Time of Death?
There was a young woman from Hall
who died jumping over a wall.
T’would have been a sad thing
if she’d died in the spring,
but she didn’t. She died in the fall.
See other limericks for Esther’s March 9 “Laughing Along with a Limerick” challenge HERE. (Sorry, I didn’t realize there was a prompt word until after I’d written the limerick. Next time I’ll play by the rules, Esther!!!!
Bird Chorus, No Backup
Birds perch on countless branches, each a separate bell
ringing out the cadence of stories they must tell.
Around them, eerie silence, for no other sounds compete.
No sound of children’s laughter. No pattering of feet.
Compared to their iPhones, mere nature can’t compete.
The prompt for the dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt is “bird.” A Quadrille asks for 44 words only…
And at the end of the day, leaf cutters still busy!
A colony of thousands of leaf-cutter ants forms a chain to file in an orderly fashion around my house to my large Virginia Creeper vine that hangs over my terrace. It is their intention to crunch the life out of leaf after leaf by grasping them in their razor jaws and slicing off neat packages to carry off to their nest.
I rattle the tiny logs of ant poison in the can to spill several small lines of poison over their trail, then scan the procession to watch them carry them off. I hate killing any part of nature, still I have a hunch that if I don’t fight back, that they will strip the entire garden of its leaves–every vine, plant and tree. As I fit the lid back on the can, I try to reassure myself that in most encounters in nature, one creature loses while the other wins. This is part of the plan. But still, I experience guilt as I watch yet another ant carry a pellet back to its nest.
Prompts for The Sunday Whirl 747 are: colony rattling still lose crunch life fits hunch scan packages grasping chains.
In the wide prairies of South Dakota, the only narrow to be found is the narrowing of the road in the distance. It is a bit like perpetually driving into an invisible tunnel.
The Stream of Consciousness prompt is distance.
Fishing with dad and my sisters, 1951 or ’52
For Fibbing Friday this week, the task at hand was:
Mish mash this week, so your suggestions please!
1. What is a cannery? An attitude readjustment retreat for pessimists.
2. What is a rookery? The part of a zoo with kangaroos in it.
3. What is hooky? A very small fish hook.
4. What is pinochle? A fist held against private parts when you need to urinate so badly that you need help in not doing so.
5. What is a ricochet? A very small portion of rice.
6. What is hubbub? The primary bubble in the middle of a cluster of bubbles.
7. What is a podcast? A baited hook cast into the exact center of a group of fish.
8. What is a wingnut? An acrobat that performs on the outside of a plane while it is flying!!!!
9. What is a switchback? Someone who has had two sex-change operations.
10. What is a cacophony? A small child who pretends he hasn’t pooped his pants.
No one loved tools more than my husband Bob, but I must admit that I have a love of them as well. Included in these photos is my most treasured object from my father–his hand-forged hammer with leather-ringed handle. It was the only one of his possessions I asked for when he died and I still use it. So, her it is along with other tools used by either Bob, my husband, or me. And after the tools, the man himself, applying paper to fishing basket to use as a lampshade for one of his homemade lamps. (I must admit that I don’t remember where I took the first photo. It was not in any of our studios, but I love it and the ingenuity of the tool storage.
For CFFC, the prompt is “Tools and Equipment.”
When I saw the prompt word was magnanimous,
I couldn’t resist repeating this old poem I wrote long ago:
Story Time at the Library
Cluster here around me. Cross Your legs. Open your mind.
I’m going to tell you stories of a slightly silly kind.
Or lie back on the carpet, close your eyes and try to see
all the varied images that are going to be.
We’ll be crossing to another land where we can be whatever
each of us may want to be: beautiful, brave or clever.
Light the bulbs above your head. Imagine what you hear.
For the next half hour, you’l be “there” not “here.”
In imagination’s magic land, all your dreams come true.
Climb aboard my story train and I’ll share it with you.
And now as then, the crowd, being both clever and magnanimous,
decided they’d all come along. The voting was unanimous.
And so the children climbed aboard to hear a tale or two—
precisely the same stories in the past I heard from you.
(For my first storytellers, Mom & Dad.)
The Prompt for RDP is Magnanimous
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 