Monthly Archives: July 2014

Ocean Rental

12 Replies

DSC09359

Ocean Rental

Her towel is spread out on the beach, the cat is on the stoop.
The housewife sips her coffee while her husband sips his soup.
There are advantages to houses built upon the sand.
You do not have to leave your porch to get expertly tanned.
You dine on tuna every day that never has been canned.
When fishermen jerk in their fish and they happen to land
upon your porch, you eat them either cooked or sushi-raw.
The fisherman cannot complain, you see it is the law.
And that is how you know what hubby shoves into his face
is probably not vichyssoise, but rather bouillabaisse

The Prompt: An Odd Trio—Today, you can write about whatever you what — but your post must include, in whatever role you see fit, a cat, a bowl of soup, and a beach towel.

Obscured Fourth

1 Reply

Obscured Fourth

In Mexico, it is the rainy season
and so the rain falls down.
The dogs refuse to leave their beds.
They curl instead, and I do, too,
listening to the steady drip of rain from tejas
and Pasiano’s more massive splashes
as he scoops water from the tub
which never empties,
constantly replenished
by the rains.

Now hot water streams
from pipes into the hot tub.
Mineral water heated by volcanic fire
steams as it meets cool water falling
from above and the cool air that carries it.

It is still morning, but even tonight I’ll find
no fireworks in Mexico on the Fourth of July,
for independence was not granted evenly around this world.
And I who love the fertile darkness of night,
but also love surprises
that the fireworks bring,
must patiently wait for independence to find
this new country I found 13 years ago.

No rains ever mar her independence
on September 16.
The rainy season over,
all necks will crane in the churchyard crush
to see the wild castillo
and its corona spinning, spinning
to lift off into the air above—
independence held back until finally
it cannot help but rise
to freedom.

Note: September 16 is Grito de Dolores (Mexico’s Independence Day)

The Prompt: It’s Your Party—Since many are marking their country’s “birthday” in the US today, we wanted to ask: How do you celebrate yours? Are you all for a big bash, or more of a low-key birthday boy/girl?

Happy Birthday to Me

4 Replies

DSC06997DSC07010

Had many nice surprises over the past few days, but two I can show pictures of are the cake my friend Jere brought to the poetry reading I coordinated yesterday (and friend Gloria provided the decoration for in impromptu fashion) and this huge bouquet of flowers my helper Yolanda brought to me today. They are nearly as tall as she is. Thanks to all who made this day special. oxoxo Judy

If Only I Could Play Guitar

16 Replies

Today’s (Jan. 8, 2015) WordPress Daily Prompt is: I Got Skills – If you could choose to be a master (or mistress) of any skill in the world, which skill would you pick? Oh, to play the guitar! But I already wrote to that subject last July. Here is that post.

If Only I Could Play Guitar

At times when now I only hum,
I’d pull out my guitar and strum;
and by the time that I’d be done,
completing my last pluck and run,
perhaps whoever sees and hears
would be reduced to sobs and tears
by every perfect tone and note,
the sentiments that I emote,
and tender lyrics that they knew
because of course I wrote them, too.

But I would be so humble still,
(my hubris would be less than nil)
that when they laud me at the Grammys,
I’ll be home curled up in my jammies—
still unaffected by my fame,
astonished at my new acclaim!

And when Bob Dylan asks me if
I’d like to come and share a riff,
of course I will not turn him down.
In spite of all my new renown,
I’ll take the time to show him some
new ways I’ve found to pick and strum.

Mick Jagger would hang out with me
(and Leo Kottke, probably.)
We’d get together to talk and jam.
The whole world would know who I am!
My fame would spread to presidents
and queens and Knob Hill residents.
I’d be so busy that I fear
my writing would fall in arrears.
I might forget to feed my dog,
forsake my friends, neglect my blog.

So all things taken to account,
as negatives begin to mount,
and though I know that I’d go far
should I decide to play guitar,
I’ve penned a note unto myself,
“Put that guitar back on the shelf!!!”

The Prompt (from July 3, 2014): Strike a Chord—Do you play an instrument? Is there a musical instrument whose sound you find particularly pleasing? Tell us a story about your experience or relationship with an instrument of your choice.

Lost in Iowa

8 Replies

Lost in Iowa

We are lost in Iowa,
pulled off the highway onto a gravel road.
Not content to give himself totally over to the control of GPS,
he checked its suggested route last night and instead devised his own.
But now, lost, without a clue as to where we are,
we have pulled over
to contemplate our situation.

I open the door to catch a breeze.
The yellow blooms of sweet clover and purple alfalfa
line the little road.
Wild anise and tall marsh grass
complete a scene
of perfect rural quiet and suddenly,
I am no longer lost.
I am back on the running board of my dad’s beat-up red pickup,
waiting for him to finish mowing the lower field.
I’ve eaten one chokecherry
from a nearby bush
and my mouth is puckered
by it’s astringent sting.
I go back sixty years
as I drink icy spring water
from my dad’s metal water can
wrapped in wet canvas
to keep it cool,
then jump back fifty years more
to my dad’s youth,
to try to imagine how he felt
with the prairie stretching hundreds of miles
in every direction.
My dad, his parents and two sisters in a two-room house.
There was privacy in the barn,
a dog for company.

Their closest neighbor
an ancient Hunkpapa Sioux named Charley
in his dugout house
half a mile up the draw,
town an hour’s ride away or more by horse or wagon.
With no diversion of cell tower or satellite dish—
there was only his family,
the land and his imagination.

My dad killing the coyote,
then finding her pups and bringing them home.
What would his dilemma have been?
Did he raise them,
then turn in their pelts for bounty?
Did he release them,
and then never know when he killed a coyote
if it was merely a pest or a former pet as well?

What did he think when he lay in a patch of clover?
Did he smell the wild anise and imagine
the sweet stickiness of licorice?
Did he pick the wild asparagus
for his ma to poach?
Did he have the idle moments
with which my childhood was filled?

What child now lies in the grass,
looking for something for his mind to rest against?
What other traveler,
lost on a gravel road in the scorching sun,
opens her door to a breeze
that flows like water down an empty creek channel,
looks up from the GPS screen
that promises to restore them
to civilization’s knowing?
Will she, as I have, relieve her lost present
by losing herself in the past?

That girl who sat on her dad’s running board
who would journey so far to unimagined places,
still travels the mind back to pleasures
of a world it was possible to be lost in,
sweet clover and wild anise
giving a taste of precious emptiness.

In this age of machines that can guide us
so surely into a  future,
where we are often so found
that we are lost in it—
savor those mistakes
that bring us back
to flounder in ourselves.

We, too, know the way.

daily life color006

Dad with sleepy coyote pups on South Dakota farm, 1924

The Prompt: Wrong Turns—When was the last time you got lost? Was it an enjoyable experience, or a stressful one? Tell us all about it.

I am cheating and publishing here a poem I wrote on a trip two years ago.

Notoriety

3 Replies

Notoriety

Remember Morrie Amsterdam, and Dick Van Dyke and Sally?
So clever and so erudite, and humorous and pally?
They had such fun as writers for a fictional TV show
(I can’t recall the name of it, but one of you will know.)

If that is what inspired the thought, I guess I’ll never know,
but I’ve always wished that I could be staff-writer for a show.
Such fun it would be, trading thoughts and quips and puns and jokes
and putting them into a show for entertaining folks.

Week after week to do this, would be a joy, I thought—
turning out those funny shows with plots so finely wrought.
But I had not a clue of how such jobs as this were got.
The route to such careers was something I was never taught.

I college I took every class in writing I could find.
I loved this pressure to use words to show what’s on my mind.
Sometimes the words came easy and sometimes they came hard.
I had a few successes, although no one called me bard.

In those days before the Internet, I don’t know how I came
to hear about these contests where we were asked to name
new products such as cereal and milk and a new shoe
and several other things as well, I just recall a few.

All-in-all, I think I entered six or more for fun.
Months later came the envelopes that said that I had won
first prize to name two products—and earned $25 for each.
Never had I expected such heights of fame to reach!

I took my best friends out to dine to celebrate my win
and we drank Golden Cadillacs (and probably sloe gin)
and wined and dined until we’d spent the sum of all the cash
I won by writing ad copy—a celebratory bash.

I know if I dug deep enough that surely I could find
the names of all those products in the corners of my mind.
“Vita-Man the Space Age Cowboy,” was one winning entry’s name.
His purpose to sell milk, although he never reached much fame.

This was the late sixties with skirts short or to the floor
and I recall one shoe line that I wrote a ditty for:
Mini-mums and Maxi-mums were names I thought were nice.
“A maximum of comfort for a minimum in price.”

This one was not a winner, but the reason I can quote it
is because they used it anyway–exactly as I wrote it.
The other one I won was for a cereal you’d know well;
I know you won’t believe me, so I’m not going to tell.

It became so famous that it’s still there on the shelf,
though I’m the only one who knows I named it all myself.
Still, this is where my fame resides—in stores from shore-to-shore
and that is how my name came to be writ in grocery lore!

So now my deepest secret’s out. The world will know my plight—
that advertising or TV is what I wished to write.
You’d think that watching “Mad Men” would cure me, wouldn’t you?
and it might, but for the glory of that cereal and that shoe!!!!

The Prompt: Back of the Queue—Is there something you’ve always wanted to do, but never got around to starting (an activity, a hobby, or anything else, really)? Tell us about it — and tell us about what’s keeping you from doing it.