Drought Year Fourth of July
Dakota natives were sure to know
the Aurora Borealis show.
Why set off fireworks as well
risking that dread fire truck’s bell
that signaled prairie fires to quell?
The Weekend Write Prompt is to write a 28 word poem making use of the word aurora.
Skinny-dipping in One’s Sixties
While driving on a country lane, I spy a little lake
and decide that I should skinny-dip, just for old time’s sake.
Lack of a suit is not a problem, for this spot is so secluded
that I jump into the water both nuded and deluded,
for after just five minutes, although the night is dark,
three cars pull up with lights full-on and proceed to park
directly in my exit spot with windows all rolled down,
music spilling out from them. Teenagers from the town
out here for the thrill of it to swill a little beer
and have a wild party with no parents near.
Like a deer in headlights, I am blinded by the glare.
I quickly put my hands back to obscure my derriere.
Then, desperate for cover, sprint for a nearby bush.
But when I cover up my front, I have to bare my tush.
Skinny-dipping simply doesn’t work with lookers-on,
and I guess that I am trapped until these partiers are gone.
With no hope on the horizon, I hunch and drip and cower,
forgetful of the blanket I had slung over a bower
just a few short yards away, but finally I sprint for it,
and wrapping it around me, I am grateful that I went for it
in spite of all the cheers and huzzahs and the blinding light
of the headlights of the teenagers who view my frenzied flight.
Once I reach my car, the far horizon is my goal.
I gun the engine and I speed over dip and knoll.
If I need to teach the lesson of this ill-advised adventure
of senior citizen skinny-dipping, I’m the one to censure,
for I was a solo-act swimming swimsuit-free,
and the only one that I can implicate is me.
I guess that skinny-dipping is best left in the past,
for the skinny body necessary simply doesn’t last!
Prompt words today are forgetful, horizon, desperate, implicate and deer.
This is my first new surviving bloom on this white hibiscus–the last addition to my hibiscus family. It was the beloved of snails who tended to decimate it before it bloomed until I started dumping the cats’ uneaten dry catfood at its base. They haven’t touched it since. Go HERE to see when I was given a clue that snails are rather partial to cat food. Who knew?
Pot Luck
(Copacetic in Retirement)
We’re copacetic in retirement. It’s like back in the days
when pot first hit the sixties and our minds were in a haze.
Drugs made our dreaming groovy and our lives peripatetic.
Our clothes were loose and festive. Every day was copacetic.
With time to watch the raindrops dripping drip by drip,
we took life with a grain of salt. Worrying was unhip.
So now life’s cycled back again. Desperate days are done.
We don’t have to fight the traffic. We have more time for fun.
Once more, drugs are ubiquitous, although a different type,
with a pill for every malady, an herb for every gripe.
Now that they’re legalizing cannabis, we’re drowning in fine weed—
a type for every malady. A strain for every need.
Do they think if we’re sedated, we won’t notice what they’re doing?
Will it censor our displeasure? Will it stifle all our booing
as they reduce our Medicare to supplement their yachts,
will they recycle our dinero from the “have-nots” to the “gots?”
Perhaps they want us copacetic, for at last it meets their need
to sedate the angry masses and cover up their greed.
A car in every garage and a chicken in every pot
Got Herbert Hoover elected. Did he do it? He did not!
Now when we apply for licenses, sometimes they merely balk
and say to call a taxi, an Uber or just walk.
They’re cutting our “entitlements,” so we don’t have a lot
left to buy the chicken, but at least we have the pot!!
The prompts today are ubiquity, drip, desperate, festivities, copacetic.
Forgottenman, the bachelor chef extraordinaire, has shared his hamburger secrets which I want to reblog. Go HERE to learn the secret of his success.
It was after dark when my neighbor called to say the dogs must have gotten to my garbage bags hanging high from the hook I’d had installed on the light pole outside our house. Must have been tall dogs or good jumpers. I went out to find garbage, including the kitty litter tray contents, spread over a five foot area. Twenty minutes later, it was rebagged and set out in a garbage can with screw-on lid. Yuck!! But on my way back in, I was rewarded with this shot of my newest hibiscus lit up in the dark by the solar-powered light overhead. Quick trip to wash hands. Scrub hands. And to get my camera. This was the result:
The Dangers of Early Halloween Shopping
Well, just a few more weeks before those little Halloweeners will be flooding through the gates of the Raquet Club. There are more every year and a few years ago we started all contributing candy and making up bags for each trick or treater and handing them out at the gate to the club. So, I made my trip to Walmart and bought 7 big bags of miniature Snicker bars and suckers, as well as a bag of chocolate chips so I could make cookies for my neighbors who are always bringing me shares of their suppers. I then made the mistake of bringing the Halloween candy into my house.
Instead of baking cookies, I took a little nap, but awakened to that candy calling my name. I resisted for about 15 minutes before I tore a corner off one of the Snickers bags and had a single miniature Snickers bar––about one inch square. I sealed up the bag. Tried to take my mind off it. Then felt suddenly thirsty and on my way to the water jug, had to pass very close to the chair the shopping bag holding all the candy was on. The bag that had been opened seemed to be saying something to me, so I leaned closer. “Eat me!” Shades of Alice in Wonderland. I opened the bag and had just one more tiny piece of chocolate, caramel and peanuts before I called my next door neighbor and asked if I could bring the rest of the candy over to his house until it was time to take it down to the clubhouse to pack up the bags.
After he stopped laughing, he admitted it wouldn’t be much safer at his house. “You would eat my candy?” I queried. Shocked.
Well, no, he admitted. Probably not. Were there Andes mint bars involved, he asked? No way. I don’t believe in mixing mint with anything but chewing gum. So he agreed and we met in the street outside our houses for the hand-over.
So, end of story until this Skype exchange between ForgottenMan and me. By the way, the chocolate chips were still unopened in the cupboard. Cookies still unbaked at the time of this interchange a few minutes ago. The comments to the right are mine.
Forgottenman says I “might wanna” explain that an r&c is a rum and coke and g&t is a gin and tonic. I think he’s underestimating my audience!! And thus go our evenings!! Somewhere I’m sure people are discussing great thoughts. Not so this evening with us.
A vine on the post supporting the terrace roof had grown so big that it totally blocked off access to the sidewalk from the terrace. Going down to turn off water to the pool, as a result, was a tricky and dangerous business, especially at night, when I had to step off onto an uneven area of dirt and plants. I also had a whole set of lawn furniture I couldn’t use because the yard incline was too severe, the back legs sunk into the dirt, and I tipped over backwards when I sat down on them. Lastly, the junction of the two brick pathways had become a favorite digging site for the dogs. Solution? A little brickwork and a few plants.
Please click on first photo to see captions and enlarge all photos.
(This post was done at the request of Forgottenman, who has been dying to see what is going on.)
Image by Samanta Sabina on Unsplash, used with permission
H-e-e-e-re’s Donald!
Our nation’s growing jittery. It seems our ruler’s broken.
In the land of liberty, freedom is just a token.
Surrounded by his family, his fumbling words are brisk.
He issues crazy edicts, putting the world at risk.
As he pens crude letters to men of more distinction,
we cower in our houses. fearing mass extinction.
He poo-poos all our scientists. The climate’s doing fine.
Who cares if the whole planet is headed for decline?
Glaciers swiftly melting. Forest fires raging.
He overlooks the hurricanes, intent upon his caging.
Children are the biggest risk, so he sends them packing.
Makes military decisions with very little backing.
On his situation comedy played on the largest screen,
he spins out the same old story: our country has grown mean.
Prompt words for today are broken, ruler, jittery, brisk and family.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 