middle of my back. But this is no time for whingeing, this is the time to pack away the winter blues, open the windows, throw off my layers, sit out at night watching the stars, light the BBQ and party like there's no tomorrow.

The sun is rising 
house is already on fire
but there is no smoke


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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