Don’t miss this excellent and hopeful analysis of the contemporary state of the union! And don’t we hope he is right? Click on link below:
https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/01/04/the-extinction-of-the-white-american-dinosaur/
Please click on photos for larger views.
They are golden-fronted woodpeckers! V.J., who identified them, is my hero. A twenty-year-old mystery is solved.
These two birds (or two like them) have been visiting the top of my very tall palm trees every morning for years. I always thought they were red-breasted woodpeckers, but only one has a pinkish spot on its head and the other is more golden-headed. Their markings look exactly like a red-breasted woodpecker or a sapsucker, but I can’t find any sapsucker with that colored head. Can anyone tell me what they are?
Sated
Flirtation is cathartic—a furbelow of life.
Though it is mainly fictitious, still it eases pain and strife.
It sets our spirits soaring and makes us feel much younger,
but takes the edge off appetites without dispelling hunger.
A nibble here, a small bite there might set our lips to smacking,
but a deeper part of us detects what might be lacking.
Caviar on toast is fine for an initial tasting,
but what we need is turkey,
crisp and golden from its basting,
but succulent inside, or a meal that fills us up
like an egg salad sandwich or pea soup in a cup.
Flirting’s great for starters, but it isn’t real.
What really solves an appetite is eating the whole meal.
Prompt words for today are soaring, cathartic, fictitious and furbelow.
For the Fibbing Friday prompt, here are the questions and my answers:
Okay, I cheated a bit. Just no real doves or darters in my photo files. I made these detritus birds out of shells and a fruit crate that washed ashore during past years at the beach. Keeps me out of trouble.
For the Bird Weekly Challenge
Stories Told by Silence
Silence has a language unique to every ear.
Anyone can hear it if they choose to hear.
Do you listen to your silences? The various tales they tell?
I’ve listened to them my whole life. I know them very well.
Their insistent voices burrow through my thoughts,
trail their separate stories and tie them into knots.
Some seek out yarns in chaos: carnivals and bars,
rodeos and festivals, parades and speeding cars.
But there’s drama in the silence as it gathers round—
stories waiting patiently for you to hear the sound
of voices in the quiet. Hush now. Do you hear?
They’ll settle on your shoulder and whisper in your ear.
Silence owns no copyrights. It’s there for you to steal.
Unsort its separate strands and then spin them on your wheel.
The fiber of your silence can be woven into tomes.
Weave them into novels, storybooks and poems.
Stories are out there waiting. Hush and you might hear them.
Reach out and grab one for yourself when you venture near them.
We Cannot Surrender Her
Try as I might to urge her on, she will not go.
She sends me on to test the water
but remains on the shore.
Ankle deep and then no more.
Fingers trailing and then no more.
Having once found a false bottom,
she trusts no foothold.
The falling is the thing, I tell her, yet she holds back from the fall.
Let me go down, I beg her.
I will always bring you up, she answers.
This is the role we alternate being the stand-in for.
What I want she keeps me from.
What she fears I pull her toward.
How many of us, children of the fifties,
find ourselves on this seesaw, wanting to control the ride?
Relax, I tell her, but she can’t relax––fearing what relaxation brings.
She cannot surrender herself. I cannot be content until she does.
Two-in-one, we rail against each other, then hold hands.
Comforting. This is enough, she tells me.
Nothing is ever enough, I tell her.
This is my third major rewrite of this poem originally written in 1976. Only three lines still remain from that poem. It is perhaps finished now.
Here is the link if you’d like to participate in dVerse Poet’s Open Link night and here is the link to read other poems for dVerse Poets Open Link Night
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 