Balm
Easy to be caught up in a hectoring world,
taciturn and doleful with all its ills unfurled.
But every day the real world holds us in its cup.
Look to the right and left of you. Look earthwards, or look up
to feel the extraordinary in the common thing—
the stamen of a flower or swallows on the wing.
The sunlight on the cobblestones or stars flocking the moon.
The cheeping of a baby bird or wailing of a loon.
Cutter ants in rank and file, purloining leaf by leaf
an entire bougainvillea bush, thief by tiny thief.
Bees mining for nectar, a squirrel hoarding nuts,
raindrops on the garden loam, sculpting tiny ruts.
The wonders of the natural world, prodigious and varied
can sooth away the worries of a world that’s over-harried.
Take the time to notice. Make use of the calm
that’s present all around you, and use it as a balm.
Word prompts are the extraordinary in the ordinary, taciturn, hectoring, prodigious and feel.
Poetic License in a Temperate Climate
December’s moved south of the border where it isn’t so icy and cold,
but still of all of the months of the year, it’s the one where the weather’s most bold.
It’s that time of the year where I profit from staying in bed until nine,
my bed being where I feel warmest—snuggled in blankets, supine.
At seven and eight it is silent, each dog still curled in his bed,
as I burrow into my poem of the day, rousting it out of my head.
It finds a new home on my hard drive, thus quelling my need to relate
as all of my creative juices suddenly seem to abate.
As my poetry swells to fruition, I finally stir from my nest
to dress in my toe socks and leggings, my sweater and wooly warm vest.
A poem survives any weather, surrounded by peers on the screen,
but even in temperate countries, December remains the most mean.
By April, I’ll feel warm and toasty and I’ll need a different reason
for staying in bed until nine when it is such a perfectly temperate season.
Yes, it’s true. I even wear them in bed! Prompt words today are December, profit, silent,
quell and home.
The Dance of the Terrible Middle
Caught in the terrible middle of the animal,
in the white nerve of my sleeping grandfather,
I go with the signs of night in a straight line,
eluding the contented star animals,
breathing with the transformation of their high place.
The high mountains are my prison,
the fear of your love my punishment.
I occasionally give in to thoughts of you.
The ghost of your memory is in my center.
We are separate, but
in each of us is the house
where both of us live.
In the table of your hair,
in the locked room,
to the living heart of the beast,
we come for charity.
The sweet scent of reason
dances to my middle self.
It is of the moon,
but equally of books––
a mongrel with its tail between its legs
howling a mortal solo of our split lives
and our separate deaths.
The rolling body of the star,
my body spinning to the paradox
of what I could believe in––
the faded ochre of the one truth of your friendship,
the disparate truth of my grandfather.
All out of line, unparallel.
Lover with your full nights’ sleep
and half of your life lost to this sleep,
you dream of three futures while
I dance the tango of the terrible middle.
I’ve been to two Xmas craft shows and a weekly street market, and at each, the only person whose work I couldn’t resist was the lady pictured above.
And this is what I bought. Believe me, I could have purchased more. Her pieces were one-of-a-kind and there isn’t one I wouldn’t have purchased if I had the room. These are all Xmas gifts. Except, perhaps, for one.
for Bushboy’s Last on the Card Challenge Hope you don’t mind that I shared my last two as I figured the creator of these objects deserved to be seen, as well.
A walk on the San Juan Cosala Malecon is always notable. Here’s a fun event from a few weeks ago:
Click on photos to enlarge.
For the Weekly Prompt: Notable.
Family Feud
The quarrels in my family are numerous at best.
If I say they are ubiquitous, believe me, I don’t jest.
Daddy’s always angry. Mama’s always in a tiff.
If discord had an odor, you’d always get a whiff
as you wandered past our windows or entered our front door,
and if you thought to mention them, we’d only produce more.
Bring up race relations and there’ll be no interstice
between Daddy’s rants and ravings that display his prejudice
and Mama’s stepping in with her opposing point of view.
Then before you know it, they’ll unite to lambast you!
We seldom have a visitor and have no friends at all.
No salesmen knock upon our door and no neighbors call.
If I threw a slumber party and had friends to spend the night,
the angst here’s so infectious that we’d have a pillow fight.
No cousins ever join us at Thanksgiving to give thanks
because our extended family has fired us from its ranks.
We are the loneliest clan in town, and that for sure’s no fiction.
But— if we have nothing else, at least we have conviction!
Before you ask, this is fiction! Prompt words today are ubiquitous, tiff, prejudice, interstice and mention. Image by Afif Kusuma on Unsplash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 