Click on photos to enlarge, please.
Loud morning birds
seem to be speaking together
in different languages.
For Bird Weekly: https://oureyesopen.blog/2021/06/11/bird-weekly-photo-challenge-birds-with-stripes-spots-or-freckles/
Sticks and Stones
Success brought a fleeting fame
in that game of pitched rocks
hit with a stick—that sugar rush of pride
in both the one who threw the rock
and the one who held the stick
with which it made contact.
Their wild shouts
before the shock of breaking glass
to this day form a wicked memory—
both boys off like a shot
down an elm-shadowed gravel street
even before a hand could part the curtains,
scattering shards of glass like summer snow.
Old man Sterner’s bellows:
“You boys!
I know who you are.
Your dads’re gonna whup yer hides,”
not yet overshadowing
the fleeting joy
of that solid whack
as the rock made contact.
Prompt words by: https://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/2021/06/13/wordle-505/
Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.
For Terri’s Sunday Stills Summer in Pink prompt.
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
–Wm. Shakespeare
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
—Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man
“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating
that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.”
–(Wikipedia)
“The Fool Doth Think He Is Wise”
Although his conclusion was toothsome and salty,
it was my colleague’s premise I found to be faulty.
His logic? Ramshackle, for facts in his keeping
would make a logician run, screaming and leaping,
out of the room and over the hill,
when of this insanity, he’d had his fill.
Light intellect teamed up with heavy endeavor,
expressed by a soul neither heartful nor clever
is a dangerous pairing in this Internet world,
where such like-minded fools, their illogic unfurled,
can find a wide audience, hardly deserved,
that would leave Einstein weeping and Hawking unnerved.
Prompt words are colleague, ramshackle, leaping, premise and heavy.
This flower is so brilliant. No color adjustment has been done on it. There were two of these on my bush between my front door and kitchen today. Tomorrow they will be gone, but so beautiful while they last and there will be more to replace them.
For Cee’s FOTD
I have a huge hedge of this flower on the street side of my wall, but I have no idea what it is.
Janet Waters asked to see the leaves so here they are. And—she identified the flower as Plumbago. Thanks, Janet!!! You can see here blog HERE.
For Cee’s FOTD
He Said, She Said
When she questioned his fidelity, he said she was a loser,
though he was the real lowlife—a bully and a bruiser.
“We’re not a pair,” he snapped at her. “I never took an oath
that I would be true to you, in fact, I’m rather loath
to say that when I married you, it wasn’t a mistake.
The only thing I liked about it was the wedding cake!
I’d had a few too many the day that we were hitched
and ever since we had the kids, you have bitched and bitched.
You like to snap my head off If I partake with the boys
and come home after midnight. If I make the slightest noise
and if I wake the kids up, well, so what? They’re my kids, too.
Perhaps they’d like to spend some time with me instead of you.
So what if it is 3 a.m.? Tomorrow we’ll sleep in.
You’d think that playing with your kids past midnight is a sin!!!!
The way to keep your man is to practice your felicity.
Instead of gripes, I’d like to see some wifely elasticity.
I always was a party guy. I always was a rover.
If you expect much more of me, my time with you is over.”
To Which She Answered:
The kids are at my mother’s, your packed bag in the garage.
Almost from the beginning, our marriage was a mirage.
I’ve called the man to change the locks. I’ve closed our bank account.
There’s money in your suitcase—a very small amount.
My father bought our house and my salary, at best,
is what was in the bank account. You drank up all the rest.
So what if it is 3 a.m.? You’re used to nighttime games.
Check your little black book. It’s sure to yield some names.
If you’ve had too much to drink, it’s best you don’t drive far,
but I’m sure that you’ll be comfy sleeping in the car.
I’ve decided to withdraw from marital complicity,
and that will bring you what you want. In short, your wife’s felicity!!
Prompts today are “not a pair,” snap, partake, felicity and loser. Photo by Elvis Bekmanis on Unsplash, used with permission.
Final Curtain
Behind a tangle of bushes and impenetrable wood,
paint peeling from its walls in strips, the ancient mansion stood.
A blemish on our neighborhood, the property condemned.
By its neighbors’ pristine hedges, its boundaries were hemmed
like burnsides on each side of an unruly mustache.
And no amount of pressure and no amount of cash
could persuade the one who lived there—a widow old and frail
to repair her ravaged property or put it up for sale.
And though neighbors voiced their protests, she challenged one and all
simply by remaining behind her crumbling wall.
At night, thin wispy music from her gramophone
leaked out through the bushes as she danced on all alone
over creaking floorboards, reliving bygone days
and a life once vivid now diminished to a haze.
Reenacting dramas of a life gone by too fast,
she played the heroine while other roles all went uncast.
Prompt words today are challenge, blemish, burnsides, tangle and property. Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash, used with permission.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 