The Sunday Challenge ~ Featuring Peggy Goetz

It is my pleasure to introduce Peggy Goetz, a writer-photographer who shares her words and pictures on her blog, On a Day Like Today.  Peggy and her husband of 43 years live in an ordinary suburban neighborhood in Irvine, California. Their two grown children and one grandchild live in the central coast and northern parts of the state. Peggy loved her career as a newspaper writer in Orange County, south of Los Angeles, California, and got to write every kind of story, but mostly feature stories, and she sometimes took photos for her stories. A dabbler with many interests, Peggy enjoys writing, travel, oil painting, gardening and reading a wide range of books.

Portrait of the Artist

Peggy spent two months in 2006, volunteering for the Africa Project, at Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, which sought to give support to children orphaned by AIDS.  Read more about her experiences there on her blog, Africa Unfinished.  She shares with us a poem she wrote recently, inspired by the photograph of three children taken at the Children's Centre at Nkandla.

© Peggy Goetz

Girl in the Orphanage
                                  by Peggy Goetz

She poses as asked
over plate of food,
her dark skin smooth
innocent, lips and
cheeks full, not gaunt
from hunger, no
shadow of illness.

But her eyes dark
like blackest coffee
piece the guest with
distrust. Will you really
help me, is there really
a future when so many
of our parents have died
that families can't care
for kids like us.

I'm 10. When my mother
died my father was already
gone. I had to cook for my
little sister and brother,
find food, get water,
hide them at night
from drunken men and
hungry animals.

Now I'm here at the orphanage
and I can go to school,
but I don't trust the future.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since it is Mother's Day, we have put together a selection of pictures of remarkable women, whom Peggy has photographed on her travels, in the hope they will inspire you to write about the strength of women and/or the theme of motherhood.

© Peggy Goetz: Chinese Dancer

I have long loved taking photos of faces and of beautiful and interesting places. My family is usually embarrassed that I take too many photos when we go places. Taking photos gives me a more focused way of looking at the world as I go through my days and see different scenes and places. This way of viewing the world also gives me inspiration for poetry.

© Peggy Goetz: Village Midwife, Mountains of Honduras

One thing newspaper writing taught me was that one can write about almost any topic and almost everyone has a story. I apply this to poetry as well and enjoy writing to prompts of all kinds and seeing where they take me.

© Peggy Goetz: a young woman from Nkandla South Africa

I started writing poetry about 15 years ago when I joined an online writing group. After discovering the joy of form-free poetry, I dove in and have been swimming happily ever since. Joined the world of cyber poetry a few years ago at the urging of writing friends and am still growing and discovering in this area.

© Peggy Goetz: Three Women and Baby, Yi Village ,China

Peggy has generously offered these beautiful photos for our poetic inspiration.  If you add an image to your post, please acknowledge the name of the artist.

© Peggy Goetz: Three Mayan Women, Guatemala

The Sunday Challenge is posted on Saturday at noon CST to allow extra time for the creative process, so please do not link up old work which kind of fits the image. Members will only respond to poetry written specifically for this prompt: this is in the spirit of our Real Toads project to create opportunities for poets to be newly inspired. Management reserves the right to remove unrelated links.