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Thursday, May 26, 2016

Fireblossom Friday: A Touch of Gray

Hello Toads and pond visitors. Fireblossom here with another Fireblossom Friday. Let's start with a quote from a song by the Grateful Dead:

"Every silver lining's got a touch of gray"



Even good things can have a tinge of regret to them. Consider: Mary is a popular girl. Both John and Jim have proposed. She says yes to John and everything's fine. She's happy mostly, but sometimes she wonders what life might have been like with Jim. Well, here's the answer. SOME things would have been better, but most things would not have been. She made the better choice. Still, there are those days when she feels restless. There it is, that touch of gray.

This notion of a touch of gray in an otherwise good situation could be applied to a job, to children, to one's location, to almost anything. Next time you come across that famous poem about two roads diverging in a wood, remember that--unlike what we're often told--there usually is no "right" path, just one that's better than the other. They are just different, and despite the charms of one road, there will always be a wistful feeling for the one that wasn't taken. Choose differently and the wistfulness only increases.

Your challenge is to write about something that is basically good, or satisfying, or positive, but that nonetheless contains some element of gray. To paraphrase the Monty Python sketch, where is the ambiguity? In your poems, dear poets, in your poems.

 

8 comments:

  1. Well, I'm not sure I've actually hit the real center of this challenge, but I've perhaps at least got it somewhere in the general vicinity. Thanks for the nudge to write something, Shay.

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  2. must . . . write . . . a poem . . .

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  3. I love that song it was nice hearing it again and the video is a classic like the song.

    I shared a poem called "Enough" that I wrote in 2015 but never published until now. To be fair it didn't say a new poem this time, but this poem just fills the prompt so well.

    I hope everyone who lives in the US has a good Memorial Day weekend. I'm really looking forward to it.

    Hugs! Bekkie

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  4. Moskowitz: I hope this hits the spot.
    Miss Anita: That's what she said.

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  5. A superb prompt, FB. I will put my mind to it this weekend. At present i am trying to write a poem a week, but I am finding it hard going.

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  6. This got me thinking... and I could just think about the image of silver and how it could be dulled.

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  7. Black or white with color told as shades of gray. I liked the prompt but aren't sure but what melting of ice involves any in between at all.
    Did you know the human eye is tuned to three colors, red, blue, and green so with mixtures of these recognizes color up to purple in light frequency, as do other upright mammals? The others only have two dimension vision giving black and white with shades of gray. Many birds have four dimensional seeing mechanisms and can see color through ultraviolet. Trivia but I thought knowing this would help understand shades of grey, a little bit.
    ..

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