Poetry Friday--Spark

I recently completed my fourth Spark challenge. (I wrote about past experiences here and here.) This time I was paired with poet Karen Jakubowski.

This is the piece I sent to Karen as inspiration:

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.
I had created the piece using my photo of a flowering vine, an out-of-copyright
illustration of the sun, and some words taken from a poem by Samuel Cobb, which I found in an old book (1707) on the Project Gutenberg site.

Karen responded to the piece with this poem:

Fleur-De-Lis
by Karen Jakubowski

Monday morning arrives
Scorched spark of yellow hope
Rolls in like a dime-store sun
Sultry eyes spill ocher beams

Arms laden with freesia,
Greens and tangled brambles
Snagged at Chelsea market
Bundled fragrance fills the air

Nestles week-old stargazers
Wilted lilies in a paper grave
Sense soother finesses fresh blooms
Whimsical arrangement remains unfinished

© Karen Jakubowski, all rights reserved.

I love Karen's choice of words--scorched spark, dime-store sun, tangled brambles, bundled fragrance, finesses fresh blooms. She did a fine job I think!

It's fun to be challenged to create. I'm not an artist, but I participate as an artist in the Spark challenges because there always seem to be more writers than artists or musicians. The challenge, therefore, is even more of a trial as it forces me out of my regular comfort zone--writing.

I dabble in photo manipulation through the wonders of free software. I started with Picnik back in 2010, but after Google purchased it, it was closed down. PicMonkey is a nice replacement. It keeps adding features, which is great, because there were some on Picnik that I really liked and I'm hoping PicMonkey will one day offer. PicMonkey is currently free, so if you want to try your hand at photo editing, now's the time to do it.

Since the Spark challenge is an exchange, Karen sent me an inspiration piece, too. Karen's inspiration piece, and my response to it, can be found here.

This week's Poetry Friday Round-Up is being held at Jama's Alphabet Soup where there's always something cooking!