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Ronnie Smith

@rfsmith.bsky.social

Scottish living in France. Poet, lover of art and nature. Retired from the world of smash and grab.

706 Posts669 Follower 898 Folgt

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 3d ago

Thank you to @emteepoetry.bsky.social for last weeks #PromptCombo and to everyone who contributed. This week it's my turn and I've picked a word with over 300 definitions, so there's no excuse for not having a go 😂 This week I want you to #Stand with me 🙏 #PromptCombo #Stand #Prompt #Poetry

Pine Hill

The hill lifts a green shoulder
to the beckoning sky,
a place where the wind
slips off its heavy coat
and rests awhile.

A small stand of pines
leans into the hush,
dark needles catching
whatever light the day offers,
roots threading stories
through the soil’s marrow,
as it gathers
every seed that splits.

Grass sways in loose stanzas,
a gentle tide
that never seeks the sea,
only the soft rhythm
of the seasons.

In this place,
the future seems approachable
while the trees still stand.

A stand of pine trees on a hill somewhere in Shropshire that I can't remember.

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 3d ago

Ra ascends his throne in a sky drained of moisture. To hold court over an Earth stripped, by greed, of all its defences. To pulverise naked nature into crisp, lifeless straw. To blow Sahara dust to settle over the litoral and spread fire to blacken the evergreen forest. August 2024

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 7d ago

One day I will be wise, but that day is not today! Thanks for another great prompt @yeehawpoems.bsky.social ❤️ #Cassiopeian #Wisdom #Poetry

yeehaw poems 🌱@yeehawpoems.bsky.social · last wk.

Yay it's Wednesday! The theme for this week is .. #wisdom 🧋 #Cassiopeian is a #weekly #prompt for #poetry #photography #collage #art and #resistance Feel free to tag me so I don't miss your piece due to occasionally glitchy tags.

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · last wk.

Driving, I see the horizon broken by hay bails piled five high. Made golden by early evening’s set; as if Brancusi had crept around quietly at lunchtime to arrange this unique tableau. ©️July 2024

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · last wk.

Sunday school in Scotland circa 1968.

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · last wk.

Tinder I did not charge with the Greys at Waterloo nor drive a tank at Cambrai; nor retreat from Stalingrad, nor watch the Hiroshima cloud. I read the books and taught the syllabus year on year… Now the world is on fire and cities wait to burn, a fate that will come before I’m gone. ©️July 2026

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · last wk.

Yesterday the highway was a garden path lined with buds and blossom, watched by hanging kestrels printing shadows of doom across the shinning grass. ©️July 2020

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · last wk.

I lay distanced on the démarrera of a foreign beach, captured by the scimitar youth of a silver, snow-cap moon; wrapped in the fine gauze of cirrus, lit by a silent, shrinking sun. ©️July 2020

The Broken Spine (SUBS OPEN)@thebrokenspine.co.uk · last wk.

#PoemsAbout #LastTrain starts Friday. Empty platforms. Flickering signs. A suitcase. A goodbye. The last seat home. We favour vivid imagery over explanation. Draft now. Use Alt Text.

Rainy train platform at night with a stationary train and two figures walking away under station lights. Overlay text reads: “#PoemsAbout #LastTrain”.

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · last wk.

I am asked what I see when I sit alone, on damp shingle, staring at the sea. “Everything”, I say. “Everything in its endless movement, in the unseen torment below.” ©️July 2026

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · last wk.

Shoreline Guided through the eye by the softest westerly. A thread of silver, a gentle plash finely sewn to seal the hem of sea and sand. ©️May 2025

Emily Tee @emteepoetry.bsky.social · last wk.

Thanks to Ronnie for last week's #PromptCombo. This week tag me, @emteepoetry.bsky.social for the prompt #Perseverance. I'm including a poem of mine published about a year ago in The Poetry Lighthouse 🙏 and a photo I took back in January Looking forward to reading your poems!

Jane Dougherty @janedougherty47.bsky.social · 2w ago

For #PoemsAbout #BadHabits and @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Jenevieve Carlyn @coastalpoet.bsky.social · 2w ago

@madp03t.bsky.social can we share old poems for #AmpersandAfterDark? I was thinking of your prompt, "the highway never answered back," but I write too slowly for prompts! This poem was for an ekphrastic series in FolkHeart Press, which, as many people know, is run by @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social!

Unraveling / Daybreak

This is your life: here is where you lived
and where you almost died. The roadblocks,
the knots you tied yourself up in, the tangled
mess you made. Here are your lost loves,
the waylaid plans, the dreams deferred—
you couldn't untangle them even if you wanted to.

We enter this world ready to be made and unmade
like the beginning of a thread, frayed at the end,
a gathering of past lives. Somehow, we become
a friendship bracelet, braided over the long hours—
reminders of childhood, heirloom embroidery thread,
yarn from a neighbor's prayer shawl, grandmother's
knotted rosary, gifts that might one day become
a bluebird's nest. Ghost light, seaweed, stardust:

We weave our lives each day from the found things.
So take what you've gathered, what you've learned
along the way. Claim it as your own. If you let it,
life will strip away at your hard exterior like salt
water on a clam's shell. Let it. You didn't need
that varnish anyway. Now the new life begins.

Francis H Powell writer and poet @fhpowellwriter.bsky.social · 2w ago

#prompycombo @rfsmith.bsky.social #RealPeople for Friday

Francis H Powell writer and poet @fhpowellwriter.bsky.social · 2w ago

@rfsmith.bsky.social #promptcombo #RealPeople

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 2w ago

@yeehawpoems.bsky.social better late than never, in every way #Cassiopeian #Roughly #Poetry

Rough Love

That first time.

That first time you shoved me
roughly out of your way,
like I was just a piece of furniture
in the wrong place.
That’s when I should have left.

That last time.

That last time when it didn’t stop
at the shoving,
when you left me concussed,
but finally not confused.
That’s when I did.

yeehaw poems 🌱@yeehawpoems.bsky.social · 3w ago

Wooooo it's Wednesday! The theme for this week is .. #roughly 🪨 #Cassiopeian is a #weekly #prompt for #poetry #photography #collage #art and #resistance Feel free to tag me so I don't miss your piece due to occasionally glitchy tags.

Lin Hart @poetry-with-hart.bsky.social · 2w ago

A memory of a woman I knew in my church-going days, early high-school. I tried to capture the moment I knew, the anger I didn't understand, the instant decision I made, and her. Kindest women ever. May share more poems about her.. @rfsmith.bsky.social #promptcombo #RealPeople #poetry #vss365 #turn

I knew her by her hands
soft birch fingers, cold dawn
nails plain curved clear
strong, in the beginning.

Her grasp was a reassurance
of what, I was never sure. She
smelled of mentos, rose and
first smoke from a fireplace.

They spoke of finding freedom
within faith, that Sunday
that she didn't come to church.
Hell had officially frozen over.

Hopes and prayers with Rosalyn,
pastor interrupting the sermon
to say, heart bleeding on the podium.
Breast cancer, she'd be gone, awhile.

I was so angry when he told us,
prayers wouldn't bring in her groceries
her firewood, help her up her stairs
keep her company through the fear.

Calculated the distance between
two points, she was only a mile
easy bus stop walk if I could
get permission to visit after school.

I don't know why I did it, barely
knew her, but she was always kind
often giving rides home from church,
talking like I already knew my mind.

By the time he finished announcements,
dismissing the younger kids to Sunday school,
my hands had turned white, birch bark
clasped in my own prayer, bargain with God.

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 2w ago

The moon has risen and assumed responsibility for defining the mountains. Now everything is silhouette in the silence of this starry night. ©️July 2021

her ghost @justasilvia2.bsky.social · 2w ago

Prompt made me think about one of the real people I pass by every day. #PromptCombo #RealPeople @rfsmith.bsky.social

Nobody

Every day by the market, standing
in the blind spot of the sliding doors,
they call him Nobody
no grand Homeric allusion,
though brutal mileage envelopes him.

He does not remember his name.
Of his past, only snatches:
shards for a stranger's mind,
remnants of neon siren tales.

He speaks with kindness to passers-by
in the accent he shares with Dante,
calling them sir, or madam,
adding they are gentle.

And laughs,
not for choosing this life,
but blessing this life chose him.
Missing teeth under bristly lips
cannot dim the white of his heart.

He keeps a dog.
She has a name: Stella.
Far from him, in the shade, when days scorch
he will not have her swelter.

Look at him at night beneath the porch,
a sanctuary shared with his good star.
No ghost in the doorway, just a real man.

And all shame thins out:
shame for the coins dropped into his palm,
for the true joy of a feel for life
most will never brush.

Ash & Ink @bundtkake.bsky.social · 2w ago

@rfsmith.bsky.social #RealPeople #poetry #blueskypoets #PromptCombo New prompt for me. This was inspired by a proud idiot I saw in my gym wearing a shirt meant to offend. What a warped sense of self. Here is a #poem...

Scalpel

Dirty fingernails
On your trigger made of rage
Shirt says freedom and
You're rooting for the cage
A fellowship of snarls
Of the need to be the same
But your bank account says you
Already lost the game
Scream USA, buy yourself more guns
Wrap your dick in the flag
Delusively Defending a life you never had
Hide your face, hit the streets
Racist rage for beyond the pale
China making hats you hope to buy
On sale
Make America great again
You're so sure that's the answer
But your not an American patriot
You're a fucking cancer

S. Reeson / Experimental Poet @internetofwords.com · 2w ago

#PromptCombo #RealPeople @rfsmith.bsky.social and is that the smell of my own brain or is it a bridge that's burning over there...

The Fix by S. Reeson

I know what you’re asking of me
the brief is impeccable precision
but you’re missing the wider point
what always ends up lost
that real’s as much a construct
as a lie or derivation
that maybe my honesty
has warped into delusion
that those I once considered
friends have altered into mutants
and if I could I’d switch off my
brain for hours too I would but it
transpires that I’m always on
and this unreal person is aware
that half the problem is in fact
the fix already here if heeded
to help me carry on
and so I am.

Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 2w ago

For @rfsmith.bsky.social Ronnie. My second and final response to his brilliant #promptcombo #RealPeople is a sequence from my latest collection with Red Ceilings Press, "The Drey Skin":

He'Dead

I've got money to buy groceries. All's right with it all.

How's your son? The old man with a stick enquires. He's dead. Don't talk about him.

He's dead. You're doing this deliberate. How dare you talk about my dead son. You bastard! Bastard! She kicks his shins.

My supervisor asks her to stop swearing. Bastard talked about my dead son!

The old man hobbled into the aisle with the supervisor. I processed the woman's goods

I'll get the bastard outside. She said and left. The old man bought a packet of sweets. He hobbled out.

Suddenly, there was shouting. Supervisor told me her son was alive,

The Roof

He needs a hit, so

on the roof
of the ex bank, ex post office
needs to break in

sees somebody spot him
so he changes his mind

shouts I will kill myself.

Ambulances and police
talk him down.

A Homeliness

She walks in front of buses.
Says her son is dead.

Her son sits outside supermarkets
asking for money.

Customers buy him a coffee
or a sandwich, or loose change.

With money he has begged
he buys a pack of rizlas
for his upper.

and walks home
to his mam

who thinks he is dead
so walks in front of buses.

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 2w ago

@rfsmith.bsky.social I manged to get it sort of how I wanted it, so here is my second offering for #RealPeople 🙏 #PromptCombo #Poetry

Poetry Readings
(or Why Must We Always Ascend? )

It always seems to begin with stairs.
A winding and steep pilgrimage.

Up staircases that spiral like plot twists,
past signs that say mind your head,
past faded pictures of the glory days.
Into elderly, cramped rooms,
scented with the memories of spilt drinks.
Filled with mismatched chairs,
filled with mismatched people.

You jostle for a place and settle down.
And then the poets rise.
One by one, they stand.
Some with the poise of seasoned magicians,
others with the tremble of someone
showing you their heart,
hastily wrapped in a Tesco receipt.

They speak of grief and pigeons,
of mothers and mushrooms,
of heartbreak and the bus to the Post Office.
They find wonder in the mundane,
alchemy in the overlooked.

Not every poem is polished.
Some are gloriously lopsided,
like a cake baked with too much hope
and not enough flour.
Each one a revelation.
A glimpse into someone else’s sky.

There you sit, awestruck.
Not because every line is perfect,
but because every voice is brave.
Because they climbed the stairs too,
and let you look through
a cracked, glorious, unexpected window.

You listen.
You wonder.
And leave lighter.

Reminded of how many ways
there are to be human.

Stefano Carini @cieloceano.bsky.social · 2w ago

#realpeople #poetry #terzarima #writing #writesky #promtpcombo @rfsmith.bsky.social

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 2w ago

@rfsmith.bsky.social I am struggling to get my poem right so this is an older one that fits the bill (i think) for #RealPeople There may be another one later in the week. #PromptCombo #Poetry

The Usual Suspects

We walk down the street
and I feel the eyes.
People shift.
Cross over.

We are the usual suspects.
Tattooed,
pierced,
vests and shaved heads,
hoodies hiding
god knows what.

A mother grips
her son’s small hand,
pulls him from our path.
Security stands closer
to their doors.

Our gang.
A gang of artists, teachers, parents
with babies of our own,
owning shops and houses,
houses open to the lost and the needy,
needing help ourselves,
ourselves still learning
how not to carry it forward.

Ronnie Smith@rfsmith.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thank you to Paul for last week and apologies for today’s delay in posting - last night’s World cup joy. For #PromptCombo this week it is #RealPeople love to all. @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social @emteepoetry.bsky.social @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social @jenthorne.bsky.social @paulbrookes.bsky.social

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 2w ago

A bit late for this week's #PromptCombo: #RealPeople. Big thanks to @rfsmith.bsky.social for teeing us up! #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 2w ago

A second one for all you #RealPeople writing for @rfsmith.bsky.social's #PromptCombo. #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity