Monthly Archives: September 2017

Continuing Education

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Continuing Education

It’s true that school is great for teaching gerunds, nouns and clauses.
Also for the how-to-do’s, the whens and the becauses.
And so I don’t regret my years in university
learning of the human mind and its diversity.

Couplets, sonnets, iambs—their knowledge served me well.
Chaucer took me to Canterbury. Dante? Straight to Hell.
Will Shakespeare gave me standards of wit to try to mimic,
and modern poets formed my taste from  Oliver to Simic.
But where I really found a classroom that appealed to me
was after school was over, when I was finally free.
Backpacking was geography: islands, mainlands, seas,
and I learned my geology rock-hunting on my knees.

I learn a little bit of life from everyone I meet—
the art of speech in barrooms, diplomacy in the street.
Biology from baby birds fallen from the nest
and taught to fly from towel racks, their wings put to the test.

All the art I ever studied simply came from looking—
geometry in midnight skies, chemistry in cooking.
And though the internet gives facts in every form and guise,
It’s life that serves us best because it’s life that makes us wise.

 

The prompt word today is educate. This is a rewrite of a poem written over two years ago.

Night Bird: Celebrating my 3400th Posting With A Flower of The Day

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I saw this bird in the light from the wall lamp outside the guest room as I opened the front gate at 9:30 PM to let guests out after a film night at my house tonight.  I remarked on the interesting lighting and my friend Glenda remarked it was more interesting because of the street light shining on it as well.  I wedged the gate open with an old axe head of my grandfather’s, went in to get my camera, got distracted and promptly forgot about it. It was after 1 a.m. when I decided to post a photo of a flower for my 3400th posting, remembered seeing a flower I wanted to photograph, remembered I was with Glenda when I saw it and started combing my memory. I then remembered it was a bird of paradise and went out to find the gate still wedged wide open.  Not a good idea in Mexico–especially with an axe head invitingly wedging it open!!!  Sheesh.

Here it is, above and below, not as interesting as earlier, but. . . .If my math is right, it is my 114th daily posting for Cee’s flower prompt, which I started posting on June 30, 2015.

IMG_0634 IMG_0627A lonely street, up a mountain road with no close neighbors. Not a good idea to leave the gate open for midnight visitors, leaving them a weapon to boot.

For Cee’s prompt.  https://ceenphotography.com/2017/09/03/flower-of-the-day-september-4-2017-primroses/

Dead Possum

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Dead Possum

A rude surprise,
it lay like breakfast rejected
on the patio outside the dogs’ sleeping room.

The dogs were restless this morning,
barking for their kibble,
unwilling to follow the rules
that decreed paws known all too well
as lethal weapons needed to be contained,
the dogs in their open cages before I’d venture out to feed.
But some wildness recently sated
drove them to assault the door
and refuse repeated demands to
go to their beds.
They staged their impatient war dance,
telling with growls and claws
the tale of the hunt—
That won battle.

I lock them in their cages
and, order restored, I dish their meals
and free them to their feed.
I walk behind them to secure the sliding glass door,
gather dust pan and broom, plastic pail.
Their quarry too large to fit, let alone be lofted
by a dust pan, I grasp the tail and lower the possum
like a colossal tea bag for a dipping,
into the wash bucket,
walk the long path down to the lower wall,
heft it over into deep underbrush
of the vacant lot next door.

I own that land.
It has been the burial place
of sixteen generations of those possums
too slow for escape,
with teeth and claws insufficient for defense––
every one a battle won
by the dogs
and each one equally mourned––
their wild ferocity not enough
to best even dogs seemingly grown docile
until these night battles
gone unnoticed in my dreams
are brought to view in light of day.

The possum’s fur wet and matted but only slightly torn,
every time I hopefully delude myself
that perhaps it’s playing witness to its name
and only playing possum.
Optimistically, I don heavy gloves and winter coat,
ready for the struggle as I try to save
what an adult part of me knows
no longer is in need of saving.

Each corpse ironically made heavier by loss of life,
that dead weight of it
is echoed in a central part of me
as I try to lift with reverence
this newest evidence
that most of life
and all of death
is out of our control.

Thunbergia Grandiflower: Flower of the Day, Sept 3, 2017

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Pushy and messy, these thunbergia vines are nonetheless my favorites. They rival kudzu in their push to cover the world.  I had to stop and click a fast photo of these vines on a neighbor’s wall.

For Cee’s Prompt:/https://ceenphotography.com/2017/09/02/flower-of-the-day-september-3-2017-primroses/

New Haircut: Sunday Trees 303, Sept 3, 2017

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For Becca’s Sunday trees at: https://beccagivens.wordpress.com/2017/09/03/sunday-trees-303/

Priceless Treasure

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Unstarched

My ladies writing group is classy—never crass or gaudy.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I found they can be bawdy!
Just one impromptu potluck and a few bottles of wine
turned their metaphoric minds to matters far less fine.
For Jenny had just mentioned that a friend had lately lent her
a rather naughty film that nonetheless had really sent her
off into the paroxysms of unbridled laughter—
the kind that take you wave-on-wave and leave you aching after.
I’d been needing that for months—my life had been sedate
since my old gang had moved away and left me to my fate
of no last-minute games of train and late-night jubilation,
for though I still have good friends here, I lack that combination
of friends that I enjoy who all enjoy each other, too,
enough to create silliness to make my nights less blue.

“Bad Grandpa” was the film we watched, and though I must admit
I watched behind spread fingers for at least a fifth of it,
still the antics had us all just rolling on the floor
—starting with a snicker and then ending with a roar.
Scatology is not my thing, nor are pratfalls or shtick,
yet still I must admit to you, I got a real big kick
from this film filled with all of them. I think the ladies did, too.
It threw a bit of spice into our literary stew.
And as they left, I think we knew we’d shared a priceless treasure,
for there’s nothing that unites us like a mutual guilty pleasure!

 

The prompt today was priceless. I’ve chosen to rework a poem from three years ago when I had so few readers that I’m sure few of you have read it before. 

Structural Forms

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Click on photos to enlarge.

For the Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge: Structure

Literary Reference

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Need to borrow a good book?  If so, click on any photo to enlarge all and read titles. Something for everyone.

 

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For Nancy’s A Photo A Week Challenge.  on the topic “Literary Reference.”

Exchanging Words on Little Santa Monica

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photo by Georgia King


Exchanging Words On Little Santa Monica

There on that city avenue,
I watched you as I sipped my brew.
Not the woman you’d chosen to woo
as you read poetry so true,
so raw, so blunt, so rare and new,
the air around you turned to blue.
Your sad poems caressed and drew
us closer. All that motley crew.

For me, love was a new venue
that night I first set eyes on you,
but there was such a ballyhoo
around you, that you had no clue
that I had joined the retinue
of women waiting in your queue.
But as I left, oh yes, I knew.
My life took on a brighter hue.

And though you were far out of view,
your memory stuck to me like glue.
Thoughts of you both birthed and slew.
Our meeting was long overdue
that night I saw you in the pew—
there to hear the poems I grew
from words carefully chosen and few,
I drew you in by some voodoo.

Perhaps our muses conspired and blew
winds from exotic Xanadu
or Zanzibar or high Peru,
the air around us to imbue,
giving us the selfsame cue:
this is the lover meant for you,
your octoroon and kangaroo,
the heart you’ll break, the fat you’ll chew.

Of all words plucked from life’s rich stew,
the ones that I would never rue.
Never would they ring untrue.
Those words that, though we might redo them,
never could I overdo them.
The words I’d sought my whole life through.
The vow I’d renew and renew.
That one rare thing I’d finally do.

 

The prompt word today is continue. It is the first word I’ve ever found that has a rhyming word that begins with each letter in the alphabet! I discovered this without consulting Google or a rhyming dictionary, which I occasionally have to resort to when a word is especially hard to find enough rhymes for. I found 64 rhyming words. Still haven’t checked any dictionaries. They may have additional ones, but these are mine, all mine! The only rhyme that is repeated is the word “you,”

“The” Words: avenue ballyhoo blew blue boo (boo hoo) brew chew clue crew cue do (doo doo) drew due eschew ew few glue goo grew hew hue imbue issue Jew kangaroo Kew, knew  loo mew moo new  overdo  overdue Peru pew phew poo queue redo renew retinue rue screw shrew slew stew sue through true undo untrue  venue view vindaloo voodoo whew woo Xanadu you zoo

 

The prompt word today is continue.

Hibiscus Past Her Prime: Flower of the Day, Sept 2, 2017

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