Prompt: How the Swallow got its forked tail (15 mins. timed writing)
When the Earth was young and skies were clear, and the air was always sweet, birds were the masters of the air. Some lived in the high mountains and would glide for hours and hours on the warm air thermals that rose from the fields below. Some were small and shy and could only be seen in the glimpse of a blinked eye, as they darted into the safe confines of the hedgerows and shrubs. Others were travellers, making long journeys in search of habitats, where food was plentiful and where the climate suited. Of those making the longest journeys, the swallow is now the mightiest, moving across the Earth as the seasons change. However, this was not always the way of things.
One swallow, during the dark months of a northern winter, was finding it hard to find food and wished that he was able to fly the long distance south, where the air was warmer and food was easier to find. One day, he met a wise owl and asked why he was not able to travel far, like many of the other birds. The owl turned his head slowly and blinked his large eyes. “Perhaps,” he said, “you do not have the plumage suited to travel far. Your tail feathers are very broad from what I can see. The swallow thought about this and asked the other swallows to help him, and to pull out some of his tail feathers to see if it made a difference…
(unfinished)
Poem: prompted by selecting from a collection of stones and pebbles (15 mins.)
I found a piece of a planet:
Dark disc and shadow-shaped.
Encapsulated time.
Crusted and rusted with tides
Of ocean floods, flowing
Endless.
This glossary of ages past
Outlasts all.
Its contoured cohorts
Will one day form another world
Wally Smith
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