For Cee’s FOTD
I’m lying in the hammock listening to faroff cicadas on the mountain. The ones that usually surround me are silent for now. Oops….one just started up in the yard across the street so I’m sure they will soon be joined by ones in my lot below. I snapped this shot just five minutes ago and already it is nearly too dark to photograph, but interestingly enough, when I just snapped another photo, my camera on my iPhone seems to have picked up extra light as it is just as light as this photo. The wonders of technology. At any rate, I love this time of the day. I came down an hour or so ago to mend a tear in the hammock, heard my neighbor on his porch and asked if they wanted some carrot cake. They did, so I carried over almost 1/2 of the little cake I bought for Jose’s birthday. Then when he didn’t call or come by today, I decided to just have a piece and had already decided to take half of it to my neighbors so I wouldn’t be tempted. Yolanda and Pasiano could polish off the rest tomorrow. But, as fate is prone to do, the minute I got inside from meeting David in the street outside our mutual garages to transfer the birthday cake, the phone rang and it was Jose, who was down at the kiosk at the entrance to the Raquet Club where I live, having a birthday beer with his friend. So, I jumped in my car and took them down two pieces of birthday cake, lit candles and let Jose make two wishes. His wish was that I’d accept his bid for touching up paint on my house and repairing a crack. My wish was that he’d reduce his estimate by half. He came down 1/3. We’ll see if either of us gets our wish. Happy Birthday, Jose. And to all a good night.
For Cee’s FOTD
Fixer-Upper
I am a fixer-upper. My joints are caving in.
My parts are getting even with a long life lived in sin.
Way too many hamburgers, fries and Hershey bars.
Too little time spent jogging — too much time spent in cars.
The fact I’ve been degraded, I admit is not disputable,
for since my early teens my shape has been too often mutable.
I tried to stage a victory over this decline
sometime in my thirties, but somewhere down the line
my resolve grew weaker and I gave up on pilates.
It was too degrading competing with the hotties
who clinched their little derrieres and flexed their perfect arms.
I simply could not stand the comparison of charms.
I’ll never flip this body. I can’t touch neck to heel.
How can I execute “down dog” when I can barely kneel?
In spite of diligent efforts now and then throughout my life,
with starts and futile endings my biography is rife,
I came up with excuses, I “hee”d and “haw”ed and “hem”med.
Then finally had to admit, this property is condemned!
Prompts today are fixer-upper, diligent, victory, mutable and degraded. Photo by Basil Anas on Unsplash, used with permission.
I used an app on this one. Wish I could remember which one as it turns photos into art! I’ve found an app called Luna that has an art app but it doesn’t seem to be the one I used as I can’t find any of the ones I used two years ago when I created this one. Ah, memory..
For Cee’s FOTD
Christine Goodnough sent me the above prompt words and since I’m incapable of turning down a challenge, this was the result. The poem didn’t start out being about my dad but somewhere in the middle, I realized perhaps it was. This is a photo of him at age 13 on the homestead that he grew up on. He moved into town when he married my mom, but farmed and ranched the homestead plus land he later acquired until he sold the ranch after I graduated from high school.
All That Glitters
Be mindful of your wishes lest fate should smite thee down.
What you think might bring a smile sometimes brings a frown.
Nowhere is it written happiness can be bought.
Too often excess riches are a trap wherein we’re caught.
Sometimes pristine palaces can turn into a cage
for those who sell contentment for a daily wage.
If fairy stories are the tales on which your hopes you gauge,
remember that their characters are prisoners of the page.
Those in ivory towers far above the earth
may not smell the flowers or recognize their dearth.
It’s one thing to be hungry, ill-provided for and flustered,
but once you have enough and your daily needs are mustered,
if you want to win the game of life, be sure to share the ball.
Just relax. Enjoy your life. You do not need it all.
Prompt words today are mindful, smite, pristine, fluster and nowhere.
Image by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash, used with permission.
Cherry Summers
They sit on the steps of our low front porch,
cherry-stained fingers dropping pits
onto the grass or sidewalk.
“They is good but they is sowie,”
exclaims our tiny neighbor, looking up
at my dad, who sits with her and her brothers,
his mouth, too, full of sour cherries
pulled from the trees in our back yard.
My sister and I spend summer afternoons
picking off stems and squeezing
the fruit to expel the pits,
juice running down our arms
to drip off elbows and pool on the
table, attracting ants.
Bowlful after bowlful is removed from the table
by my mom to make into pies to freeze.
This task of summer is rewarded all winter long
by the crisp thin crust and tapioca-thickened
ooze of sugared cherry gel surrounding
the fruit sweetened by some chemistry
of my mother’s hand.
Those summer days were lengthened
by the absence of the tolling school bell across the street
and by a sun that lingered into night,
bedtimes stretching out because of the impossibility
of going to bed before dark.
“Ollie ollie oxen free,” echoed from
games of hide-and-seek that ranged
from the playground across the street
into our backyard where cherry trees
that offered shade in the heat,
offered shelter from detection at night.
The aroma of cherry pie, fresh from the oven,
whetted more than mere appetites
during all those nights when,
snow piled on the windowsills,
we bit into
the sweet memories
of summer
For dVerse Poets
Image by Joanna Kasinska on Unsplash, used with permission.
Widowmaker
Water swirled around the old tree, oozing into the spaces between its trunk and loose bark with borborygmous sucking sounds, ripping it bare. She clung to a giant limb just inches above the current. It was an old limb of the type they used to call a widowmaker back when they were an actual pair, lying in the shade on an old blanket pulled from the trunk of his car. She had been lithe and slim. He had been handsome and as wily as a fox. “Zorro,” she had called him, that first long afternoon when he had led her off into the forest for the first time.
Now, for what would probably be her last visit, she had a different companion—the hurricane named Esmerelda, raising the skirt of her water inch by inch as she came to join her. She could hear the cracking of the limb, bit by bit, as it registered the effect of her weight. Where was he? In some snug hotel room, storeys above the swirling water, with a less lethal female companion, no doubt. Only she was here, caught in the memory of them, clinging to that limb that was one syllable short of being appropriately named.
Prompt words today are widowmaker, wily, borborygmous, actual and pair.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 