I love the bud nubs in the background of this photo as much as the blossoms on the front. I took this down in the garden and should remember what this flower is but alas, I don’t.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/06/11/flower-of-the-day-june-12-2016-rose/
Earlier today, I published a poem and at the end, left a pile of unused words that were free for the taking. Christine Goodnough rifled through them and came up with this poem, then left a free-for-the-taking list of unused words of her own, leaving a link to my refuse pile as well. I have dipped into each bunch of words again and used them all in the below poem, with the exception of the few left at the end that I pass on to any reader willing to make use of them in a poem. You’ll find our combined leftovers at the end of my poem and a link to to Christine’s poem above
Craig’s List Confessional
I’d like a mirror so I can see
if I display felicity
when someone whispers in my ear
the name of one I once held dear.
I know not what my heart may feel,
what passions I might dare repeal
now that my head is ruling me
instead of love for somebody
so long departed––no longer here
for so many a long-lost year.
If I could paint a picture of
the countenance of long-lost love
in monotone or multi-tones,
in stereo or monophones,
I hesitate to admit that
I fear the portrait might fall flat.
How often it has been my ploy
to act withdrawn or bored or coy,
as though the long-lapsed love I bore
is what steers my grieving core.
But, in truth, duplicity
is what in all simplicity
guides my actions and my thought
and turns me into love’s robot.
With paint cans colored various hues,
why do I always choose the blues,
rebuffing each potential woo
and dropping out of courtship’s queue?
And so, if love is not a ruse––
a mere excuse for whom to choose,
I stand here gawking, open wide,
with no place left in which to hide.
Respectability’s passe,
and pride too dear a price to pay;
for staying safe in grief’s tight room
is burial before the tomb.
And so my dear, this poem you view?
Pretend that it’s addressed to you
and join me in complicity.
Perhaps shared words can set us free.
I’m not a girl. You are no boy.
This poem is not a word-stuffed toy.
Should you respond with words that match,
it’s possible that we will catch
another chance to reach and choose
and maybe this time we won’t lose
the golden ring that does not bind.
This time we may find love is kind!
Okay, I dug deeply into Christine’s leftovers and rifled through mine as well. This is what is left in the poetic grab bag. Can anyone make use of the rest of our cast-offs? Here is what is left to you:
ooze booze cruise who’s whose choose lose news pews poos cues sues twos woos youse
doozie floozie twozie boo goo hue loo moo new poo sue soo sioux too to you What a spectacle! not respectable
I am so happy that Christine stopped by my yardsale word giveaway. Her reward for taking some extra words off my hands was this wonderful poem that she conceived of!!! Now I hope someone takes the words she didn’t use and constructs yet another. Let’s see if we can get rid of all of these excess words!
“Look what they’ve done to my hide, Ma!”
Fellow blogger Judy Dykstra-Brown was having a yard sale on leftover words over at her blog, so I’ve claimed a few and used them in this bit of whimsy.
SIMPLE GRAY
And what’s wrong with simplicity
is what I’d like to know?
Before this rank duplicity
I could humbly come and go
without the public squawking
just like a bunch of parrots—
or little children stopping
to stuff my mouth with carrots.
For someone thought — insane-ness!
They’d add some brilliant hues
and liven up my plain-ness.
So now I’ve got the blues!
These artists brought their teacher—
I think they stood in queue
to add, each one, some creature
and make me into a zoo!
Now I wear this dumb menagerie.
Can you tell my face is red?
My own mother wouldn’t know me!
Are those rain clouds overhead?
Simplicity
Simplicity is something that I rarely do.
Why have only one of something when you could have two?
It takes a lot of veggies to come up with a stew,
and we’d do a lot of limping if confined to just one shoe.
Multiples are awesome. Multiples are grand.
Look how many fingers we have upon each hand.
One finger could not do the job. Neither could two or three.
Simple cannot form a hand, did not form you or me.
Simplicity’s much touted but I think it is absurd.
Who ever heard of stories comprised of just one word?
With a single raindrop, the world could not get wetter.
Sparsity may be more chic, but I like clutter better.
I don’t get minimalism. I’m a hoarder to the core.
When I ran out of wall room, I put art upon my door.
There are no piles in hallways. Hoarding need not be a sin.
I’ve built three rooms onto my house just to store things in.
With so many lovely things in life, collecting is a joy.
With life’s manifold choices, why be niggardly or coy?
At the ice cream parlor, why does one have to choose?
You need not always limit yourself just to ones and twos.
Have a scoop of strawberry and pineapple and mint.
Green tea is delicious and tequila’s heaven sent.
Load your dish with raspberry and coconut and mango.
Why do the simple two step when you could do the fandango?
In short, I am a gatherer. I have too many things.
I like to make the choices that a complex lifestyle brings.
When it comes to writing, a stuffed-full mind is fine!
Reach into words and shake them out and string them on a line.
A solitary animal will never make a zoo.
One grain of dirt, one drop of water cannot create goo.
A single cannon fired will not execute a coup.
The world just is not simple, nor am I and nor are you!
*
I’m having a yard sale of left-over words. Below is the “free box.” Take what you will (please note that some of these items have been recently used, but all have been laundered and are ready for a new user):
coy ploy toy bore core
simplicity complicity duplicity felicity
ooze booze cruise who’s whose choose lose blues news pews poos cues ruse sues twos views woos youse
doozie floozie twozie
boo goo hue loo moo new poo queue rue sue soo sioux too to you view woo you
*
Right in line with the theme of the poem, below are way too many photos. If you want to see the details, you know what to do, right? If you don’t, I’ll tell you. Just click on the first photo and click on arrows to proceed through the photo gallery. To come back here afterwards, click on the X in the upper left corner.
I love these tiny little blooms when they are at these various stages of budding and flowering and look like a mixed bouquet. The little red buds are like miniature roses and the white star-shaped flowers look like they have tiny planets buzzing around their central suns. There is so much to overlook in a garden filled with marvelous things.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/06/09/flower-of-the-day-june-10-2016-hydrangea/
It was about time for Yolanda to leave today when she came into the sala, where I was working on my blog. “¿Senora,quieres tomar una pictura?” she enquired. I wasn’t listening closely, so at first I thought she was saying she’d found the picture my friend Betty had painted that I had purchased at a show months ago and put away for safe keeping until I could figure out where to hang it and had never found again. “Pintura de Betty?” I inquired, and she said no, and motioned for me to follow her. “Un foto!” she directed, pointing at my camera that is always at the ready. I realized then that she had originally used my imagined Spanish word for photograph by adding an “a” to picture, whereas in reality, the correct word was “foto.” In fifteen years, we had developed this pidgin Spanish between the two of us comprised of real Spanish vocabulary I had learned in addition to the made up words of Spanish that she had adopted as a means of not humiliating me when I made mistakes. Over the years, they had become real words to both of us and we did all right, although anyone else listening to us might have wondered just what language we were speaking.
She was grinning as she led me through the bedroom and the back door, out to the patio. The always-curious dogs joined our convoy and when she motioned to a drooping leaf in one of the large pots around the corner of the house, Morrie and Diego moved in to investigate. She motioned, but I saw nothing.
“Una rana!” she said, motioning towards a tiny slit of beige between one leaf and an overhanging one. There on the leaf I could make out not a frog, but rather a tiny beige toad, no bigger than one inch across, only it’s eyes and mouth visible in its hiding place between the two leaves. Yolanda quickly took the dogs away to put inside as I clicked photo after photo, most of them so close up that the toad looked huge, whereas in reality it was tiny. I was amazed that Yolanda had seen it but so glad she had.
It was the same variety of toad that had taken up residence in our guest toilet on the second floor a few years before. Since this room was sometimes unused for more than a year at a time, the toad had moved in, storing it’s upcoming insect meals on the porcelain toilet rim under the seat, now and then dipping into its private lake for a little swim. It was so tiny that it could sit on the porcelain under the toilet seat, which we had lifted to clean. When we removed it because company was coming, it remained below in the backyard for the weeks our guest was here, but once she left, it reinstalled itself, somehow hopping up the flight of stairs and getting through the locked gate and screen and sliding glass doors, hopping across the bedroom and into the bathroom and up to the toilet. I have no idea how it found its way here from the garden far below in the first place, let alone a second time, but now here was the descendant of that toad, perhaps, taking a little nap in the plant nursery I’d established tucked around the corner from the normal traffic area of my house.
It silently bore my many clicks, the lens coming closer and closer until they nearly touched. Only when I lifted the overhanging leaf did the toad shift a bit. An hour later, when I went out to measure it, not trusting my poor talents at estimating distances and measurements, the toad was still there, facing in a different direction, but still in the shade of the same leaf.
Please enlarge these photos as much as you can on your viewer. The texture and coloration of this little creature’s skin is so amazing.
Eminent* Domains
As a new wife I chose mountains, made a home of them and that’s
where we were surrounded by potted plants and cats.
Perched amid the redwoods, my art studio in their shade,
I looked out across the mountains as I made and made and made.
I was happy in the mountains, but the incline and the trees
made living somewhat harder as I began to wheeze.
The pollen took my breath away and walking was a labor––
the trees impeding access to and vision of each neighbor.
So I moved to the desert, with openness my quarry.
I loved its subtle beauties and the sparseness of its glory.
All the arms of cacti reaching to the sky,
the faded pastel sunsets as starry nights drew nigh.
But, although good for walking at a faster pace,
the desert, lacking moisture, dried my hands and face.
It dusted all my furniture and opened cracks in wood,
carved other furrows in my face, where they remain for good.
The ocean spreads before me, a different watery land––
all her morning treasures displayed across the sand.
I examine coral and the fragile bones of fish,
surveying and collecting everything I wish
But the ocean is bipolar—sometimes she’s a bitch.
Perspiration trickles, causing me to itch.
I love the beach in wintertime and love it in the fall,
but beachside in the summer is no fun at all.
I have lived in mountains, the desert and the sea
and all these special places still have a place in me.
But if you ever ask me which place I’d like to be,
I fear I’d have to answer that I think I need all three.
The mountains in the summer loom up and beckon me.
The desert in the winter, balanced by the sea.
It seems there is no place on earth where I will just remain.
I claim mountains, sea and desert as my regions of domain.
Tottering on stubby legs,
Reaching for the world,
Another child once nested
Now slowly comes uncurled.
Stretching out and learning,
Forgetting childhood woes,
Opening to each new thing,
Reforming as she grows.
Meet her in the springtime
And meet her in the fall.
The child you met the first time
Is no longer there at all.
One more child a woman,
Now a mother, now a grand.
Always we are changing,
Led by nature’s hand.
Libraries cannot answer
If changing has an end,
For we know not if transformation
Ends around the bend.
Okay, Cee–this is HARD for me!! I have flipped, flopped, reversed and stood these images on their heads and for every one, I know which version I prefer, but my mind just doesn’t work in the analytical way yours does. I am totally inductive, not deductive, but nonetheless I tried to figure out the why of why one photo works better than the other, so let’s go and see how I do!!!
In this photo, I definitely like the one where the man with the red shirt is to left of the burros. The eye is attracted to his red shirt, then sweeps to the right, as is a natural motion in reading. With the man on the right, the sweep of the eyes from right to left feels unnatural, and a bit like looking at the photo backwards.
The only way this photo looks good it with the two trees coming from the left and the bottom. I think it is because, as in the last photos, the eyes want to go from the left to the right. Flipping it vertically made me dizzy… so no go with that perspective.
With this goofy fella, we want to see the most interesting part first–which is this intriguing little crystal coming out of his head. It also seems more normal to start at the top and slide out eyes down the branch in a natural left to right movement. This is a photo of the larval stage of a hummingbird moth.
These pelicans just have to be swimming from left to right or they look to me like they are swimming backwards. Isn’t the green wig on the fron guy fetching?
Same with this cat. In the first photo, he looks like he is gazing backwards at where he has just been–whereas in the second, he looks like he’s gazing out at a scene before him.
Having seen this spider spin her web for weeks, I know logically that she spins it in front of her, backing away from it. The spider needs to be the first thing we see, and her web needs to be in front of her. Flipping the image gives the web itself primary importance and is disturbing to my eye.
Here I much prefer the first version to the second. We are first drawn to the bright colors of the child’s clothing and there is then a natural “S” movement of the eyes up the baby’s legs to his torso in a left to right movement and then another curve back slightly left and up to the mother’s face to the right. I love the communication between the mother and child in this shot.
So, I think I just made the same argument over and over in this exercise, but at least I did the assignment!!!
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 