Daily Verse
Week 1, January 2025
The Evergreen Sigh
By Ketaki Mazumdar 1st January 2025
Forever love in stars
of a cold winter sky
shimmers of nostalgia wrapped in
frosted memories,
trying to survive
the bleakness of aloneness...
the surround sound of life
is painfully muted...
the quilt we shared
is thin, unfluffed, lacks your fragrance,
lacks the warmth of togetherness...
frosted in hibernation
cocooned in me
are pine aromas...
Xmas cakes, mince pies and freshly baked cookies...and our laughter...
colours of oranges,
red apples,white chrysanthemums and poinsettias...
obsessions we shared,
gift wrapped with red, white and green,
angels, stars, fairy lights, music...
sweetness of soaring carols and church bells...
shimmery silver snow flakes...
laughter and kisses we had shared.
Winter's embrace
By Peter A Witt 3rd January 2025
Her breath etches the crisp morning air,
as she twirls circles on the glassy surface, her eyes
a pair of sleighs tracing whispers of gossamer wings,
promises of winter spun in her gaze.
Frost blooms like cobwebs on her fingertips,
each blink scattering powdery stars,
her lashes weave whispers on the wind,
as she catches the shimmer of drifting flakes,
tongue tasting secrets of the cold.
Beyond the lace of glittering hills,
clouds of laughter ripple across the valley.
She hears the swift, sharp cut of blades,
the wind carrying dreams, currently out-of-reach,
but almost ready to touch.
Gliding, she watches, quiet and still,
ice her canvas, hope her guide that
one day she will become an ice dancer
twirling within winter's crystal arms.
Poems on frosted memories
By Jennifer Gurney 2nd January 2025
one after another
poems nascent in my heart
newly born
a poem leaks out
through the threadbare spot
of my newly healing heart
between the margins
a word here, there
before a patch seals it closed
Haiku & Tanka
By Victoria Crawford 7th January 2025
Window Sill
Tender flame long waits
on window sill, faint stars fade
as the East lightens
I will puff out the candle flame
and scrape dry wax in the morn
Winter Winds
Kogarashi stirs
Kyoto red leaves shiver
winter winds arise
Kestrel
A wild bird of prey
kestrel hovers overhead
rapacious haiku
Undead
By Radha Chakravarty 4th January 2025
drowned moments refuse to die
beneath the frozen surface
of willed forgetting
lies a chill dark lake of guilt
where undead memories lie in wait
at night through sudden cracks
in that smooth, hardened crust
we skim so glibly in the day
dark secrets rise like twisted claws
to clutch our souls
and drag us under
too late
we realize
skating on the thin ice
of falsehood can be
fatal
Biographies of Poets
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.
Jennifer Gurney lives in Colorado where she teaches, paints, writes and hikes. Her poetry has appeared internationally in a wide variety of journals, two of her poems have won international contests and one was recently turned into a choral piece for a concert. Jennifer’s first book of poetry, My Eyes Adjusting, has recently been published.
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.
Victoria Crawford is a poet living in Thailand. She enjoys writing short form poetry, particularly haiku and tanka, about all forms of nature from her pocket-sized garden to hiking in northern Thailand jungles. Her poems have been published in many journals and have followed the natural worlds of all the countries she has lived in.
Peter A Witt is a Texas poet and a retired university Professor. He is a two time Best of the Net nominee. His poetry has been published on various sites including Verse-Virtual, Indian Periodical, Fleas on the dog, Inspired, Open Skies Quarterly, Active Muse, New Verse News and Wry Times.
Week 2, January 2025
Cold Yearnings
By Sunil Sharma 8th January 2025
Earth and sky fused
into
a vertical of
silver, the dominant
colour with varied
shades splashed around,
dark-grey-bluish
patches
animate the void.
Winter is a silent painter of warm colours, grandpa, a devoted farmer
in Ontario, declares over dinner, during a rare family
reunion, as the fire crackles, and a yellow fog once seen
by T. S. Eliot, settles down, along with the alley cat.
Also, a soft-voiced singer, grandma added with a twinkle
in eyes with failing sight: A female singer working the
fields and yards and humming simultaneously; the wind
scatters those
songs
to the world, on an icy breath.
The children played on the soft sheets rolled out over the grassy grounds, doing somersaults, throwing snow at each other playfully in the flurries; the screaming
kids, during the recess, embraced warmly by a grey-bearded old man with cold
fingers and white brows, while the gentle creatures of God hibernated beneath
the solid sheets, warm in burrows.
The white-outs are getting rare now!
Missing, the desolation of stark beauty and romance of the winters!
Grandpa said with the long sigh of a jilted lover.
We, too, miss out the snowy country, kids complained bitterly to the adults busy
with their gadgets; no longer we see the stoic
Snow-men and their happy families, out in the open, welcoming the freezing
rain and ice, with smiles on snub-nosed faces; reassuring presence, for a lonely
commuter, trudging home, after a late shift
in a cavernous warehouse, full of young immigrants, hoping for bright stars, in
the dark
alien skies!
Haiku on Frosted memories
by Neena Singh 9th January 2025
New Year dawn
brass candlesticks gleam
a friend's memory
lost birdsong…
the wooden birdhouse
fills with frost
draping the warmth
of an old pashmina...
winter loneliness
Forgotten
By Nandita Samanta 10th January 2025
I have no memories,
I watch myself from behind an amnesiac mirror
in delirium, touch my body gently,
narcissus returns to me.
Then sleep comes, leaving behind
the foreshadow of an exile.
The forgotten frigid passion
cuddles the setting moon.
That night, you wished to touch me-
that was only the caress,
I couldn’t feel anything after that.
Tanka & Monoku
By Pravat Kumar Padhy 14th January 2025
teardrops
of burning memories
all evaporate
only to return back
as rain-soaked grief
melting snow into blades of grass
frozen differences an adjective of the past
still breathing the scribbles deep beneath the frosty time
tea flowers grandmother’s kyusu brewed with joy
Mummified
By Lily Swaran. 13th January 2025
I let the chill mummify my dreams
With the stubbornness of snow
Hardening into blocks of stony ice
Sabre toothed icicles swoop down
From frozen cliffs of sepia memories
Lampooning slopes of shrouded Dalhousie
Rambler roses died bruised deaths
With whiffs of perfumed nostalgia
Beside carrot nosed comic snowmen
I let the frost gnaw into my innards
With nightmares of wild Yeti forms
Riding Tibetan yaks ,wool blinded
Biographies of Poets
Sunil Sharma is a humble word-worshipper: catcher of elusive sounds, meanings and images. He has published 27 creative and critical books-joint and solo. A winner of, among others, the Panorama Golden Globe Award-2023, and, Nissim Award for Excellence-2022 for the novel Minotaur. His poems were included in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, 2015.
A Touchstone nominee in the Shortlist for Individual Poems in 2021, Neena is a banker turned poet. Her haikai poetry is regularly published in international journals and magazines. She has published two books of poetry—'Whispers of the Soul: the journey within' and 'One Breath Poetry'. She runs a non-profit for quality interventions in the education and health of underprivileged children in Chandigarh. Neena loves to sit in the garden conversing with squirrels and pigeons.
Nandita Samanta is a poet, short story writer, reviewer, editor, artist, and translator. She freelances as a parenting and relationship advisor and colour therapist. Her writings, published in three of her compilations, many anthologies, webzines, and journals, are highly appreciated and translated into different languages.
Lily Swarn won the Reuel International Prize for Poetry 2016 and was recognised by the World Union of Poetsas Global Poet of Peace and Universal Love. World Institute Of Peace conferred the title of Global Icon of Peace on her in Nigeria. Lily has been awarded the Virtuoso Award by Philosophique Poetica. She has penned several books and her poetry & prose have been featured in many prestigious literary magazines.
Pravat Kumar Padhy is a mainstream poet and a writer of Japanese short forms of poetry (haiku, tanka, haiga, haibun, tanka prose). His poem 'How Beautiful' is included in the undergraduate curriculum at the university level. Pravat’s haiku won The Kloštar Ivanić International Haiku Award, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Invitational Award, IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award, Setouchi Matsuyama Photo Haiku Award and others. His haiku are published in many international journals and anthologies including in Red Moon Anthology. Haiku are featured at 'Haiku Wall', Historic Liberty Theatre Gallery in Bend, Oregon and at Mann Library, Cornell University. USA. His publications can be read at http://pkpadhy.blogspot.com
Week 3, January 2025
Hymn for Fallen Soldiers
By Michael R Burch 15th January 2025
Sound the awesome cannons.
Pin medals to each breast.
Attention, honor guard!
Give them a hero’s rest.
Recite their names to the heavens
Till the stars acknowledge their kin.
Then let the land they defended
Gather them in again.
Poet's Note: When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense/POW/MIA Accounting Agency) that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem.
Poems on Winter's Embrace
By Mona Bedi 16th January 2025
end of winter--
a row of pickle jars
bask in the sun
winter stars this wish to have it all
evening chill
the silent conversations
of snow
Hot coffee with a view of a snow covered parking lot
By Biswajit Mishra 17th January 2025
A well-earned latte,
after an unusual walk by snowy streets-
some sidewalks still have uncleared icy patches
but the sunny afternoon
enticed me to come out-
two large dumping of snow
may have brought my bar lower
and another deviation I make
stopping by for a coffee at Starbucks
where a light music is on-
Christmassy ambiance
and I sit with my coffee
looking out at the unused patio
just outside my window
where two chairs sit
on which snow is still hanging on,
a few vehicles are strewn about
with the detached tractor of a semi
in the parking lot beyond
which is fully covered with snow
metamorphosed into a brownish hue
traded on, driven on-
could have been sands
that kids had wrangled on at a beach
giving the lot a forlorn look-
a scene out of an apocalypse movie.
All seemed to be attuned to the pace
of a November afternoon
that I enjoy with a calmness
at the turnstile
where both autumn and winter
face each other in a stand-off, each scheming
to get a jump on the other.
Biographies of Poets
Michael R. Burch's poems have been published in literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 19 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 61 times by 32 composers.
Mona Bedi is a medical doctor in Delhi, India. She has been writing poetry since childhood but a few years back she started writing the Japanese form.. haiku. She has authored two poetry books published by the name of 'they you and me' and 'dancing moonlight.' She received the Grand Prize in the 3rd Morioka Haiku Festival, 2021 and four haiku of merit in the World Haiku Review 2021/2022 alongwith an honourable mention at the Japan Fair 2021. Her haiku, tanka haibun and Haiga has been published in various journals of repute like Presence, Modern haiku, Haiku dialogue, Haiku in Action, Triveni haikuKatha, Drifting sands, Failed haiku, Stardust, among others.
Biswajit Mishra writes poems and occasionally flash fiction. He also writes sporadically in his native language Odia. Born in India and having lived in Kenya, Biswajit and his wife Bharati live in Calgary, Canada.
Week 4, January 2025
Calcutta Winters
By Haimanti Dutta Ray 20th January 2025
It seems last year, but
Eons of years have lapsed
Since me holding hands with eyes shut
Inside the Zoo; childhood, dashed
Amid pages of an album, suddenly erupt
Woolens, out with mothballs, washed
Worn with love – pristine, not corrupt
Forgotten time that ran and clashed
With the clocks, the hour hands did disrupt.
Movements – seasonal and personal – smashed
The liquid frozen time, that came up – a memory abrupt
Winter outings, in the brilliant sun, abashed
The cozy pictures within phosphorescent memories, cupped
Calcutta winters are solidified warmth, molten n’ cached
We revel in them, until they swirl in our gut.
Frosted memories
by Vijay Prasad 21st January 2025
existence frozen in certain parts of me
dense fog . . .
am i
(𝘬)not
darkens
my darkness ...
white snow
the thickness of a frozen absence
Fire & Ice
By Sunil Sharma, 22nd January, 2025
Speaking of bygone eras-
Today, matchbox homes have burnt the fireplace
when North winds tease tinkling icicles off naked branches
when single file footsteps in circles reach homelessness,
diaphanous snowflakes frost
breath in and out of lungs, seeking a roof
warm fingers, toes and a bowl of broth!
When peals of bells slice heavy silence, hibernation stirs,
Santa’s landing on my rooftop, I feel.
When indigo twinkles on blanketed pristine white,
my ancestral home rooms stay warm all night
not as a hangover of the colonial culture or rule
but the hearth being the heart of this home,
fires are lit, wood chips and shavings kindle kindling
logs hiss and sizzle, chimneys smoke
yellow, orange flames lick the flue aglow
tongs and poker standing by ready to stoke.
Young and old gather, beholden togetherness.
Overcoats, mufflers, mittens and caps shrugged off
guffaws and giggles, veins and cheeks aflush
peals and squeals break the night’s gelid hush
everyone baubles the Christmas tree a little. A tall teen
fixes the Star of Bethlehem on the peak.
Good cheer casts a presence, rum and eggnog, add on
peanuts, pistachio shells perk up dancing flames.
Red- green themed cover and candles, buoy
laden tables with our favourite fare
love and laughter ginger the air.
The grandfather clock nudges, time in bed to be tumbling
new logs on dying embers warm the home now slumbering.
Snuggled and hugged cherubic cheeks turn rose gold
cradled in granny’s gossamer shawl’s lacy folds.
Sated and sleepy we’re ready to say goodnight
to the sound of carols “…..all is calm, all is bright!”
Tanka
By Jahnavi Gogoi 23rd January 2025
misshapen bow
floating in the air like wishes
tufts of cotton rehomed again
in an old razai
my mother’s compromises
foggy morning
grandma’s prayer song
offers a glimmer of solace
the marigolds orbit the quivering
flame of an earthen lamp
old photograph
father in a field of verbena
cradling an infant with my smile
the northern sky witnesses
our final meeting
Anniversary
By Sanjeev Sethi, 24th January 2025
As you hide in the halo of unsung harmonies,
my tunes wallow in the vernix of unborn lyrics.
How much ever one may circumvent, run on
uncommon routes, marks from memory inter-
crosses like tired stamps or exhausted songs.
When it is too late to remedy or recast, the
answer is acceptance. With tottery stiles, one
bends towards the balustrade. Barreled, everyone
is a dead ringer. Secure in syllogisms, Cassandras
in my canton straggle me as I baste a safeguard.
Biographies of Poets
Haimanti Dutta Ray is a Kolkata-based poet whose poetry collection 'Yesterday in Tomorrow' has been released recently.
Vijay Prasad is a poet from Patna, India. He is disappointingly interested in life. He has a passion for haiku, language, philosophy, and so on ... He is published in Bones, Under the Basho, tinywords, Failed Haiku, The Mumba Journal, Haiku Dialogue, Prune Juice, among others.
Sunil Kaushal loves reading and writing poetry. He is the Editor of Pittsburg-based literary magazine Setu
Sanjeev Sethi has authored eight books of poetry. Legato Without a Lisp is his latest (CLASSIX, an imprint of Hawakal, New Delhi, September 2024). His poetry has been published in over thirty-five countries and has appeared in more than 500 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He edited Dreich Planet # 1 India, an anthology for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in December 2022. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. Sethi is in the top 10 of the erbacce-prize 2021. He is the recipient of the Ethos Literary Award 2022. In 2023, he won the First Prize in a Poetry Competition by the National Defence Academy, Pune. He was conferred the 2023 Setu Award for Excellence. He lives in Mumbai, India.
Last Week, January 2025
The Frozen Memories
Toolika Rani 27th January 2025
Under the umbrella of time
We feign ourselves protected
From the snowflakes falling around
Our footprints getting buried
In the seamless snow-filled ground,
And forward we march in an arrogant ignorance
Creating a crunching sound,
Until time plays a trick again-
Unearthing the frozen memories
Unleashing astonishing discoveries
Revealing, seventy-five years on,
the enigmatic Mellory
And,
Throwing Irvin’s shoe up right after a century.
Who knows what else the snow covered up!
When it melts, the clock may turn backwards!
Haiku
by K Ramesh 28th January 2025
winter dawn...
sound of the teashop
shutter opening
hill station convent...
sweaters emerge from
the thick mist
misty railway station...
a man in shawl reading
the newspaper
Farewell
By Shivshankar Menon, 29th January, 2025
I will break my ships down now
To pieces of floating driftwood
And cast them out upon the sea to
Journey where they will. For I
Don’t want to point them any longer
To my own purposes, nor chain
Them to indefinite waiting at anchor.
Let them find at last their own
Favoured waves and shape their own
Voyages. Let them follow their
Preferred siren voices and challenge
Shipwreck on rocks of their secret
Desiring. And shorebound I shall perhaps
Watch them for a while, shading my eyes
From sunset-daggered waves and spray
Until sky and sea embrace in darkness
And my ships, whole once more, return
On the green tides of dreams
Patterns
by Avantika Singh 31st January 2025
As frosty winds blow,
Icy patterns of frost on windshields grow
From trees to intricate leaves
Beauteous patterns, the ice weaves.
My warm breath I see escape,
In the cold air in a shape
Like a small, puffed-up cloud—
Patterns I see where none did abound.
As frosty winds blow,
The homeless shiver slow
On the roads, they lie
Besides small fires under the open sky.
Sometimes on a gurdwara’s steps
At other times under the flyovers complex
They find shelter from the cold
Bundled under quilts tattered and old.
But the world works in its own fashion,
As unknown hands reach out in compassion
Distributing blankets to the destitute
Covering them with love resolute.
As frosty winds blow
The patterns of compassion show,
Embracing the cold on footpaths and pavements
In steaming cups of tea and other arrangements.
As frosty winds blow,
The dogs lie snuggled low
On small hillocks of dug-out earth
For that warmth is their hearth.
As a compassionate soul passes by
Jackets and food they supply.
In this world, as we pass by
In patterns of compassion, let us tie
Frozen memories
by Fatma Zohra Habis 30th January 2025
memories frozen
alone I review
old movie
a cold spark
from frozen distant echoes
I reach for it's warmth
novel on the shelf
time folds its pages~
memories frozen
Poems
By Vijay Prasad, 30th January, 2025
winter dusk –
her eyes weep
fog
inside the winter wind my last breath
cold moon –
not a speck
of mind
snowfall . . .
her one-sided
hesitancy