Rachel McDonald
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softlywild.bsky.social
Rachel McDonald
@softlywild.bsky.social
2.1K followers 1.2K following 6.3K posts
Poet; writer; imagination is everything. 💫

Lover of shapes left over from cutting out shapes; the sea; humming and the rain.
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softlywild.bsky.social
Rachel McDonald @softlywild.bsky.social · Jan 31
Where have you been?
In the deep dark woods. Finding my way through forests.

Why did you return?
To remember the space between
us closing and who I am Becoming.

Who are you Becoming?
Leaf and prayer and the
dark bones of wintering.

#poet #poem #poetry #writingcommunity
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
bohumilao.bsky.social
I opened a book
And the sun flooded my soul
Never more alone.

#bridahaiku #haiku #poetry #poem #book
Bookshelves of poetry
May 15, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
merrildsmith.bsky.social
Good morning! I suppose I've continued last week's theme into this week's #PoemsAbout #NeverForget Thank you once again @alanparry83.bsky.social and @brokenspinearts.bsky.social for this forum. I will be back in a bit to read--depending on how severe the storms are coming our way!
Poem At the Borderline of Intangible You can’t see the specks of stardust, that scattered light beyond our vision, infrareds, ultraviolets— the blackholes that zip around us, drift like our ghosts-- shadows almost seen. You nearly forgot the cold touch that brushed your cheek with thoughts from the past, a dream voice that called your name, this time you woke, this time you remembered how the rain fell, a virga of possibility, a deluge of inevitability carrying flecks of all of us, of everything, the light.
May 16, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
k8star-p.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #NeverForget @alanparry83.bsky.social
@brokenspinearts.bsky.social

#poetry #poem
May 16, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
sueimnw.bsky.social
For this week's #PoemsAbout #NeverForget an old poem in memory of my Dad, but new to here, and fitting, I hope. With thanks to @alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social and all those taking part. Will catch up with others later.
May 16, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
paulwritespoems.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #NeverForget here is a piece called Summer Fade, a rework of an old poem of mine.

Looking forward to reading others work throughout the day.

Thanks to @alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social for cultivating this community of writers 🙏
Summer Fade I see the underskin twine barely holding your life together, cherry and plum threads unraveling in midsummer twilight. I tell myself it’s just the shade. A lie I can live with a lie to make you live - longer - than the moulding bouquet existing on the windowsill, the lead crystal heavy with death of mulching carnations and tulip stems. I don’t know why no-one has replaced them— but I do really. When your head turns to face me sometimes there’s a glint of silver recognition in your moonswell eyes— and the slightest cup of a smile held on your saltstubble lips, lasting no longer than a heartbeat. When you retreat into the security of the peppermint blanket, dry tears scold my throat while sterile walls, return my stare unable to offer the answers I hope for.
May 16, 2025 at 6:03 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
eleanorholmes.bsky.social
#poemsabout #neverforget
Fantastic theme with a brilliant multiplicity of responses
@brokenspinearts.bsky.social
@alanparry83.bsky.social
barter we used to exchange rhubarb, for advice a barter that left both feeling warmer i was jealous of his Russian hat collection he of my fluency in matters of the heart healthcare titbits and NHS navigation for freshly dug carrots, leeks, the odd spud it seemed to me Fred had life sorted my own was falling apart, I didn’t let on his wife was in and out of hospital until one day, she wasn’t any more a bag of onions left on my doorstep the exchange one-sided and raw.
May 16, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
johnadlam.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout
#NeverForget
Something on the stove, not yet cooked. But I must re-share this, 1st published @asylummagazine.bsky.social, about my Mum's Alzheimer's, when, like Persephone, she was still in and out of the world rather than gone away💔🙏
@brokenspinearts.bsky.social @alanparry83.bsky.social
Persephone says Persephone says that she dreams of the snow’s soft falling. She sits in the shade all alone and she thinks that there’s nothing worth learning, and no-one worth calling. Persephone says she no longer remembers her reasons for returning. Her pomegranate days seem palely out of synch with the pull and the yearning of the seasons. Persephone says she no longer believes in the meaning of those small things that used to sustain her. Most nights, she drinks. The woodlands are burning. She wearies of her long inbetweening.
May 16, 2025 at 8:39 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
My #poem for the #PoemsAbout theme #NeverForget is Come Back, a version of a piece first published in The Cannon's Mouth. #poetrycommunity #booksky #vss365 @alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social
Come Back. A poem by Paul Connolly. First published in The Cannon's Mouth Come Back I miss you. I miss you with the greatest ache addiction. You were the appetite I tended daily, your gnawings became my ritual. I brewed you again and again with a practiced measurement, connoisseur’s minute and exact attentions, then injected you, topped up my inward streams of you to focus and flood in a head-pulsing blood torrent, drenches of you, then quiet and nothing but your trace, a constant residue, till I crave in clench and fidgeting our next session together, like now. But now it’s different. Now they’ve switched you off who cannot be switched off by me – you, my one, surely elect, a life predestined, beyond a single span – so now the rite I celebrate is broken, sacrilege, for in the hours of waiting, preparation, and in every dose was prayer, a succour, hope for the coming joy, my ecstasy a longing for you imbued by you who didn’t know I care. Your life meant time for the end of times, the former things passing away, I longed for it daily and never saw but shaped it mouthing repeatedly the precious words to you so far away but vivid, your voice like a fierce grasp, your hair, clothes, the aroma as you loomed or smothered me with your special playfulness. But now you’re dead. My prayers are killed. My ecstasy is gone. Come back again so I can live, come back so I can wish again that you were dead.
May 16, 2025 at 5:54 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
lozzawriting.bsky.social
For @brokenspinearts.bsky.social #poemsabout #neverforget a poem about my grandmother. I wrote this a while back but edited it a bit for today as short on time this week. Hope it works ok.
@alanparry83.bsky.social
Alt included.

#poetsonbluesky
#prompt
#poetry
#poems
Flask A Tenby, sand-crust afternoon one souvenir mug, because I thought Tenby was 'Denby.' We laughed, bathed our toes. The ebb of the still water of time lay upon us. There's only approximately one fettered mug of her left one place left to visit, I can almost taste her scones. I'll never make it to Ardnamurchan. One cup of granny by the shore. she'd have spat out her tea at that, "one lump or two?" She'd have squealed.
May 16, 2025 at 6:34 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
oevermann.bsky.social
Memorial
#poem #poetry #writing
Memorial You are not gone. You’ve become the silence just after birdsong, the light that clings to the edge of leaves. I walk where we once stood and time does not behave— it folds, it flickers, it forgets to move forward. Your name lives in the spaces between mine. In breath. In shadow. In the ache that follows beauty. -Gerhard Oevermann
May 15, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
A haiku as submission 2,
for
#PoemsAbout #NeverForget

@brokenspinearts.bsky.social
@alanparry83.bsky.social

#Haiku #senryu

#blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
#poetrycommunity #poems
#poetry #writingcommunity
#writingprompts #writing #inspiration
An art work showing a bunch of small petal flowers on a braid-like entanglements with a ribbon knot at the bottom. The following haiku: fingers tuck forget- me-nots in my tied tresses — a knot traced in throat - C. Oulens Art: ©️Nirabhra (with artist’s permission)
May 16, 2025 at 11:12 AM
softlywild.bsky.social
Here’s a contribution to #PoemsAbout #Don’tForget
@alanparry83.bsky.social
@brokenspinearts.bsky.social

Thank you for reading 💫
May 16, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
bdmpoet.bsky.social
Waiting to Return (Revised Version) - this was actually a poem I wrote in high school that I revisited and revised a couple of years ago. #poetry #poet #poem #poems #revision
May 4, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
meraki-k.bsky.social
sunset over the sea
a streak of auburn
in her hair

#haiku
April 29, 2025 at 4:11 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
jrbhaiku.bsky.social
bouquet of lilies
gifted to my valentine
fire in my hearth

#DailyHaikuPrompt (hearth, lily)
#haiku
May 4, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
ireneaddie.bsky.social
at the bird feeder
the comings and goings
of precious migrants

#dailyhaikuprompt (gleaner)
#micropoetry #haiku
April 28, 2025 at 10:23 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
nomadwriter.bsky.social
His scent was sweet
#Vellichor infused
And she couldn’t get enough;
His spine was the binding
Of a hundred days, lost at sea
His lips still salted with mystery
And a lingering thrill
That her teeth itched
To bite into
And she could read all his life
From the parchment
Fluttering in his gaze
#vss365
May 6, 2025 at 4:31 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
intjohn.bsky.social
After the exorcism, she didn’t vanish
No blaze, no cry—only quiet She lingered, soot-stained and hollow, fingers ghosting where the blaze had carved its name in bone
Yet her heart—defiant, unbeholden—kept beating
Not for penance, nor mercy, nor grace, but for the chance to begin again

#BlueSkyRelay
May 5, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
poetguygabe.bsky.social
Some say
you can lose your heart
but don't lose your head,
but my head is
nowhere to be found
when my heart
is madly in love
with someone
or some thing.

I say
lose your head
open your #heart
get it broken
again and again
pick up the pieces
and put yourself
back together
one more time

#blueskyrelay
Seagull in flight
May 5, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
rayhourigan.bsky.social
In swansong, elegy of effigies,
Masked visages that carry
Eulogies through entropy's seas,
Terrible lovers, unable to marry,
Too melancholic for dread,
All hail the victorious dead.
#vss365 #elegy #writing #writingcommunity #verse #poem
May 6, 2025 at 5:51 AM
Reposted by Rachel McDonald
tregallery.com
✨️🌿💧🤍💧🌿✨️

Droplet-Locket

Love's droplet-locket
Banishes all doubt and fear
Pearl-White Bleeding Heart

#Vssmagic Droplet
#EastCoastKin

#Photography #haiku #俳句 #3lines #Poetry #Micropoetry #PoetryCommunity #NaturePhotography #Macro #BloomScrolling #FlowerReport #NationalPoetryMonth
A macro nature photo I took of a White Bleeding Heart. There is a single white blossom dangling on the upper right, with water droplets on its tip. The green stalk elegantly splits on the left, bowing towards the flower. The background is a dark purple bokeh.
April 16, 2025 at 5:39 PM
softlywild.bsky.social
#poem #poet #poetry #writingcommunity
May 6, 2025 at 5:56 AM