I knew him as a rowdy member of our town constabulary, noted for his bumbling but not lauded for vocabulary. So when he whispered “pulchritudinous” with raspy voice though he could have just said, “beautiful,” I wondered at his choice. He could have called me riveting or gorgeous or just cute. All those other adjectives I never would refute. But when a noted doofus picks his words from a thesaurus, I fear it has no other kinder effect than to jar us. The fact that he would woo me being nothing but absurd, nonetheless he might have won me if he’d used a different word!
He shook his bag of marbles at me in a jocular fashion. It seems this childhood game is his secret guilty passion. He had faith that eventually I would slake his thirst, in spite of my conviction that marbles is the worst game ever invented, for you see rampant sciatica coupled with my daily dependence on Sal Hepatica made my kneeling difficult, uncomfortable, and rendered it most difficult, afterwards, to stand.
But his most stubborn diligence in begging for a bout at last contradicted my reluctance and my doubt. I picked me out a shooter and commenced to knuckle down— the fact we played for keepsies occasioning my frown. But it seems I am a prodigy—most artful with my thumb. It wasn’t very long until he realized how dumb it was to introduce me to this game that hurt my ribs bending low to shoot at his dragonflies and mibs.
First I won his cats eye and then I won his aggie. And when I won his shooter, I fear I became braggie. In the end, I won at that game that he called ringer by making a maneuver that proved to be a zinger. And my friend the marble shark paid for all his sins as I emptied out his marble sacks and emptied out his bins. I left with all his marbles rattling in my tin, grateful that he’d never ask to play the game again!
Gloria has actually taken photographs for more than seven days, but I’ve neglected to post some and combine others. Here are her most recent shots:. I’m very curious about that first shot..any ideas about how she did it? Look for her six other photo shoots in earlier blogs, including an explanation about how this assignment came about.
Hear the wind’s soft whistle as it explores the eaves?
What a perfect harmony each new zephyr weaves.
Each mourning wail original, each sad and keening cry
takes my heart on with it as it passes by.
All man’s detailed projects for capturing the wind
only make short use of it. Again, it will ascend
far up above all of us to what created it.
For all our petty problems, the wind cares not a whit.
The sadness we project upon the wind is ours alone,
for the wind has nothing for which it must atone.
In our attempts to harness it, as we make our demands,
we forget we’re part of nature. How have we served as its hands?
Gloria’s continued with her daily photography assignment since she went home, so wanted to share her floral and plant offering for Cee’s Flower prompt:
I couldn’t figure out how to embed this, but if you click on the link below, you can read about this fiasco planned in the year I graduated from high school. How is it that I didn’t hear of it then? Lack of an internet, I suppose.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 