Monthly Archives: September 2020

Few Regrets

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Image from front cover of Veils, Halos and Shackles : International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women

Few Regrets

The widow’s true feelings belie her black veil,
for the eulogy prompts no tears or no wail.
She remembers his fury and his raised fist,
so his mouth and his hands will never be missed.

That sustained keen from the front of the church
comes from his mother–a black crone on her perch.
Sitting alone in the very front row,
she continues to sob and to moan and to crow.

Hers the only wet eyes, most likely because
she was the reason he was as he was.
No person comforted to ease her pain,
for all felt her loss was the wider world’s gain.

Later, at the grave site, as they commenced queueing
to pay last respects during the final viewing,
the single men agreed the corpse was a louse
and dreamed of becoming the widow’s next spouse.

Word prompts for the day are fury, eulogy, sustain and belie.

Last Dance

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Last Dance

It’s taxing my limits, this spirited dance.
I’d like to sit down if he’d give me a chance.
If I were more candid I’d say it’s enough,
but finding an opening to do so is tough.

He spins me and whirls me and then grabs my hips
as though he is plotting some aerial flips.
Ensconced in the music, he hasn’t a clue
that my hair’s come undone and I’ve only one shoe.

He seems not to notice that I’ve grown more frantic
as each new maneuver grows more corybantic.
I’m so exhausted, I fear I might drop,
and I pray for the band to finally stop.

I’m tired of following, tired of dips.
I can take no more swirls, no maneuvers or flips.
When I land on my feet, I bolt from the floor,
I retrieve my shoe and I make for the door.

I sprint down the street, and when I find my ride,
I lock all the doors once I’m safely inside.
And since that day, I’m relieved to report,
I’ve vowed to make dancing a spectator sport!

 

Prompt words for the day are tax, ensconced, corybantic and candid.

Succulents and Anthurium in Inventive Planters: FOTD, Sept 29, 2020

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Click on photos to enlarge.

I found a new little vivero where the woman does such unusual plantings. The first one pictured is planted in an empty oyster tin. Wish I had purchased the one that still had the lid attached! The Anthurium was planted in a coconut shell which was then covered in grass so it formed a tight ball. I unfortunately left it in the trunk of my car while I met a friend for lunch, and so the leaves and flowers all dried out and shriveled up a bit. Hope it will grow new ones! The third was planted in a small coconut shell with little legs added on. I have a feeling I’ll be visiting this vivero again!  If you happen to live in the Lake Chapala area, the name of the inventive lady is Lety and her vivero is located across the carretera from Super Lake.

For Cee’s FOTD

Travel Fatigue Amnesia

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Travel Fatigue Amnesia

After ten hours of driving, he felt the car swerve
as his eyelids got heavy and he lost his verve.
With an accident imminent, he pulled off the road
to turn into a Starbucks for sleep’s antipode—
a double espresso with foam and a scone.
His purchase completed, he departed alone,
but fifty miles later, he’s been heard to confess
a thought popped into mind that caused much distress.
He did a fast U turn, feeling like a louse,
and drove back to the Starbucks to retrieve his spouse.

 

Prompt words for the day are froth, imminent, purchase and verve .

New Intruder

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This is a piece i wrote 19 years ago that I found when I was sorting through old files. A few months after Lulu’s arrival, Annie decided to join us as well, and although both of the kittens   have now joined Bear in that great scratching post in the sky, I enjoyed reading this story after so many years, so perhaps you will, too.

Lulu inventing a new place to come to rest.
1988
Lulu teaching Annie how to climb the screen door.
Annie and Lulu as kittens
Annie in one of her favorite lounging spots

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

New Intruder

My closet rattles. One door is slightly ajar. Something is being batted about on the floor inside. A paw is visible now and then when it comes close to the bottom edge of the door. Once a nose with white whiskers peeks out, then shoots back in like a jack-in-the-box.

My tiny new kitten was a street waif. She arrived complete with sticky streaks on her underside and chin. She arrived with fleas and one sore eye–– the green one. The other eye is blue. There is a perfect fish outlined in white on a charcoal colored patch on her back. Her very long ears are a pale peach color and her head is big on an extremely thin body. Already after 4 days, she is starting to acquire a small pot belly from regular meals. The vet says she is four weeks old, but her body is so tiny and weightless that she seems more like a large mouse than a cat. I fear stepping on her and in fact have, but when I did, she made not a peep and her bones seemed to spring back like a sponge.

Her long eye whiskers were singed back almost to hair level in an unfortunate encounter with the gas burners on my stove. She is so fast that she leaped up on the counter before I could stop her. In similar fashion, she had walked across the bubble wrap jacuzzi cover that floated on the top of the water, so light that she made it from one side to the other without sinking. Another time, she leaped from the back of a chair to the top of the high metal display case, where her claws made little ingress into the metal and where for a few seconds she clung from the edge like a mountain climber before falling to the tile floor five feet below. Five minutes later, her head peeked up from the opening at the top of the lampshade of the lamp on the telephone table. This house is her new world, and she is the Magellan of cats.

Two weeks before, I had found Bear, my cat of 15 years, floating lifeless in my pool. It was horrible. I had seen the cat born and his burial seemed a reversal of the birth process. We buried him in the garden wrapped in his favorite silk sari from the end of my bed, and with the mouse-shaped doorstop he loved to bat around the house. I buried with him my intention not to have any more pets for a while. None could replace him.

Then, two weeks later, a mouse had streaked across the street in front of me and entered the store I was about to enter. Upon closer examination, the streak had been a tiny kitten that had leaped into a huge display basket of scarves, and it hadn’t taken too much encouragement by the shop owner to get me to promise to stop back by before we left that night to see if the kitten had been claimed by an owner or adopted by someone more determined to have a cat than I was.

Every animal I’d ever had in my life had come to me by accident or by its own volition, so when this placeless cat appeared, I had by habit accepted the karma and now she sleeps each night on my chest or on the pillow by my right ear. I am slightly allergic to her, and although she doesn’t flinch when I cough and sneeze, when I get up for a drink of water, she miaows. This word perfectly describes the sound she makes. She is loud. The sound of her echoes through my high-ceilinged brick and stucco house. “ Miaow, miaow, miaow, miaow,” but somehow it seems to belong here––to fill out the silence that might otherwise only be filled by the sounds of the television or the computer or the stereo––sounds that do not breathe or jump up to the arm of my chair or respond to a reassuring pat or the sound of the can opener. With the appearance of this newest little intruder, once again, my house has become a home.