Welcome to another Poetry Friday Adventure!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our poetry challenge for the month of JULY.

Here’s the scoop: we’re circling back to the beginning by revisiting Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound challenge from way back in January. (After scrolling to the very bottom of the post), use the eight prompts he provides us to produce eight lines to organize into a Midyear Pantoum that gives you a sense for where you are now, and where you’re going with the rest of your year. Are you in? Good! You’ll have the month to craft your creation and share it July 31st in a blog post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. See you then!

Happy June, friends!

A few days after Solstice I was clearing off my art desk – finally – and found some sealed envelopes. New Year’s Cards… which I’d never sent. Honestly, that’s SO on brand for this year (and this month) that it made me laugh out loud (and apologies and felicitations to the people who are going to be receiving their New Year’s cards six months in – but hey, now we know we survived it, right? Right. Happy Halfway to January Again). I definitely needed to read Louise Ireland’s Louise Ireland’s August Triptych, a poem that depicts the exigencies of discarded urgency and celebrates the beauty in the ephemeral – all those things that don’t last, including blooms and buds, attention, and time.

Because I’ve been reading this poem over and over again since Tabatha Yeatts introduced it to me, I can say that this was one of the easiest works to slip into as a mentor poem. Not because the poem has strong meter or rhyme that insists on drumming its way into me, but because the first line of that first stanza stops me cold again and again. Freedom is a fence gone slack. All I could think of when I read that was, “What could I escape, but don’t? What ‘fullness of time’ line item have I been auditing, waiting on paperwork and assurances which might never occur?”

Put that way, suddenly the topic shouldered its way into the forefront of my brain. I wrote this poem in a single sitting, in the short window of time we gave ourselves to write collaboratively with those of us able to meet on a Sunday afternoon. That rarely-to-never happens for me, and normally I’d take the time to fuss with and edit the poem. Not today.

Though some others of my Poetry Sisters did thorough editing and revision. Liz’s poem is here. Mary Lee’s poem is here. Michelle K’s triptych is here. You’ll find Poetry Friday hostess Tricia’s poem here. Diane Davis’s evocatively titled triptych is here. Other Poetry Peeps may taking on Louise Ireland’s beautiful poem may pop in throughout the weekend, so do check back for the round-up here.

The poem that followed germinated in part because we sat down to have our poem chat on Father’s Day… a Father’s Day where I was home and not at my parents’ house, a Father’s Day where I didn’t even buy my Dad a card or a bottle of Dad’s Root Beer, because he didn’t want it.

untitled triptych on louise ireland’s “august”

draft ©2026 ts davis

I.
Restless guest, a wind swirls through
sundering, as petals shower.
Mature trees release with grace,
Making way for swelling fruit
and, ripening,
harvest.

II.
Daughterhood’s a part-time job,
so my father says.
Per his last email,
we, the begotten,
should leave him in peace
until he calls.
So much free time
I’ll not spend waiting
for royal scepters
extended my way.

III.
Nectar-drunk
bees feast on crushed fruit

flawed
isn’t
fatal

even bruised buds
still smell sweet.

Well. It is what it is. The grass withers, the flowers fades, but what is timeless – the rhythms of change and choice – last forever. Seedtime and harvest. Sunrise and sunset. And, when we choose it, love that is the foundation of the world.

So until next time friends, pull your weeds, replant your borders, and leave a little water out for the honeybees. They’ll find the fruit on their own. And because it is always worth saying so that I hear it myself – remember you are so, so loved.

Happy Weekend🌻