Daily Verse
Week 1, February 2025
Everlasting Memories
By Sreelekha Chatterjee 3rd February 2025
Memories hang like verglases
from the rock-solid ceiling of my mind.
With the warmth of my remembrance,
they melt, pouring out, come alive.
Moments turn into memories
I do not know when.
One leads to another,
clustering as though a bunch of grapes
from the soul of my existence,
belonging to a common memoir clade.
Memories frosted for life
bloom as delightful flowers—
imperishable like the fragrance
of my being without which I feel disempowered.
Refreshing as the roseate air of dawn’s
illuminating grace,
anamneses come forth,
seem to ebb and flow—
vanish and reappear.
Reminiscent of the frosted icing on the cake,
I relish them, venerate their lived experiences—
some of memorized tears, others of recollected laughter;
their beauty embraces with passionate wings.
Akin to the snow that amasses—wise and bright—
memories remain sealed,
my heart endowed with gratitude chimes.
Twilight Hours
By Geeta Varma 5th February 2025
They stay,
The early ones,
Like old photographs
On a fading wall,
Of-
Sweaters, red and brown
hanging on a clothesline,
waiting for the school bus
in the cold,
sister in a white petticoat
refusing to sit
on a cold metal chair,
a soft white flower falling
and I, picking up
as we, father and I, walk
one dark evening,
waiting for a peacock feather
in my notebook
to germinate,
grandma’s echoing voice
in the old courtyard
of her ancient house,
our running in the rain,
our new-born baby
packed, full of wonder,
ready to be cuddled….
So much, so many
Frozen in time
In the twilight hours
Of my life!
Haiku
By Giuliana Ravaglia 4th February 2025
fallen leaves -
all the words
I didn't say
lockdown -
wall of silence
unveils the stars
cicadas...
the empty shell
of my womb
Micro Poems
By Kavita Ratna 6th February 2025
pierced heart
on a window pane
dusting day
cradled faith
a prayer awaits
the pole sta
Why, child, do you
step into my aura,
only to vanish?
Biographies of Poets
Sreelekha Chatterjee is a poet from New Delhi, India. Her poems have appeared in Madras Courier, Setu, Raw Lit, Verse-Virtual, The Wise Owl, Pena Literary Magazine, Ghudsavar Literary Magazine, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Poetry Catalog, Suburban Witchcraft Magazine, Creative Flight, Medusa’s Kitchen, Everscribe Magazine, and in the anthologies—Light & Dark (Bitterleaf Books, UK), The Harvest & the Reaping, Winter Glimmerings, and Whose Spirits Touch (Orenaug Mountain Publishing, USA), and Christmas-Winter Anthology Volume 4 (Black Bough Poetry, Wales, UK).
Geeta Varma is a poet based in Chennai. She has worked as a teacher and freelance journalist for some time. She has to her credit two books of poems and is a regular contributor to a few online magazines. She lives in Neelankarai with her husband Shreekumar Varma and has two sons, Vinayak married to Yamini, and Karthik.
Giuliana Ravaglia was born in the province of Bologna (Italy), is a former primary school teacher and has a great love for poetry, especially haiku. His poems have been published on websites and online magazines: Otata, Troutswirl, ESUJ-H, Asahi Haikuist Network, The Mainichi, Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, Haikuuniverse, Cold Moon Journal, Akita International Haiku Network, The Bamboo Hut, Take 5ive, Haiku Corner, Memoirs of a Geisha, HaikuNetra, Haiku World, Failed Haiku among others. he received Honorable mention in Haiku EuroTop 100.
Radha Chakravarty is a widely published writer, critic and translator. Subliminal: Poems is her recent collection of poetry. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She contributed to Pandemic: A Worldwide Community Poem (Muse Pie Press, USA), nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2020.
Kavita Ratna is a children's rights activist, poet and a theatre enthusiast. Sea Glass is her anthology of poems published by Red River. Her poems have appeared in The Kali Project: Invoking the Goddess within, A little book of serendipity, Muse India, The Wise Owl, Triveni Hakai India, Haiku in Action, the Scarlet Dragonfly, the Cold Moon Journal, Five Fleas Itchy poetry, the Haiku Dialogue, Stardust Haiku, Leaf (Journal of The Daily Haiku), and many others. She was on the Haiku panel at the Glass House Poetry Festival, Bangalore, 2024. She is also a Pushcart Prize nominee, 2024.
Week 2, February 2025
Live...Pause
By Vidya Hariharan 10th February 2025
a lump on my slender neck
ear nose throat ENT
specialist scribbles other
acronyms with a stylus
emanating professional
stance in a white room
with a partition behind
a high faux-leather bed
with wheels on which I
hunch, Rodin! While
the nurse calls out
the next suppliant’s no.
Haiku on Frosted memories
by Neena Singh 9th January 2025
frosted windows
every morning star
a reminder of you
a snowdrift morning
we turn inward
finding ourselves
in a world
of glimmering silver
gone but not forgotten
ice spirals folded
into sunrise
Frosted Memories
By Tamali Neogi 12th February 2025
Depending on the curve of our disposition,
we remember either the saddest or the happiest,
memory of our past,
psychologists say so, but is there any rule, fixed or not?
At times the weird behaviour of memory puzzles a lot,
otherwise who is such a fool to look back,
for the burden of past mistakes and errors is enough
to sink us in the coldest ocean of compunction.
Don't know why on a sunny morning when
angels go swimming on the glassy water of Manas lake,
alluring gateway to heaven,
when my mind, piercing it open,
out of the age old blanket of misery,
just started enjoying the drama of
dream happenings,
when life around seems to be the most beautiful thing,
why then the light falls on the cloudy gemstones,
childhood pain, adolescent aberration, sins of youth?
No. It's not as painful now as before.
Perhaps under pressure they are converted
into agate stones,
and see how it splits,
when the ray of conscious understanding
passes through them,
the seven colours of rainbow,
bring into prominence multiple
subconscious understandings;
inviting changes of perspectives!
Won't shun again, reflections on the past,
for depending on our disposition,
fossil like under the layers of alluvial soils
or gem like in cavities in igneous rocks,
like me, my soft hearted friends,
or the unfeeling demons,
may too discover their frosted memories.
Cherita
By Susan Burch 13th February 2025
bags of mulch
stacked around
the house
this grief
still too heavy
to unload
like James Earl Jones
a deep booming voice
in my head says
the sparrows have chosen!
it is your tree they will nest in
through the winter
a tick burrowing
under my skin
a tiny insult
that turns out
was a bullseye
all along
Icicles of Yore
By Santosh Bakaya 14th February 2025
I glimpse a silver-hued expanse and watch entranced.
Snowflakes dance and prance, exhilarated.Within my heart, a silence resounds, but is soon replaced
by faint stirrings of nostalgia.
My soul is ablaze
in the warmth of those memories buried under frost.No longer do I feel lost as the frost melts,
pelting me with silver pebbles of juvenilia.
“We need to shovel the snow.”
I hear Papa’s baritone and see Mom
standing on the patio with two mugs of kehwa.“First have the kehwa, then shovel it!”
The snowman peers wearing Papa’s glasses.
My kid brother hurls a ball of snow at me.
“Hey, Mister, how dare you throw things at your elder sister? “
I yell a full-throated yell. He goes pell-mell
guffawing a guffaw, laced with frost.
Ice clinks in my glass.
Memory chunks tarry a bit- then pass.
Icicles of various sizes full of pleasant surprises.
Is that my kid bro in boxing gloves turning blue in rage?
The cranky fellow oft displayed his versatility in crazy pranks.
I chuckle at a secret thought.
What if a resurrected Picasso adds my bro’s blue nose
to his repertoire of the Blue Period,
with an added embellishment -a red rose
stuck to the lapel of his hand –me- down black coat,
about which he was always complaining?
While travelling in the train once,
the poor fellow had been mistaken for a ticket collector,
clad in a coat two sizes bigger for his lanky figure!
Thankfully that memory chunk lies buried under frost.
But my soul is ablaze in the warmth of those frosted memories.
Biographies of Poets
Vidya Hariharan lives and works as a lecturer in a suburban college in Mumbai, India. Vidya's poems, haiku, haibun, senryu and prose narratives can be found in Setu, Contemporary Haibun Online, Pan Haiku Review, Under the Basho, Borderless, Poems India, Glomag, among others.
Joanna Ashwell is a short form poet (from the UK) who writes Haiku, Tanka, Haibun, Cherita and other related forms. She has published four collections of poetry. Between Moonlight a collection of haiku was published by Hub Editions in 2006. Her tanka collection ‘Every Star’ was published by KDP on Amazon in 2023. Her Cherita collection ‘River Lanterns’ was published by 1-2-3 Press on Amazon in 2023. She currently serves on the selection team for the Canadian Tanka Journal GUSTS.
Tamali Neogi is an upcoming poet who loves to read and write poetry in all he spare time
Santosh Bakaya is an award winning poet, novelist, biographer, TEDx Speaker, acclaimed for poetic biography, Ballad of Bapu, Dr. Santosh Bakaya’ has authored twenty- three books encompassing multiple genres. Reuel International Awardee [Poetry, 2014], Setu International Awardee for ‘stellar contribution to world literature’, 2018 [Pittsburgh, USA], WE EUNICE DE SOUZA [WE Literary Community, 2023], for ‘rich and diverse contribution to Poetry, literature and Learning’, she runs a column, Morning Meanderings [Learning and Creativity. Com]. Her recently published works are What is the Meter of the Dictionary? The Catnaman [With Dr. Sunil Sharma] & For Better or Verse [With Ramendra Kumar and Dr. Ampat Koshy].
Susan Burch began writing tanka poetry in April 2013. Then haiku, senryu, haibun, gembun, tanka prose, sedoka, sedoka prose, and cherita. When she writes, she lets the poem be what wants it to be. All the poems in this book wanted to be cherita, and were kept together on purpose, as a collection. None of them were previously published. Susan was the Vice President of The Tanka Society of America from 2017- 2024. She was also the Editor of Haiku in Action from 2023-2024. Susan resides in Hagerstown, Maryland, USA, with her amazing husband, Sexy Beast, and daughter, British Baby. She enjoys reading, doing puzzles, birding, and watching Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team.
Week 3, February 2025
The Last Time
By Shivshankar Menon 17th February 2025
The last time Grandmother addressed
Me was from her favourite
Morning seat by the window, her book
Of devotions open at one
Sunlit page unread. She spoke slowly,
Holding my hand, of the old
Family home, of ancient scandals and
Feuds, squabbles and partitions
While I listened, watching her faraway eyes
And marvelling at the rich flow
Of family lore. Only a year later did that tide
Of nonagenarian reminiscence
Take on new meaning when, coming home
I ran down to her room and
Found her sitting in the same old chair with
The same old book open on her lap.
Now too the pages remained unturned but
Her hands rested on them inert ;
When I approached she looked up slowly
And stared at me blankly
Clearly with no notion of who I was, before
Turning wordlessly away
Haiku
by Steliana A Voicu 18th February 2025
amethyst sky -
we dance in the same rhythm
as snowflakes
hide and seek…
the moon through the icicles
at the house eaves
frost evening -
the raccoon sneaks away
in the back yard
Lace
By Deborah Bennett 19th February 2025
i am holding the lace
my grandmother tatted
a hundred years ago
i am the keeper of
the yellowed thread
she carried north
from mississippi
running from mississippi
ojibwa for "big river"
for how wide the water was
between containment and freedom
for how wide the world
between horror and beauty
i am touching the lace
my grandmother touched
thinking about what it was
to be starved and sustained
by knots and loops
by curves and stitches
by row on row of
snow-shaped rings
that held all the pieces
together
Poems
By Alison Nuorto
Aubade
As he kissed her sleeping form,
His hair fanned her face like a bouquet of feathers.
She awoke to the bitter scent of loss.
Like crushed blooms in Autumn.
White Lines
Let me slip into you.
Into your spaces.
Where our lines blur and meld,
And I can no longer be mapped or traced.
Seawater
I’m a husk;
All lashed kernel and hollowed hubris.
Hewn from the withering vine.
But plunge me in seawater and I’ll shine,
like the newly presented babe; birthed from the core.
Propelled to Galilee,
my shedding will lead to salvage.
Bottled Love
By Ketaki Mazumdar 21st February 2025
Autumn shivers.
I remember Indian Summers and
Grandma preparing jars of mangoe pickles,
raw, firm, drenched with sun,
that I helped pluck.
Mangoes bite sized, doused with home fiery ground masalas.
Shaken firmly,
Mixed with oil...
Spooned into jars...
Many hot noons of watching and waiting and drooling...
On hot roof tops..
Memories,
I carried across oceans,
Across seasons...
Precious stock of
Enticement.
Every bite a delight...
As falling leaves drifted across glazed windows,
As high rises, with powdered snow, stared at me,
The warmth of my grandma's love, Overwhelmed the corners of my heart.
Her hand knitted red and orange cosy scarf,
Her green and red, floating in oil... Mangoe pickle,
My sustenance.
Delighted my Autumn heart!
Biographies of Poets
Shivshankar Menon served for many years in the History faculty of St Stephen's College, Delhi. He now lives in his hometown Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, and devotes himself to studies in Russian language and literature.
Steliana Cristina Voicu lives in Ploieşti, Romania and loves painting, poetry, Japanese culture, photography and astronomy. Her haiku, tanka, haiga, poetry, short-prose have been published worldwide, including Asahi Haikuist Network, Daily Haiga, The Wise Owl-The Daily Verse, Under the Bashō, Chrysanthemum and others. She is founder and editor of Enchanted Garden Haiku Journal-Romania.
Deborah A. Bennett is an American poet whose poetic work consists mostly of haiku and senryu. Her poems have most recently appeared in Acorn Haiku, Fresh Out Magazine and The Mamba, Journal of the Africa Haiku Network.
Santosh Bakaya is an award winning poet, novelist, biographer, TEDx Speaker, acclaimed for poetic biography, Ballad of Bapu, Dr. Santosh Bakaya’ has authored twenty- three books encompassing multiple genres. Reuel International Awardee [Poetry, 2014], Setu International Awardee for ‘stellar contribution to world literature’, 2018 [Pittsburgh, USA], WE EUNICE DE SOUZA [WE Literary Community, 2023], for ‘rich and diverse contribution to Poetry, literature and Learning’, she runs a column, Morning Meanderings [Learning and Creativity. Com]. Her recently published works are What is the Meter of the Dictionary? The Catnaman [With Dr. Sunil Sharma] & For Better or Verse [With Ramendra Kumar and Dr. Ampat Koshy].
Ketaki Mazumdar is an educationist and a poet. She is a recipient of many awards. Her poetry reflects her excitement with the beauty of nature, emotions of grief, joy, love and also gently touches on the spirituality and mysticism of life.
Week 4, February 2025
January Winter
By Sushant Thapa 24th February 2025
Wintering is an art.
When the winter sun
kisses the earth
its light parda seeks
an embrace.
Memories are trust
that seeks the warmth.
The mirror lake
freezes,
yet, I play with
the candleof my frosted memories.
You shape up
and form a soul
that seeks my sight,
I carry your heart
and hear all the anticipations
to embrace the forgotten book
of wintry recollections.
January winter is a memory book.
The snow falls
from the apple tree,
I cherish the fireplace
and its nostalgia.
I fondly remember you
peeling layers of winter
from my heart.
Now, you are a frozen lake -
a mirror that I carry
in my soul.
Micro Poems
by Belinda Behne 25th February 2025
morning lookout
waiting for the red fox
coyote appears
sticky fingers
of love
pry open my heart
following the rainbow
we share
the pot of gold
Snowy day Poem
By Kavita Ezekiel, 26th February, 2025
When the snow is on the ground
And the silence makes no sound
From earth to heaven all is white
From faraway the sun shines bright
All the birds seem to have flown
To a place they call their home
They will return when the snow has gone
Once more to sing their sweet sweet songs.
But wait I see a magpie hopping
From every branch the snow is dropping
Blue and white feathers against the light
I bet 'twill be a quiet night.
Some more snow fell all last night
He shoveled the sidewalk with all his might
A lone squirrel scampering on the high line
Like a tightrope walker balancing fine
No birds today, some sun, grey clouds
White trees praying with their heads bowed
Blessed to have nowhere to go
Will read and write and take things slow
But wait there's laundry and plenty of dishes
No Fairy Godmother to grant my wishes!
Don't know what tomorrow will bring
Be gone winter, come quickly Spring.Poet's Note: I live in a part of Canada which experiences five long months of winter. Many of my poems describe the landscape and the sights and sounds of this season. Some of the poems are rhyming in nature and use humor as a means to cope with the silence.
A Risky Affair
By Edilson Ferriera 27th February 2025
Sometimes I visit the past, long ago, perilous
and suspicious a world.
The road I take has been built entirely by me,
in very hard a way no one at least dreams of.
Rough a path and full of so many deviations,
that even I, well used to, go so timorous.
Now, it is clear there were no other choices,
for only this way would lead me where I am.
Where and what I must be ever since I was.
On this visit, I see friends, lovers, enemies,
grandfathers and cousins, see also myself.
Then, undoubtedly alive, they talk to me,
ask for news and soon we are laughing,
like old comrades who were absent for so long.
On leaving, one or other intends to follow me,
but I go home alone.
I suspect that the past is jealous of its deeds
and hides from us how it has weaved them.
I think we must go there so few times
we are capable of.
Biographies of Poets
Sushant Thapa is a Nepalese poet. He has published seven book of English Poems and his latest book is titled "Finding My Soul in Kathmandu" published by Ukiyoto Publishing. Sushant holds an MA in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He teaches English Language and Literature to University level students in Biratnagar, Nepal. He is widely published in print, online and school book.