I admit this is the weirdest poem I’ve ever written. Forgive me,Robert Frost….
To be sung to the tune of “Nothing Could be Finer Than to be in Carolina!”
Couturier Extraordinaire
Nothing could be finer
than to be a dress designer
a hum di-i-i-i-in-ger.
Dealing with disaster,
sewing faster faster faster
on my Si-i-i-i-in-ger.
Nothing that they do can ever h-e-e-e-ex me
even fashion stalkers cannot ve-e-e-e-ex me.
Marketing their copies
to the stoners and hip-hoppies,
they can’t ma-a-a-a-at-ch me
Gleaning all my leavings,
they are surely misconceiving,
They can’t ca-a-a-a-a-tch me.
No one in the industry can best me.
All their machinations cannot test me.
That’s why nothing could be finer
than to be this dress designer
I give wa-a-a-a-ar-ning!!
for no one can beat me
and for sure they can’t repeat me
at ado-o-o-o-or-ning!!!!!!
I actually prefer the leaves of Dusty Miller to the flowers which are little yellow clumps that are rather non-assuming.
For Cee’s FOTD
Joys of Aging
I expected wheezing and perhaps crepitations,
creaking joints and even gaseous emanations.
Minor loss of memory and odious rolls of fat,
problems kneeling on my knees, but apart from that,
Mother never taught me and Father never told
the most bothersome drawbacks there were to growing old.
These lines and tracks enmeshing my neck are most distressing.
I can’t conceal them with cosmetics or the way I’m dressing.
They’ve crept onto my forehead and made crow’s feet near my eyes.
These crevasses above my lips I simply can’t disguise,
and though I crave a remedy that would work for sure for them,
no website has a cream and no peddler has a cure for them.
The only sure solution is a boyfriend who’s my age
who has similar problems so we’re on the same page.
And hopefully among those ills, he’ll suffer from myopia,
macular degeneration or perhaps presbyopia
so he will not notice the fissures on my face
or the deterioration of any other place.
Prompt words today are father, enmesh, peddler, apart, crepitate, presbyopia, another.
Cee remarked on loving my garden, so here is a view of some of it for her. If you click on the photos, they enlarge, and some have captions.
For Cee’s FOTD
After a year, my new crop of bananas was finally ripe and ready to be cut off the bunch. I ended up carrying 34 pounds of bananas up to the house in two trips. This yielded 12 gallon bags full of sliced bananas to freeze for smoothies and banana bread. That filled up a 16X8X11 inch space in my freezer. See proof of my labors below. Click on photos to enlarge and read captions. Forgottenman insisted you’d be interested in this. I had my reservations, but I usually comply with requests, so here is the proof of my day’s labors.
For Cee’s FOTD
Fleeced
If you simply must explore
to find the golden fleece of yore,
as have other fools galore,
I fear that its discovery
is something that is not to be
by the likes of you or me.
The point, I fear, is simply moot.
If you are at all astute,
you’ll realize there is no loot.
Your hopes, I know, will surely clash
with the fact there is no cash,
for legends often make us rash.
But I fear I must explain
lives searching for an unearned gain
turn into lives just spent in vain.
And that, in short, is just inane!
Prompt words today are fleece, moot, discovery, galore and clash. Image by Georgi Kalaydzhiev on Unsplash.
Liquid Yolk
He holds the hot egg in one hand, turning it as he taps it gently with the knife edge in a perfect horizontal line, and lifts the top off like a skull cap to reveal the molten golden lava of the half-congealed yolk. It spills out in a river as he moves his spoon around the shell to remove the white in one solid unblemished half-oval—shining, still steaming from the boiling water it has so recently been surrounded by.
The egg rests on the square of toast and is soon joined by its equally perfect other half, mashed
onto the toast to be lightly sprinkled with salt, dusted with black pepper. Then, the final perfect ingredient to this gracefully executed breakfast favorite—one delicate sprinkle of cider vinegar from the tiny stoppered glass vinegar cruet and the neat slicing with fork and knife, the lifting to lips, the dabbing of yolk from the plate with another triangle lifted from the toast plate.
The final smacking of lips and the long satisfied sigh as he places his knife and fork across his empty plate. My father, a large man with work-hardened hands, is like an artisan in his neat and graceful maneuvering of the utensils, his napkin blotting any errant egg from his lips before raising, at last, the coffee cup to his lips to wash it all down.
Soft boiled eggs, toast and coffee. Bright yellow, white and brown are the colors of the morning as the school bell rings and I am off in a mad dash to slide into my seat in my schoolroom across the street before its last peal. This memory of my father eating soft boiled eggs was early morning poetry that I have not forgotten half a century and more later. It is the little things, the small beauties, that stick like liquid yolk to our memories.
For dVerse Poets prompt: food
My father put vinegar on everything from cabbage to eggs. I loved to watch him eat, for it was at the table that he was transformed from a hard-working farmer-rancher with wheat in his pants cuffs to a cultured gentleman with impeccable table manners. In this prose poem I try to replicate my father’s artistry in disassembling a soft-boiled egg. The cruet above is one of the few objects I claimed when I went to pack up our house after my father’s death. I still use it for cider vinegar, and think of my dad every time I open the cupboard and see it on the shelf.
The other day I went out to find ten blooms on my scrawny hibiscus bush as well as eleven buds!!!!
For FOTD. See Cee’s luscious lilacs HERE.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 