On this 5 October, Laura Bloomsbury of dVerse Poets’ Pub has commended to us a Place of Five, using as a starting point Juan Filipe Herrara’s “https://poets.org/poem/five-directions-my-house”.

Laura explains:

… for today’s poetry prompt we are also taking “Five Directions to My House” as inspiration:

  • write your poem in five stanzas of five lines per stanza (quintain)
  • write as a Pentastich Quintain (unregulated rhyme, meter etc)
  • each stanza is one of five ways to your house (real or imaginary)
  • can be literal or metaphorical, measured in time, direction, etc or a mix
  • the title is your own choice but must begin: “Five…………”
  • include a reference to Hererra’s poem somewhere in your post

This is my quintain, leading through the four main compass directions and including the fifth as ‘Here’




Five Directions to my House of Here


Northwards past the

elvan foot of the dark sky region;

past William Wallace's 

shriek for freedom;

across the Boundary Fault


Easewards is not a

typographical mis.

take what you need,

only do not tease my

conscience at Easter, Ross


Southwards at Equinox

when the bone horse plays

around the firepit, whinneying

foalishly as the embers

consume our letting go


On Western shores, the

Pure Land of Amitabha

glows crimson and whole-

heartedly, cradling the egg

of the Mind's universe


Here i am at last, waiting

for you - there, almost, without a name -

aghast at what unfurled

in the short nights

and the longer twilights




© Kathy Labrum McVittie 5 October 2023