Click on photos to enlarge.
For the Cosmic Photo Challenge we are to post photos of our autumn garden
An Autumn Garden
6 Replies
Monthly Archives: October 2025
The Beginning for SOCS
The Beginning
You are in a hotel room. The drapes are drawn. No one else knows you are here. There is a white covering on the bed—something light that flutters with the fan blades as they go around and around, just like your thoughts. He has gone. You don’t know whether to be glad about this or sorry, for with him have vanished all of the terrible things in your life along with all of the best ones. Mainly, you will now need to decide for yourself what to do next. What will you have for dinner now that his needs do not need to be taken into account? When will you go to bed and what side of the bed will you sleep on? It is like beginning a new life with all of the “musts” and “shoulds” erased. You can do anything in the world that you want to do.
You take off your dress and then your underwear. You can have another piece of pie without wondering what he will think the next time he looks at you naked. No one to calculate what went where and when. Is the roll over your waistline evidence of that triple chocolate ice cream cone? That extra inch on your thigh the milk you have in your coffee each morning?
You step to the mirror and look closely, not overlooking for once. Are your curves artistic or simple obesity? Do you yourself care so long as no one else is looking? Is his leaving a blessing or a curse?
You move out to the terrace. It is dark and no one is looking. The night air has a slight movement that you would not be noticing if you were clothed. It is almost sensuous, this movement of air like light caressing fingers—the way he could never quite make his fingers behave enough to be. Nature has become your lover and perhaps this will be enough. Always before, you have replaced each one who left, but maybe this time you will not bother. You and the natural world will conspire to meet your needs and you will be shameless in your environment, carefree in your living. You will pass before mirrors without looking away, even when you stand as you are standing now. Without cover. Without any flattering draping or cloaking color. You. No longer us.
The SOCS prompt is “In The Beginning” (Image generated making use of AI)
Daffynitions For Fibbing Friday
Words to define for Fibbing Friday are:
1. Baloney: a batter’s first missed pitch
2. Hogwash: A facility used to clean Harley Davidsons.
3. Codswallop: A mercy blow to a caught fish’s head after they are removed from the fish hook.
4. Bunkum: What counselors do to campers at bedtime.
5. Claptrap: Another word for mittens
6. Fly tipping: The act of giving gratuities to flight attendants.
7. Tripe: One’s third bathroom visit of the night
8. Balderdash: A marathon race for male senior citizens
9. Trash: A choir director’s command to silence the first syllable of “Tra la la.”
10.Scrap: A rude statement made about something of low quality.
Books, for dVerse Poets Open Link Night
Books
The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
it’s paper sprinkled with drops–
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory–
that rainstorm run through.
How he put it in his back pocket.
Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.
Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages–
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink–
the allure of a book and its tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.
Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial–
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us
What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Google replacing dictionaries,
Wikipedia already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?
Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs––
perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
The grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them–as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages––one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.
For the dVerse Poets Open Link Night
And….Here is a link to another poem published today: “BEGINNING”
To see how others responded to the prompt go HERE.
Skinny-Dipping for One Word Challenge
Skinny-Dipping
Important note: This is a shape poem , (at least the last two stanzas are) but if you look at it in Reader, it distorts the shape by left margin justifying. Please click on the title again and you will view it from my blog where it will be centered and you can see the shape.
Skinny-Dipping
There’s a change in the weather, a shift in the light.
The palm trees are swaying. Three stars shining bright.
The water is cooling, my exercise through.
Clouds cover the moon. I think it’s my cue
to get out of the water before I turn blue,
then clouds shift and the moon turns its usual hue.
The wind stirs the water. I think of past times
ages ago in different climes.
All those past lives, can they really be mine?
If I put experience in a straight line,
could I see the reason for things as they were
as my life sped by–—a perpetual whirr?
What gave me the courage to do what I did
since that time long ago when I was a kid
and took that first journey out on my own,
out of the house across grass newly mown,
fresh from the bathtub, laughing with glee,
nude for the whole world to look out and see.
Running down the sidewalk until I was captured
again by my mother, winded but enraptured
by this two-year-old daughter escaped from her bath,
already set out on her singular path.
So many roadways traveled since then.
So many different lives that have been
tried and discarded in favor of others.
Surrogate fathers and surrogate mothers,
surrogate sisters and friends freshly minted,
plane tickets ordered, paid for and printed.
Travel adventures. Dangers to survive.
Making it through it all still alive.
I come up from the pool,
dripping and shivering.
Those few bold stars
above me delivering
promises that I
might still be a rover.
While there is breath left,
my life isn’t over.
For Word of the Day the prompt is “Bathtub.”
Face Pots for Lou!!!
When Lou Carrera published a picture of two of his flower pots that bore human faces, I tried to send him photos of a couple of my own “face pots” but it didn’t work in comments, of course, duh…so here they are, Lou. One is new this week but looks like the tree I planted in it isn’t doing well, so I need to find a smaller plant for it. The other photo is os a pot I purchased years ago and it seems to have lost both its definition and its nose.
Golden Hibiscus, for Terri’s The Flower Hour Challenge
Recent rains have brought out dozens of blooms and buds on my favorite hibiscus bush. It is so high that it stands far enough above the wall so my neighbors have emailed me thanking me for beautifying their world!!! I thank it for beautifying mine.
for: #theflowerhour.
An October Horror Story, for dVerse Poets
An October Horror Story: Hollow E’en
They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall.
One climbs a tree to peer within. I hope he doesn’t fall.
I cower here within my house and pray they’ll go away.
Though I am not religious, eventually I pray.
Their little voices raise a pitch. They start to bay and howl.
There’s a flutter in my heart region, a clutching in my bowel.
I purchased Reese’s Pieces and miniature Kit Kats
just for all these masked and costumed little brats.
My motives were unselfish. The candy was for them,
for I don’t eat much candy in efforts to grow slim.
And yet that bag of Reese’s, those small Kit Kats and such
called to me from where they were sequestered in my hutch.
It started with a whisper, hissing out their wish:
“We would look so pretty laid out on a dish!”
I knew that they were evil. I knew it was a trap.
I tried hard to resist them, my hands clenched in my lap.
I turned up my computer, listening to “The Voice.”
Those candy bars would not be seen till Halloween—my choice!
My willpower was solid. No candy ruled me.
(If that were true, no kids would now be climbing up my tree.)
Yes, it is true I weakened. I listened to their nags.
I took the candy from the shelf and opened up the bags.
Their wrappers looked so pretty put out for display
In one big bowl so colorful, lying this-a-way
and that-a-way, all mixed and jumbled up together.
No danger of their melting in this cooler weather.
I put them on the table, then put them on a shelf
so I would not be tempted to have one for myself.
When people came to visit, I put them by my bed.
Lest they misunderstand and eat them all instead.
Then when I was sleeping, one tumbled off the top.
I heard it landing with a rustle and a little “plop.”
I opened up one eye and saw it lying there
just one inch from where I lay, tangled in my hair.
Its wrapper was so pretty—foiled and multi-hued.
Some evil force took over as I opened it and chewed!
This started a small avalanche of wrappers on the floor
as I ripped and stuffed & chewed & swallowed more & more & more!
This story is not pretty but has to be confessed.
My only explanation is that I was possessed.
They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall,
but I have no candy for them. No treat for them at all.
Surrounded by the wrappers, bare bowl upon my lap,
I think I’ll just ignore them and take a little nap.
I hear them spilling o’er my wall and dropping down inside.
I try to think of what to do. Consider suicide.
They’re coming in to get me. Beating down my door.
They are intent on blood-letting—the Devil’s evil spore.
I guess it’s not the worst death a gal could ever get.
I’ve heard of much worse endings than death by chocolate!
The dVerse Poets prompt is “October.
“Vitiligo” for Esther’s Writing Prompts
Vitiligo*
Mighty sol’s ubiquitous in regions that are tropical,
but when it comes to sunlight, I have news that is more topical.
I’m evidence empirical that all folks aren’t created
to lie out in the sun’s rays until their lust is sated
for skin transposed to honey brown from a whitish hue.
For folks like me, such practices simply will not do.
Unlike my lucky college chums, my best friends and my sister,
when I’m exposed to sunlight, I am more prone to blister.
I see them put their swimsuits on and take turns rubbing oil on,
anxious to go greet the sun to get their bake and boil on,
but once they’re spread out on their towels with all adjustments made,
I’ll be covered up instead, sitting in the shade.
*Vitiligo is a chronic autoimmune disorder that causes patches of skin to lose pigment or color. This happens when melanocytes – skin cells that make pigment – are attacked and destroyed, causing the skin to turn a milky-white color. People with vitiligo have no natural protection from the sun.
The prompt for Esther’s Writing Prompts this week is “Shade.”
The Numbers Game #93. Please Play Along! Oct 6, 2025
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #93”. Today’s number is 215. 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.**
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 