Monthly Archives: July 2025

Fire!!! (With update 2 hours later) (And another update the next day.)

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My neighbors across the street in Mexico just called to tell me the transformer on the pole above my studio is on fire.  I’ve been talking to her and to Yolanda’s family for the past half hour and it is still burning. They are waiting for the Electric Company to turn off the power because evidently they can’t put out an electrical fire with water. I am still in the U.S. Going home tomorrow. This is been quite a day. I spent the first half of it in the hospital having a bone marrow biopsy. Not as bad as I feared, but still…..

Just got a message from my neighbor in Mexico that Antonio from the Raquet Club and another man  climbed up on my studio roof and  put out the fire with an extinguisher. I can sleep in peace. Such a relief.

Aug 1––2:53 PM I’m home and all is well. Have electricity!!! Yay.

Unfortunate License Plate Spotted in Billings, Montana

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My sister Patti spotted this license plate in Billings, Montana in 2016. We think he must have meant it to read “Retired.” We both saw it as something else!!! Hopefully he has since changed his vanity plate. (That last letter is a “d” not an “o”.)

“Song of Mexico” for dVerse Poets, July 30, 2025

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(And yes, if you were wondering, the skull is actually part of the helmet of a man driving by on his motorcycle!)

Canción de México
(Song of Mexico)

This small café sits on the square,
or rather the rectangle.
The gas trucks pass by, blaring “Gaaaaas,”
their grounding chains a-jangle.

Trucks and cycles lacking mufflers roar by every minute,
accompanied by the beat of bass drums
pouring out the windows of the passing cars,
drowning out the music they were meant to accent.

The guinea fowl make such a ruckus that they sound insane,
but to complain about the noise in Mexico’s inane.
The daily garbage trucks, the water truck and all the rest
all live by the assurance that what’s loudest is the best.

I drink my coffee, eat my muffin, try to grin and bear it;
but when she sets a napkin down, I grab at it and tear it.
And even though one part of me says that I shouldn’t dare it,
I use a bit to wipe my lips. The other part? I wear it!

I stuff a wad in either ear, and though I still hear all,
I go by the illusion that I hear it from afar.
Sometimes I feel the threat of age, so quickly it is nearing;
but if I lose one faculty, dear God, please make it hearing!

This song is in jest, for in truth, I love Mexico, even her sounds, for in spite of this poem, not all of them are loud. Go HERE to read another piece about the music of Mexico.

The prompt for dVerse Poets was to write a poem about music that is meaningful to me. Go HERE to read poems others wrote to this prompt.

The Woman in the Mirror

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That Woman in the Mirror

The woman in the mirror has a better sense of humor than I do. This is because she does not need to depart to go into the world. She controls what is behind her and in front of her. Her wounds are my wounds. Her wrinkles are the selfsame wrinkles that fail to respond to the expensive face cream my sister sent me for my birthday. A gentle hint that my apparent age reveals her age, 4 years older.

The woman in the mirror does not necessarily reflect my feelings. She sometimes freezes in surprise at my tears. Chides me to get a hold on myself. She steams over at times and refuses to confront me. She does not flinch at sprays of toothpaste or a misting over of hairspray. She grows younger as the layers thicken. The woman in the mirror chides me to refresh my lipstick, define my eyebrows, pluck hair chins. Slowly, slowly, she ages—turning into first my mother and then my Grandmother, whom I had thought I had left so far behind. That self-pitying look? Shame on her, I chide. Those ever-lowering breasts, that additional girth? I will never get like that, I think, and then I remember.

There is a mirror in my house where my Grandmother cannot find me—a full-length miracle mirror where the one looking back at me is a woman in her 40’s, just barely overweight. She is my grandmother, stretched out—lengthened and diminished in width. It is the sort of mirror that was once seen in fancy dress shops that encouraged women to buy and buy. Like The Hollywood shop from fifty years ago, now long abandoned, shuttered and replaced by a Radio Shack…but whose charms can still lull me into a luxurious feeling that all is well. I am as I should be.

I flip off the bathroom light and move to the bedroom to catch a last glimpse of me in that magical full-length mirror, then climb into bed to dream and dream those slender dreams that, if we are lucky, are the ones that remain in our memory long after the mirrors have cracked and crumbled, like other more recent memories that fade quickly to give way to the past.

The FOWC prompt is “slender”.

Deep Voice for Esther’s Writing Prompts 76

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Deep Voice

I am being visited by words.
Some come from the world
immediately around me.
Travel, experience.

Some come from my grandmother.
I listen to their shadows.
The voice of my mother
echoes from the center of our house.

Poems of the body,
where do you come from?
Books,
Sunday School
and Saturday night movies,
all equally determining
my voice.

Some fade away
but remain backseat drivers
as one after another takes control.
Nothing ever lost.

The Writing Prompts prompt this week is “Voice.”

Gamefish

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Gamefish

See how the mighty fisherman holds me in his hand
as he drags me from the ocean to set me in the sand.
For twenty years, I’ve moved myself in freedom through the sea,
but by tonight it seems I’ll merely be somebody’s tea.

The dVerse Poets Quadrille pompt today is “fish.”

Mystery Podcast. Give it a chance.

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This podcast is amazing. Give it a chance and tell me what you think.

Podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-OJ_DFd2pM

The Numbers Game #83, Please Play Along, July 28, 2025

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Welcome to “The Numbers Game #83”  Today’s number is 205. To play along, go to your photos file folder and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and post 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. Here are my contributions to the album.

Please click on photos to enlarge.

 

Catching the Ball for the Sunday Whirl Wordle, July 27, 2025

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Catching the Ball

The edge of truth floats shimmering preparing to unveil
behavior we need warnings of that lie beyond the pale.
Strange doings that we should avoid. Actions we should fear.
Dark magic that sparks whispers of dangers far and near.
Beware those creatures of the dark that woo us with their wiles—
shedding their true natures by obscuring them with smiles.
Fortune can be  a swift-paced ball. Best catch it in your mitt
lest you forget to reach for it and, instead, get hit.

For the Sunday Whirl, the words are: ball whispers shimmering unveil hits strange shedding edge creature sparks fear magic  Image by Benjamin Hershey on Unsplash.

Arizona Sunset, for Cellpic Sunday, July 27, 2025

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Click on Photos to Enlarge.

These are the views from my sister’s backyard and front yard  in Peoria, Arizona on July 25, 2025

For Cellpic Sunday