DNA
A piece of you came enclosed in your letter.
Not your heart but still a part of you,
concealed as usual,
this time between the envelope and stamp—
trapped forever as the rest of you departs,
taking all of you except
for that remainder—one last kiss of tongue
before you sealed the stamp upon the envelope.
Click on Photos to Enlarge.
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #17” Today’s number is 138. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find under that number and include a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.
This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below.
A Semi-Tall Story
Once upon a time, dear friends, long before creation,
the spirits of the universe formed a delegation
to invent our ancestors: the cell and then the fish,
and eons later, they decided to fulfill the wish
of the lowly haddock to wallow in the mud
with toes and feet to stay erect while walking through the crud.
And thus was born the dinosaur, king of a twig-strewn world,
crashing through the underbrush as all it touched unfurled.
Those parts of earth unbroken eventually gave birth
to animals less violent and much smaller in girth.
Warm-blooded, they awakened to divine memory,
invented words and realized that what had come to be
was what the spirits of the universe had foreseen long ago
while looking in a crystal ball. The predicted it, and lo,
that chain occurred unbroken—ending with you and me,
sitting here upon the ledge of infinity.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 650, the prompt words are: twigs divine wake blood wallow cell memory ancestors crystal creation ledge unbroken. I am combining this prompt with the NaPoWriMo prompt from two days ago, which I forgot to do. The 12th prompt of the monthly series was to write a tall story. This one is only tallish as it’s based on evolution. The Spirits of the Universe might qualify as the tall part of the tale.
Only after I wrote my Day 14 poem did I realize I’d missed out on days 12 and 13! Here is my Day 13 poem, in arrears, “Playing With Rhyme.”:
Light Verse
Bitter night winds blow and flitter,
singing songs that hum along
with kerosene lamps that careen.
spilling light that fills the scene,
then joins the sunset’s streaming jet
of fire across a furry sky
of fleet clouds that hurry hurry
pursing lips to blow out light
and give a welcoming respite
to day’s unrelenting bright
as night contains it in its purse
and stashes it behind a wall
through which light cannot shine at all.
Then shoes of night step softly through
every midnight somber hue,
tracking light, securely trussed
into tight balls, its loud rays shushed
into small whispers, star after star,
sending it back from afar,
on footsteps constant through the night.
that regather in the morning light.
The optional prompt for the day asked us to play with rhyme. We were to start by creating a “word bank” of ten simple words. They should only have one or two syllables apiece. Five should correspond to each of the five senses (i.e., one word that is a thing you can see, one word that is a type of sound, one word that is a thing you can taste, etc). Three more should be concrete nouns of whatever character you choose (i.e., “bridge,” “sun,” “airplane,” “cat”), and the last two should be verbs. Now, come up with rhymes for each of your ten words. (If you’re having trouble coming up with rhymes, the wonderful Rhymezone is at your service). Use your expanded word-bank, with rhymes, as the seeds for your poem. Your effort doesn’t actually have to rhyme in the sense of having each line end with a rhymed word, but try to use as much soundplay in your poem as possible.
Here is my word list, to prompt. Only one— “thrust,” is no longer in the poem, replaced with “tracking,” —a word more in keeping with the poem.
bitter sitter twitter flitter hitter jitter litter sitter titter
song bong dong gong Kong long pong wrong tong along
kerosene obscene bean scene gene Jean keen keene lean mean peen queen seen teen wean machine
sunset bet debt fret get het jet let met net pet Aquanet set Tet vet wet
furry curry furry hurry jury surrey
purse curse hearse nurse terse verse rehearse
wall ball call doll fall gall hall loll mall mol wall tall
shoe blue clue due few goo hew Jew kew loo moo new anew pew queue rue sue two to too view whew yew zoo
thrust bust cussed dust gust lust must rust shushed trussed trust
whisper Whisker bicker spiller thinker winter finger per were blur spur whirr
Wind
The breath of the world blows tendrils of hair,
turns windmills and dries white sheets upon a line.
It twists into a tornado
and lifts a house off its foundations,
sets it down in a mountain meadow
where zephyrs stir the trees.
The breath of the world blows a bee from its branch,
inhales its pollen and puffs it into nostril hairs
that launch a hurricane of sneezes,
sending a whirlwind of powder
from a powdered sugar donut out the window
onto the shoulder of a passing immaculate black tuxedo.
The breath of the world launches sailboats,
then sends them into safe harbors as it swells into a typhoon.
As it exhales, it lifts kites high into the air
and as it inhales, sends them plummeting to earth.
It fuels our lungs to blast a wind of words: expletives or adamant prayers,
anthems or a tyrant’s raves,
benedictions or cheers for a favorite football team.
Windy cities draw their nicknames
from the breath of the world.
Wind in the Willows names our books.
Woodwinds breathe out melodies.
Wind gives a name to our direction
as we struggle windward.
Hurricanes quench our thirst in airless bars.
Breezes give monikers to our dispositions.
Whirlwind, breeze, zephyr,
hurricane, gale, draft, blow,
tornado, crosswind, cyclone—
from gentle puff to wild tornado,
it is the world’s breath
that sets everything into motion.
For Day 14 of NaPoWriMo we were to write a poem making use of anaphora.
“Poor man’s Galapagos” is a nickname for the Ballestas Islands in Peru, which are a good alternative to visiting the Galapagos Islands. The islands are smaller than the Galapagos Islands, and are located in the Paracas District of the Pisco Province in the Ica Region of Peru. They are known for their arches and rock formations, thousands of birds, sea lions, and other wildlife. The islands are also home to a variety of mammals, marine species, and birdlife, including: Humboldt penguins, Sea stars, Fur seals, and Sea lions.
The last two photos show the Paracas Candelabra which we passed on the way out to the islands. It is a giant, mysterious marker etched in the earth and lined in large rocks. Similar to the Nazca lines but believed to have been created by a different group of people, due to its size (595 feet long) and visibility, (you can see it 12 miles out at sea) one theory is that it was created centuries ago as a sign for sailers to reference for landfall. Another theory is that it is a depiction of the Mesoamerican Tree of Life.
I took these photos in 2008 on a trip that also included an Amazon River trip, a flight over the Nazca Lines, Villa Salvador and Lima. A wonderful trip.
The Paracas Peninsula is a desert peninsula within the boundaries of the Paracas National Reserve, a marine reserve that extends south along the coast of Peru. The only marine reserve in the country, it is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is to mark and preserve the archeological sites of the Paracas culture, in addition to the marine habitat. [citation needed]
The peninsula is located within the Paracas District of Pisco Province . This unusual peninsula may be best known for the Paracas Candelabra, a prehistoric geoglyph nearly 600 feet (183 m) tall that was created on the north face of the peninsula ridge. Pottery nearby was dated to 200 BCE, placing it within the Paracas culture.
Rooting around in old photos, I found another favorite. This was a friend’s dog. I was staying in the guest casita behind their house and every morning her sweet dog would bring me a gift.
If you have a favorite photo you’d like to share, please give a link in comments.
This is a poster from a show four years ago in Tabasco. The poster hasn’t been made for this year’s show yet, but I will be participating. I sent in two of my poems translated into Spanish by Mario Puglisi. They will be given to a painter who will paint a painting inspired by one of them. I hope to attend the show in Tabasco in June! Possibly, we will have it here next year. It is an itinerant event that travels to various cities for 2 years. You can see the different countries above.
(This poem evolved from notes that I scribbled into the margin
of our Mexican Train score sheet while visiting my friend Gloria.)
Green Brownies
The brownie that she serves me
crumbles when I try to break it in half.
Her sense of humor allows it and so I tease her.
“Gloria, this looks like the kind of food
my grandmother tried to pawn off on us—
weeks old and crusty from the refrigerator.”
“Those chocolate chips were like that when I bought them!”
she insists, even before I question their green tinge.
I think that this is even worse than the alternative,
and say so and we both laugh as she eats her brownie
and I reduce mine to dust. Not a hard task, as it turns out.
She’s had a bad infection for a week or more.
“I’m not contagious,” she insists each time she coughs
a long low rasping rumble that threatens to avalanche.
“Now stop!” she tells the sounds that explode
without permission from her chest.
“Perhaps,” I say, “These brownies are a godsend
and that’s penicillin growing on the chocolate chips.”
Then her deep coughs transform into
gasps of laughter that echo mine.
The young man there to rake the garden
looks up at us and shakes his head
at two old ladies drinking rum and
eating something chocolate,
and it occurs to me that perhaps
what the world sees as senility
is simply evolution
out of adulthood
to a higher
stage.
For dVerse Poets Open Link 360
You can see how others responded to the prompt HERE.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 