Full Moon Indictment
The moon is just your implement, dismantling my defenses.
It rattles my conviction, plays havoc with my senses.
What is it in the moonlight that lowers my resistance?
It seems to swell to its full power just at your insistence.
For dVerse Poets, we are to write a poem about the moon. To see other responses to the prompt, go HERE.
Arising early, I stumbled upon this poem, “Table for One, Please” by Bartholomew Barker. That led to reading more of his poems, including THIS ONE at BeatnikCowboy.com. Have a look at it, but please come back to hear my reply. I was so impressed that he knew a herd of deer could be called a “parcel,” but then it occurred to me that perhaps he was just being poetically inventive, so I had to research the matter and in doing so, found this list of synonyms for “herd,” as it applies to deer:
In most situations, you can refer to a group of animals like deer simply as a “herd”. A herd of deer is probably the most common way to designate them, but it is most assuredly the most boring. To be more deer-specific, the other ways to refer to a group of deer include a bevy, a rangale, a bunch, or a parcel. When using parcel, however, it’s generally going to refer to a group of only young deer.
And that new knowledge led, unfortunately, to this hair-splitting and corny rhymed poem on my part:
Deer Ones
A “herd” is most commonly what you will hear
folks calling a grouping of two or more deer;
but if you’re a poet in need of a rhyme,
perhaps you’ll use “bevy” some of the time.
Which is just as correct, though granted, more rare
to describe groups of deer that are more than a pair.
But if you need a rhyme for deer in a dale,
you just might prefer to use a “rangale,”
which is also proper—or perhaps a “bunch,”
to label a deer herd gathered for lunch
in field or in forest, munching on leaves
or grass, twigs or acorns—or crops left when sieves
abandon their fields of soybeans or corn
leaving some crops abandoned, forlorn.
But if you use “parcel” to call deer among
deer of their ilk—that’s just deer who are young!
I can never remember this word, so I think I am going to have it tattooed on my palm so I can remember my excuse for not remembering!!!!! (In case you don’t read comments, I just received these words of wisdom from my sister, who obviously remembers her Greek mythology better than I do: Lethe was the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology. Thanks, Sis!!
Self Portrait
I am trying to escape the menagerie—
all those selves I hold in front of me
as well as the ones I have let escape.
Those that run ahead—
the ones that are my future selves—
are here, hidden in the portrait that you see.
Domineering, perhaps. But seasoned with
an awareness of what might have produced
all of the parts of myself I try to rein in.
This has created a certain slowness to connect.
The natural is seasoned with a desire to honor dreams
of what I hope to be. When I look in the mirror,
I see them all: my mother and my grandmother
and my sisters. We demand, are stubborn.
Sometime we are martyrs, stifling tears.
Then suddenly, I pass them by like memories
of nightmares: all the anxiety attacks,
illnesses and heartbreak.
We are all wonderful performers,
using bad luck to fuel good.
The belles of our own ball,
we push back the grim news
of what we fear we really are.
Headstrong, we reach for what we can be.
Utterly addicted to change,
Tony or no Tony,
we are the stars of our own lives.
For dVerse Poets.
The Excuse
It is those times
over dinner
when we have lifted a glass
or two—
those times
without husbands, who are home
watching a game
or out with gun and skeet—
those times
with long-ago college schemes
or scandals
remembered—
when, although no longer hungry,
we nonetheless order a dessert
with three forks
as an excuse to linger.
For Monday Poetry Prompt, the prompt is “excuse.”
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #89”. Today’s number is 211. 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.
Click on Photos to Enlarge and View as Gallery.
Coco and I celebrated the sunset in the hammock with Bruce’s book, Uncommon Sons.
For JohnBo’s Cellpic Sunday
Since I have written around 4,000 poems for this blog, I have lately started searching to see how many of the prompt words have been used in an earlier poem. I couldn’t resist doing so for “sundae,” thinking this might be the one word I’d never used before, but it actually came up in 4. This is the one I chose:
Sixteen!! The Combiners (Excerpt)
This is an excerpt from a longer narrative poem in my book, Prairie Moths. It is the final section of “The Combiners” –a poem about the itinerant workers who would drive up from Oklahoma each summer to harvest the wheat crop in South Dakota. This infusion of fresh young men into a town of just 700 people was, of course, exciting to teenaged girls whose own male classmates were a bit immature. Not that any of us ever did anything about it. Imagining and talking was enough for us at the age of sixteen!
The Combiners
I saw him first on the bleachers
on the other side of the floor.
As dancers came together and parted,
I saw him and then didn’t see him.
After the music stopped, I craned my neck
around the legs that stood in front of me,
trying to see him across the cleared dance floor.
Then the voice at the top of the legs
asked me to dance, and I looked up–at him.
Feeling uncertain, wicked and wild,
I answered yes.
I’d served him once or twice
at Restaurant 16–
that highway-fronting restaurant
as exotic as its name.
I knew he was working the Weston place
with an outfit my dad had never used.
He liked his steak well-done,
French dressing, no tomatoes.
Butterscotch sundaes made him cough.
Over the water pitcher and order pad,
we had traded a look or two.
I knew he wore Old Spice
and drank Cokes with breakfast,
but I didn’t know his name.
When we got to the dance floor,
he took my hand,
put his other hand on my damp waist.
It was a slow dance and the night was hot.
The dance was work.
I was awkward–too inhibited to get as intimate
as following in dancing requires.
Over the music, we tried to shout our names,
tried to find a mutual rhythm,
finally giving up both endeavors
to dance the slow song, not touching,
moving our arms in fast song 60’s style
to the slow song rhythms.
When the music stopped,
he walked me back again
to the bleacher
he had plucked me from,
reinserted me into the correct space in the line of girls,
smiled, and walked away.
My friends closed around me
like a sensitive plant
to hear the news.
I watched his back,
blue short-sleeved shirt,
his pressed Levis
and his cowboy boots.
I watched the Oklahoma swing of his hips–
danger on the hoof.
He wouldn’t ask me to dance again,
yet, his sun-blackened arms,so finely muscled,
had held me for a minute or two.
His bleached blue eyes
had seen something of worth in me.
He had asked my name, touched my waist,
and walked me off the dance floor.
And, since this was as spicy
as any of our stories would likely be
all summer long,
I turned to my friends to tell the tale.
The Word of the Day prompt is “Sundae.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 