MerrilDSmith of dVerse Poets Pub has given us the following prompt from May Sarton’s ‘Meditation in sunlight’:

“In space in time I sit thousands of feet above the sea”

and the following constraints for using it:

“Today the prompt is for Prosery, where we write prose, not poetry. Prosery can be flash-fiction or creative non-fiction, but it is short prose no longer than 144 words in total (not including the title). It must be prose, not poetry (no versification, line breaks, meter, etc), and most importantly, it must include the given poetry line, word for word, within the prose.”

Above Oak

Sea at my back, forwards past honeysuckle, led by Jason's voice. Before I reach Hardwick Wood, I encounter Oak. Turn aside and touch his fissured bark, feeling the residual heat of the sun. 

Then straddling the trunk, limbs, boughs, I'll clamber to the uttermost, and reach the Ladder through the clouds, ascending to the Upper World.

They guide by Drum, my friends the Shamanic practitioners, and its influence is benign. Relaxed and safe, I face my Spirit Guide: visible, or felt, or sensed as light.

My intention, the questions, a waiting-in-service open to revelation, up there. When I hear the call-back beat I'll descend the Ladder, the branches, boughs and limbs of Oak, past Tawny Owl.

Meanwhile I rest for a moment in space, in time. I sit thousands of feet above the sea, in a realm beyond cloud, beyond sky. Waiting for words.



© Kathy Labrum McVittie 13 March 2023