Lactose Intolerant
If you’re intent on becoming maternal,
I’m hopeful your plans include turning nocturnal.
For babies claim most of your time, night and day,
but their favorite time to entice you to play
is when you have finally collapsed in a heap
and obtained REM sleep, so blessedly deep
that you swim towards the surface with collections of dreams
that shed off you like water as you waken to screams
of your recent dependent who’s hungry and wet,
needing all the attention that there is to get.
Since you went through the nausea and gained all the girth,
acquired all the stretch marks and endured the birth,
though you love this dear bundle with skin smooth as silk,
how you wish that their father could provide the milk!
Yet you search for your robe and for your other shoe,
for that wholesome nutrition provider is you!
Prompt words today are hopeful, claim, nocturnal, wholesome and collection. Image by Jenna Norman on Unsplash.
Please click on photos to enlarge.
There has been a lot going on besides Xmas this month. Here are some photos that didn’t seem to fit in anywhere else. I made a new friend in the pool that unfortunately I rescued too late. I bought wonderful crocheted gifts and witnessed a novel display at the massage booth in the local street fair, wore my toe socks for a month straight, (Well, I alternated between 5 different pair), Deysie got a new electric bike and drove it out to help me tackle my studio. I decorated the tree with past memories, admired the beautiful tool display in a local gallery, captured a garden godess and a bedroom sprite, saw the light display for the Virgin of Guadalupe festival in San Juan Cosala and accomplished a hundred other pressing tasks with committing them to photos.
This is another photo I took on a walk with my friend Linda along the ocean just north of Davenport landing in California in 1915.
For Cee’s FOTD
Love on Line
These
nocturnal visits
over Love.Com
require no suitcase,
bring no human feet
over my threshold.
Only conversation
hollow in its lack
of pulse beat
echoes through it.
Too much of our world
absent from the other parts.
Too many empty chambers
with great sound systems.
Too many tapping fingers.
Waiting eyes.
Prompts today are suitcase, hollow, bring, nocturnal.
This little daisy-like vine seems to be creeping toward my wall. Perhaps by next year it will have crept up and over and into my garden.
For Cee’s FOTD
Vernacular Confusion
When he says I have puissance he means I have power.
Why must he go on like this, hour after hour?
I don’t understand his schoolbook French.
In Yiddish, I cannot tell shiksa from mensch.
I fumble with Spanish and flunked at Italian.
An onion’s an onion. When you call it scallion,
it’s all Greek to me and I don’t have the energy
to combine languages. What’s with this synergy
that creates Tex Mex, Pig Latin and Spanglish?
I have enough problems just pronouncing Anglish.
I don’t catch your meaning when you say “Que tal?”
This method of talking means nothing at all
to one not versed in languages. So, when you call,
please don’t say,”Salut!” Just say, “Howdy, y’all!”
Prompt words today are fumble, synergy, catch, puissance and method.
I snapped this photo years ago before I started blogging. I was back in Santa Cruz/Boulder Creek California for a visit and took a walk with my friend Linda Levy on the high cliffs above the ocean. Wildflowers were aplenty and I took a number of photos that I stumbled across yesterday. I have no idea what this flower is, but I can tell from a different photo where she had her hand near it that they are rather small. That was a lovely day. Glad I have these flowers to remember it by.
Janet of the Simret Blog recognized this flower as a wild radish and both Martha Kennedy and Cee agreed, as do I, so it is official. Thanks, Janet and all.
For Cee’s FOTD
Remembering Grandma at Christmas
The years have chosen to abrade
the paper angel Grandma made
that year when Christmas cheer was thin,
because for weeks we were snowed in.
Even Santa ceased his action
for his reindeer had no traction.
Weeks of snow and sleet and fog
even kept the catalogue
from providing a Christmas doll
when Santa couldn’t come at all.
And so the holidays that year
did not reflect our usual cheer.
No tree, no lights, no heavenly choir,
our only heat a roaring fire.
We kids complained to Mom and Dad
and by Christmas Eve, they’d had
as much of kids as they could stand
and that’s when Grandma took a hand.
Her silver scissors nipped and flew
creating something that was new—
a Christmas angel feathery light
that floated that December night
above our heads in fire glow,
hung by a string, rotating slow
around the room with wafting wings
descending from above on strings.
And from the dark a heavenly song
prompted us to sing along.
My Grandma led, with timorous voice
that song that always was her choice:
“Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, and all is bright.
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child.
Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.”
One by one, we entered in,
our voices first halting and thin,
but when my Grandma chimed a bell,
our family choir began to swell
up to the ceiling, throughout the room,
dispelling darkness, cold and gloom.
Mom made cocoa on the coals
while Dad made popcorn, filling bowls
we strung on thread to deck our halls
from curtain rods to lamps to walls,
along with paper snowflakes that
twirled on their strings to tease the cat.
In the firelight’s magic glow,
they made things magical and so
every normal Christmas since,
we love our turkey and pies of mince,
Christmas presents to poke and squeeze,
bubble lights and towering trees,
but what’s most special is when Pop
puts Grandma’s angel on the top
of the tree covered in flakes
and popcorn strings the family makes.
And when we sing her special song,
if angels sing, she’ll sing along.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 