Once I liked my dishes spicy,
but lately it is getting dicey.
As time progresses, I find it’s not
advisable to dine on “hot.”
Somehow, my tastes have seemed to tame.
It’s all those extra years I blame,
that turn me once more into child.
Please, make my taco extra mild!
Rerun. Lots to do today!The prompt today is mild
When I said I wasn’t going to put up a tree because of the kittens and therefore wasn’t going to have my usual Xmas Party/Meal, I didn’t know that events out of our control would change those non-plans. When Yolanda’s husband went into the hospital a few days ago and I learned they weren’t celebrating Xmas because she didn’t have time to make preparations, my tree came down from storage upstairs and I started planning a meal for her family here. The turkey is in the fridge, dressing prepared, vegetables peeled and cut up, cranberries and spuds and gravy ingredients ready to be prepared or put out tomorrow, table all set, poinsettias purchased and put out with candles, presents under the tree. It may not be their usual Xmas meal, but they’ll find out first hand the way gringos celebrate the day. Happy Xmas Eve to all. (Increase size of photos by clicking on first photo.) Afterwards, if you want to see the end of the story, go HERE.
Happy Xmas Eve!!!!
Succulents, Wandering Jew and what will grow up to be a Silk Floss Tree.
Kids’ Tribunal
When wind howls like a banshee to fill the dark night air
and monsters lurk in closets or in creakings up the stair,
when your brother knows they’re out there––these creatures he can’t see,
when nightmares wake you up at night and you have to pee
but daren’t leave your bed in fear those creatures will come “getcha”
(all those night-born monsters that come out at night to fetch ya,)
or when sister wets the bed again and seeks a drier nest,
for lying on her soggy sheets, she knows she’ll never rest––
it’s times like these when all the kids form a small tribunal
and determine that their parents’ bed should be declared communal.
The prompt word today is communal.
Since these flowers are made out of corn husks, they almost qualify as “real,” right?
Torn Love
Still standing close,
each on our own side of this terrible rending,
how can we see things so differently?
This little flap of skin
you keep pulling open
wants to close.
This is how cancers start—
this worrying and worrying of an old injury.
My darling. Leave it alone
and let us heal.
This is only a biopsy
of our changed love affair.
If it is cut out of us,
it will be by your decision;
and no number of late-night arguments
will ever change that fact.
What you need to remember
the next morning,
you will remember.
If it were up to me,
we would still be friends,
but if you need an enemy
to console you in your actions,
I guess I must be that too.
I always was a figment
of your imagination.
Believe that
if it makes this easier for you.
II
Cicatrix
I know better than you
what lies buried under
my healed-over self.
The raised part of me
grown to protect the wound
creates this distance
that I once warned you of.
I need to thicken that part of me
where part of you remains,
and if for this time you gasp for air,
it is my thick skin growing over you,
like an orb spider winding you in my web
until you become
the one in me hidden so deep
that even you
believe you’ve disappeared.
Yes, another reprint of a poem from over four years ago. The prompt today was torn.
Went for a short walk through my back yard today. This is what I saw: (On Facebook, click on URL to see all flowers. Click on first photo to enlarge all.)
World I Cannot Hold Thee
The dolphin tail of the wing cuts into the orange sky.
Brilliant deep orange fades to gold with dark islands of clouds
rising like trees above pale blue, medium blue, dark blue fading to black.
A thumbnail moon,
one star bright like a planet just far enough above the horizon
to be set in the darkest shade of blue.
Scenes like this break my heart. I don’t know what to do with them.
I’ve moved to the window seat now,
unable to resist that first flash of orange revealed over the shoulder
of the man who now sits in front of me––
that vivid sunset with no one looking at it
such a waste, yet now here I am, watching yet still wasting it.
I used to feel like this holding my sister’s child––
tiny newborn baby, so beautiful, so in my power.
I wanted to hug him tighter to hold on to this––
to do something to express this feeling
that I knew was vanishing even as it happened.
Yet this fading sunset now flares more brightly than before
as we keep catching up with it, flying west.
It may be that the dolphin wings, jets protruding like fins,
will swim for hours into the orange sea with all of us,
kin inside of her, waiting to be born.
Sleep. Read. Move to the bathrooms and back again
shepherding children––small brown sheep and black sheep,
eyes like berries turned toward windows reflecting back fire.
I want to run to the cockpit to feel orange wrapped around me,
cannot get enough of these colors, want to paint something significant––
colors like vivid embers against ashes, firey colors bleeding into blue
like fire staying alive as it bleeds into ocean and then into deeper ocean.
All of these things that are––what are they for?
Their purpose lost as soon as light has faded into darkness
through that incredible palette that means nothing, but is everything
above us all and under us and in us swelling us,
reminding us to hug the world tighter.
Squeeze life into it or out of it.
Hold it closer, needing no meaning except
being of it, with it, in it, having it in us.
“Oh world I cannot hold thee close enough!”
Understanding that.
The prompt word today is miraculous.
I stopped to photograph this beautiful tree, but I’m unsure what it is. Its blooms look like orchids and so I’ve always called it an orchid tree. A friend thought it was an hibiscus, but I’m sure it isn’t. Anyone know the correct name? Jude at cornwallincolours has solved the mystery. It is, in fact a purple orchid tree. Its scientific name is bauhinia variegata. Thanks, Jude! Go see her beautiful varied Cornwall sky photos. The link is above.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 