Monthly Archives: July 2018

Blown

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Blown

It whistles a soft melody, this whisper of the wind.
Sings a mysterious lullaby, seemingly without end.
We do not know its language, but know it well by Braille.
It makes a tangle of our hair and swells our vessel’s sail.
It blows into a tempest that hurls us off our course.
Where it once took us willingly, it takes us now by force.
It is that infinite mystery whose answer is unknown
until someday, perhaps, when we arrive at where we’re blown.

The prompts for today are: unknown whisper infinite  lullaby
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/29/fowc-with-fandango-unknown/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/rdp59-whisper/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/daily-addictions-2018-week-30/(infinite)
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/lullaby/

 

When My Sister Plays the Piano

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jdb photo

This is  a poem written when I visited my sister in the first stages of memory loss. it is a bittersweet memory that I shared with only a few of you five years ago when I first started my blog but which very few people read, judging from the number of views and “likes.” This memory, as most are, is bittersweet.

When My Sister Plays the Piano

The first notes, beautiful and true, float like a memory up the stairs.
In the week I’ve been here in her house with her, she has not played the piano
and so I thought her music was gone like her memory of what day it is
or whether I am her sister, her daughter or an unknown visitor.

Yet on this morning after her 76th birthday celebration,
music slips like magic from the keys: song after song
from “Fur Elise” to a sweet ballad I don’t know the name of—
sure and correct at first,
then with a heartfelt emotion we had both forgotten.

“Midnight Concerto,”
“Sunrise, Sunset”—
song after song
expressed
in an unfaltering language—
some synchronicity of mind and hand
her brain has opened the door to.

While I listen, time stands still for me
as it has for her so often in the past few years
as yesterday and today shuffle together to
crowd out all consideration of future fears.

For ten minutes or more, she segues
from melody to melody
with no wrong note.
Then “Deep Velvet,”
a song she has played from memory
so many times,
dies after twenty-four notes.
Like a gift held out and snatched away,
I yearn for it, pray she’ll remember.

After an uncharted caesura, her music streams out again,
sweet and sure, for a staff or two—
the sheet music giving her a guide her brain so often can’t.
But after a longer pause, I know it is lost
like the thread of so many conversations.
A hiccup of memory, folding itself away.

“Come And Worship” chimes out
like the tolling of a bell.
The wisp of the old hymn, two phrases only—
before it, too, fades.

That sudden muffled sound.
Is it a songbook displaced from its stand as she searches for another;
or the lid of the piano, quietly closing on yet another partial memory?

 

The Ragtag prompt today was memories.

Once a Week

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My hat rack

Once a Week

To be eccentric every moment takes too much from me,
so I limit my oddness to every Saturday.
On that day my zany hats come out from their hiding,
anxious for one day a week they get to go outsiding.

I don my feathered boa and stick on rhinestone lashes.
I wear my fringe-tiered flapper skirts with neon colored sashes.
I hop onto my bicycle, my cockatoo inside
the wire basket on the front and take him for a ride.

When we drive by the playground, at first the children balk,
but I pique their expectations as we have a little talk.
The cockatoo speaks bird talk and does a little jig.
Then he does impressions of a donkey and a pig.

He does a little rap routine that every child loves
and then I don my riding hat and my driving gloves
and pedal off to other adventures up the street,
expressing eccentricity to everyone I meet.

Later in the afternoon, I pedal us back home,
turning up the driveway by the garden gnome.
I put my bike into the shed, the bird behind his bars.
I put my rhinestone eyelashes in their storage jars.

I strip off all my finery and pull on my old jeans.
Microwave a hot dog. Open a can of beans.
I sink into my Barclay lounger, flip on the T.V.
turning once again into the ordinary me,
having exorcised my cravings for eccentricity

The prompts for today are expectation, moment and eccentric:

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/expectation/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/28/fowc-with-fandango-moment/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/eccentric-july-28-2018/

Flower of the Day, July 28, 2018 Happy Birthday, Rita!!!

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For Cee’s Flower of the Day

This is for Marilyn–not a poem! Written over three years ago, it predated the “Me too” movement, but fits right in with the climate today of”one step forward, one step back.” Which will it be by the end of this political “reign”? Hopefully, if a woman winds up on the moon it will be literally and not figuratively.

For Ragtag’s “Moon” prompt.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

“To the Moon, Alice!”
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On “The Honeymooners,” Ralph Kramden (played by Jackie Gleason) had a phrase that those of us of a certain age can’t help but remember.  “To the moon, Alice, to the moon!” he would rasp at his wife (played by the inimitable Audrey Meadows) whenever he had no less predictable comeback to her never predictable jibes. Of course, the idea was that this was how far he would knock her.  An upraised fist often accompanied his threat.

The audience, of course, would roar.  So hilarious this empty threat, for America knew that Ralph would never make good on the threat. Even Alice never flinched–supposedly because she, too, knew those words signaled an empty threat.  But underneath those words and the fact that viewers found them to be so hilarious, was the idea that such threatened violence was funny–and, somehow, that such treatment of his wife was a…

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Time Out!

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Time Out!

He was an avid sports fan. Alas, his wife was not.
With box scores and with averages, his mind was fully fraught.
Tennis, football, cricket? It mattered not a whit.
If a ball was fought over, he had to witness it.
Basketball and baseball and soccer were the same
as golf to him. Whatever. For all sport he was game.
At last, his wife had had enough and did what she was able
to cure his wild obsession. She cut the TV cable.

The TV went as black as night. The sports fan sat in shock.
He did not move a muscle. He did not blink or talk.
Then he began to jerk and shake as though having a fit.
Withdrawal from his sports fix seemed the cause of it.
As his delirium tremens overtook his life,
 things were getting better for his kids and wife.
His wife could watch her soap operas, the kids watched their cartoons.
No longer did a sports announcer fill their afternoons.

This furtive arrangement lasted for awhile
until our ballgame junkie figured out their guile.
He moved into a condo to catch up on his sport
and his wife remarried to another sort
who did not know a baseball from a hockey puck.
That such a man existed, she could not believe her luck!
The blessed quiet of her house with no announcer shouting
made her glad she turned her spouse’s inning to an outing!

The Prompts:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/27/fowc-with-fandango-arrangement/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/avid-july-27-2018/

More Benches for Cee’s B and W Challenge!!!

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After I posted my last “bench” gallery, I admitted to Forgottenman that there were several I wanted to include that I couldn’t find. Not only did he find them in my past files, but he found a number of others as well!  If you haven’t seen them yet, to see the additional photos published earlier, go HERE. To increase side of photos, click on any photo.

For Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Benches

Benches

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Click on any photo to enlarge all and view as slide series.
To see more benches, found after I posted this batch, go HERE.

 

For Cee’s Black and White Prompt: Benches

Pink Coral Vine: Flower of the Day, Jul 27, 2018

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

I have been admiring a lush vine like this one at the Chapala Society for 17 years. A few years ago, I put a few seeds from it into my pocket and scattered them in a spot where I’ve never been able to get any thing to take hold.  I’d tried a grape vine to no avail, so thought perhaps these could use the dead grape vines for support.  This year I noticed that they had bloomed. I took one of these photos then.  Today I took it at a later stage, more fully bloomed out.  For years, I’ve wondered what it was and I finally lucked out and found it on a website.  It is called a Pink Coral Vine, so when I forget that at a later date and label this as a mystery flower, you can remind me!

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Treasure Hunt

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Treasure Hunt

At Rudy’s Scrap and Salvage, you’ll find the junk of dreams.
Sewing machines with treadles and pants burst at the seams
that you can mend upon them.  Dining sets with mismatched chairs.
In his clothing section, shoes seldom come in pairs.

Lovely one-eyed dollies and lop-eared careworn rabbits,
uniforms and costumes, surplices and habits.
Little pails of misplaced parts like nuts and bolts and widgets.
Chairs fit for a giant and little chairs for midgets.

Crankshafts, axles, handlebars for 50’s era Schwinns.
Housegoods by the bushel and tools by the bins.
Whoever was responsible for making all these things
would barely recognize them with their scratches and their dings.

It’s a place for dreamers, for artists or inventors—
those a few steps out of time who lack corporate mentors.
Those bent on handing back our junk with which we tried to part
as startling new inventions or else objets d’ arte.

Taking worthless bits of junk and making priceless treasures
is, I must admit, one of my most primary pleasures.
You can keep your Bergdorfs, Neiman Marcus or your Saks.
I prefer my treasures in orange crates or gunny sacks!

 

The prompts:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/rdp-56-salvage/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/25/responsible-july-26-2018/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/26/fowc-with-fandango-dreamer/