Nude Descending the Beach. Wall sculpture and photo, jdb
Off-Kilter
Who cares if your bangs are uneven,
your hem hanging down on the left?
If the picture frame’s a bit off-kilter,
who here would feel most bereft?
Who fusses and dithers whenever
the pizza’s unevenly cleft,
or in the new rug he just purchased,
if the warp is not square with the weft?
When it comes to most talents,
he’s not especially deft.
He has little talent at singing,
and he has neither looks, charm nor heft.
Yet if your smile is crooked,
my dear, I fear you are effed.
for with our friend “Even Steven,”
a mil off is as bad as a theft.
The prompt today is “uneven.”
Cruising the Volcano
I have been so busy getting ready for my three-month move to the beach that I didn’t even consider that I’d be driving past Colima—one of the most active volcanoes in North America. I had read about the recent lava flow down the south side, the ash warnings with evacuation suggested in certain areas, and unusual activity in the months leading up to now, but my concentration today was mainly on Morrie, my surprise companion on this trip to La Manzanilla.
Long story short, my house sitter had to cancel on short notice. No house sitter—no one to live with Morrie and Diego. The result was that a friend took Diego while I brought Morrie to the beach with me. Other than his time in the animal hospital when he broke his leg two years ago and a handful of times someone let him slip out of the gate and he took off like a bat out of hell, this is only his second time away from his own yard as well as his first time away from Diego.
Today’s six-hour journey in the car must have been like a trip to a foreign planet to him. For hours, he seemed to be searching the surrounding world as we passed it by. I looked over at one point and Colima Volcano was sending up a huge balloon cloud behind him. It was a gorgeous shot. Unfortunately, there was no place to pull off and a big truck coming up fast behind. By the time I got to a pull-off spot, this is the view that presented itself:
I barely noticed the volcano in the background as the towers dominated, and it had ceased venting.
Now, here is Morrie interspersed with the scenery we were passing. Luckily, Colima vented again a few times, but not nearly at the magnitude it had that first time I viewed it.
Again, click on first photo to enlarge them all.
This late afternoon and evening, Morrie had his first introduction to the beach. It is a tale in itself, but I need sleep right now more than you need a longer story; so, perhaps tomorrow I will tell it along with at least one other that had a surreal quality to it.
images from internet
I was purified each Sunday, sitting on a child-sized wooden chair, belting out “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” Sure of salvation, my only worry was whether I’d forget the Bible verse memorized by repeating it every morning and every night for the preceding week.
I was glorious holy, worrying about my dad, who put the harvest before church, trying to pray him back from a future Hell. Yes, there were happy ladies shepherding us up the back stairs from Sunday School to real church above; but there were also those who gave us brief flashes of the fires of Hell, who denied that perfect attendance bar for my Sunday School pin even when my excuse was a verified hospital stay to have my tonsils out. Muriel, the preacher’s daughter and my oldest sister’s best friend, stealing the bar to add to my Sunday School pin, anyway. Surely this member of a holy family herself validity enough to certify my perfect attendance in intention if not in fact.
Where did it go, that round white enamel pin with the surrounding gold cluster for the second year and new bar hanging down each year thereafter for perfect attendance? I wore it with such pride. Did it blow away in the tornado that lifted my parents’ roof that year long after I had left? Was it stolen in the burglary at my house where 70 rings were stolen? Did divine intervention finally lift it from my possession?
The only certainty is that this pack rat did not throw it away. I am an artist of little things, joining them together to create stories of my life, the world and thoughts above this world. They are little lights of mine shining words and memories—little song medleys that belt the lyrics as surely as that basement room of children, sure in their conviction that somewhere out there in the universe, someone or something was watching them shine.
The prompt word today is “shine.”
I don’t know what bush/tree this was at the carwash, but it was exhibiting every stage of blooming at the same time—from first buds to flowers to these amazing clusters of berries. I took seventeen shots, and got a clean car to boot! I’ll show other stages later.
Click on first photo to enlarge both.
https://ceenphotography.com/2017/01/08/flower-of-the-day-january-9-2017-bearded-iris/
I cannot face the infinite—
that colossal haunted house—
too many rooms seemingly empty
that teem with invisible somethings
that I can’t comprehend.
How could I find myself in such vastness?
What in those giant corridors knows I exist?
Ego, finally, my undoing, as I fear
becoming part of what I find impossible
to grasp.
Everything I am
yearns towards the specific—
fine detail being more or less
how I have spent my life.
How can such a life be reconciled
with the infinite? Everything
cycling up and up from nothing
and, we fear, back down again.
He who says that nature is not ironic
lies or simply refuses to face the truth.
It is a cruel infinity that has included
such a tiny space
for me.
The prompt today was “infinite.”
Here is the promised view of the entire Xmas tree at the Nueva Posada. Every year, Judy Eger does a different fabulous tree. See last year’s Here. See this year’s below. Christmas in Mexico lasts from Dec. 12 to Jan. 6, Three King’s Day. Actually, it isn’t completely over until Candlemas on Feb. 2, but I imagine this tree will be taken down by then. I wonder what she will do with all the angels?
Click on first photo to enlarge all.
The photo prompt was to photograph something with a name on it.
In Mexico, Christmas is celebrated from December 12th to January 6th. That is why the gorgeous tree at the Nueva Posada hotel in Ajijic was still up when I went there to read poetry yesterday. So glad as I forgot my camera the last time I was there. This is the display beneath the tree. I’ll post the tree on Thursday.
Check List for a Budding Poet
If you want to be prolific,
better that you be specific,
and when you choose to state each fact,
try to make each word exact.
Don’t use time-worn words or wilted.
Avoid pretentious words or stilted.
Never try to force a rhyme.
Do not fail to take the time
to make your lines scan smoothly for,
uneven meter is a bore.
Words written for effect are hollow,
but where heart is, the head will follow.
So write your poetry from the heart.
Put your horse before the cart
and let it pull you up the hill.
Let your words express their will—
you following blindly, just to see
what the next line wants to be.
Let words of different shapes and sizes
furnish pleasure and surprises.
Make your poems resemble zoos
of striped okapis and kangaroos.
Delight yourself and then your reader.
Follow words, then be their leader
by whipping them in line and order,
shaping them within your border.
It never is too late to change
an errant line that’s out of range,
but editing is not what you
initially should seek to do.
Words give hearts tongues to share their pleasure
and their pain in equal measure.
Essayists and authors strive
to make their writings come alive.
They show us where their minds have been,
but poets put the music in.
The prompt today was “specific.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 