I went out to the garden to try to find a flower to photograph for today’s FOTD prompt. A slight misty rain cooled the air and the almost constant precipitation over the past 24 hours had jeweled the leaves and flowers. As you will see from the photos below, I couldn’t stop.
Different Strokes
I believe I’ve lost my juju. I’m throwing in the towel.
If I were a mason, I’d be throwing in the trowel.
I’m too light on pragmatic and strong on fanciful.
I’m not achieving much but my life is never dull.
I’m terrible at numbers, organizationally lax—
a non-controversial drawback when it comes to paying tax.
I have a different point of view based on imagination
which works for writing poems but does not work for pagination
where “one” must always lead to “two” and “nine” must follow “eight.”
If I were timekeeper, the whole cosmos would run late.
The fact that I’m disorganized cannot be debated,
but it’s going way too far to say I’m addlepated.
The world needs many opposites to balance out each other.
For every north there is a south, for every dad a mother.
Sober’s stirred by silly and warm thaws out the cold.
Calm smooths out the erratic and meek balances the bold.
So if I tend toward fanciful, don’t issue an indictment.
There’s way too much reality. We need some more excitement.
Prompt words today are pragmatic, terrible, controversy, juju and towel.
Virtual World
Beamed into this lifetime, we’re bitten, bruised and lost,
not knowing it’s a virtual world into which we’ve been tossed.
Reality a spectrum whose limits have been blurred,
how many feel their life is just a thing to be endured?
If that grand player tweaks the board a bit, adding more disaster,
might the game be over an eon or two faster?
If he adds another virus to aids and chicken pox,
If he bundles up more pieces and throws them in the box,
will Earth breathe her final breath at last, gasping, torn and weak?
Is that the master game move? Is that his final tweak?
Or will the game start over with new rules the next round?
And will the moves go smoother once new game pieces have been found?
Wordle prompts today are: beam, virtual, box, bruise, bit, lost, spectrum, torn, tweak, bundle, breathe and time. HERE is the link to read other submissions for this prompt. Image by Robert Coelho on Unsplash, used with permission.
After a huge thunderstorm, the rain stopped and I went out to take an after-midnight swim. Luckily, I’d taken my iPhone out to listen to a book as I did my water exercises, and used it to try to capture a photo of a rare firefly that clung to the branch of an Areca palm hanging out over the water. I couldn’t capture it, but luckily it did make me notice an incredible moon and cloud tableau over my neighbor’s house that is pictured in the gallery below. This is the scene: mist surrounding and rising up into the night-chilled air from the hot water of my geothermally heated pool, clouds swirling around the moon. Click on the individual photos below to enlarge them.
For Hammad’s Weekend Sky Prompt.
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.
Homeless
Incomplete women and incomplete men
schlep up the avenue and back again
bearing their bundles over their backs,
the remains of their lifetimes stuffed into sacks.
Patiently trudging with impassive faces,
trying to find the impossible places
where they may rest, be they new ones or prior,
to find a safe haven and build a small fire.
What have they done to warrant this life?
To live out existence that cuts like a knife?
A wife who couldn’t put up anymore
with an abusive husband? A bully and bore?
Are his brains addled? Is he confused?
Were they once children neglected, abused?
They sit collected, their backs to the wall.
What will society do with them all?
Collect them in shelters or drive them away
from Interstate medians where by night and day
they lie hidden by bushes, secure, so they think,
to dream away days or to shoot up or drink?
Such wasted lives that have slipped through the cracks,
stripped of their power, defined by their lacks.
They line our sidewalks, devoid of our riches,
to show us society’s obvious glitches.
Prompt words today are incomplete, bundle, patiently, schlep and prior.
Click on first photo to enlarge photos. Then click on arrow to see all.
Summer Storm: Lake Chapala, June 25, 2021, 8:40 P.M.
Enough
At six o’clock, glib comments start to fill the air.
We’re hungry for frittata, but the table’s bare.
Darkness fills the kitchen, for mama’s gone on strike.
She’s gone off to the city. Alone, on papa’s bike.
It’s dicey whether she’ll return. She says she’s tired of cooking.
She’s in need of a vacation and so she made a booking
at a posh hotel that has its own cafe
where she will dine on coq au vin followed by crème brûlée.
For once, serving the rest of us will not be her fate.
Someone else will wait on her and she’ll just sit and wait.
In the morning she will order service in her room
where she’ll not even make her bed or wield dust cloth or broom.
Her note says then she might come home, or she might just wait
and find a nice seaside resort where she can cogitate
for another day or two. She says we shouldn’t worry.
The pizza place delivers if we’re not in a hurry.
Her recipe book’s on the shelf. The stove is under it.
Her apron’s in the closet and she’s sure that it will fit
each and every one of us while she is on vacation.
She says that fending for ourselves will be an education.
She says to wash the dishes even though it is a bore,
for if she sees a messy kitchen when she walks in the door,
she’s going to walk right out again until we prove we’ve learned
that things will be real different after Mama has returned!
Prompts for today are six, glib, frittata, dicey and darkness.
What a strong and effective statement.
Fandango- definitely a “who won the week” contender🙂
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 