Author Archives: lifelessons

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About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

Mystery Flower For FOTD Oct 19, 2024

 

For Cee’s FOTD

“Knackless,” for SOCS Oct 19, 2024

Knackless

Whether you have talent is a subject that is moot.
So far you’ve written nothing that has won you much repute.
All the latent talent that you’ve meant to expose
has turned out to be nothing  but the emperor’s new clothes.

Your instruction manuals have ended up intractable,
and all the plays you’ve written have ended up unactable.
All your readers joke that instead of a word user
you’ve proven repeatedly that you’re a word abuser.

 

The SOCS prompt is “Starts with Kn”

“The Silence of the Iambs” for MVB, Oct 18, 2024

The title, by the way, is talking about iambs, not lambs.  Hard to tell when it is capitalized.

The Silence of the Iambs

Anapests sing lullabies while dactyls gallop on.
Trochees beat a drum beat that’s heard hither and yon,
but raindrops speak in iambs, dripping from the eaves
as the torrent lessens and cups itself in leaves.
All the small feet hushed now, we can fall asleep.
We can find our dreams inside a silence that’s so deep.

 

The loud rhythms of the unseasonal rain that awakened me so early this morning have ceased, leaving only the faint drip of water off the eaves. This poem may be one that only another poet could appreciate, but for those of you who aren’t poets and who didn’t pay attention in your lit class, it is about metrical feet—the syllable rhythms within a poem and even within our everyday speech and nature itself.  A trochee (the rhythm of a native American drumbeat replicated in the poem “Hiawatha”) is an accented or long syllable followed by a short one. An iamb is the rhythm in the English we speak every day––a short syllable followed by a long one. An anapest is the rhythm of a lullaby. (short short long) whereas a dactyl (the rhythm of a horse’s gallop) is its opposite (long short short).

MVB’s prompt for the day is Silence

 

For Fibbing Friday, Oct 18, 2024

The words for Fibbing Friday are:

1. Rubaboo: What you do when you hit your arm hard against something!
2. Wampum: What you should do to a fresh date.
3. Taradiddle: What Rhett called his affair with Scarlett!
4. Yitten?:  What the shy cowboy asked the school marm to ask her out to dinner.
5. Dingus: What the hit and run driver did.
6. Pronk: What the stuffy British governess called the joke pulled on her by her charges.
7. Fipple: A cross between a fig and an apple.
8. Bupkis: What be the opposite of a down kiss.
9. Deckled: What the ship’s officer did to the pretty new passenger.
10. Brouhaha: A giggle prompted by lofting a few too many beers!!!

Garden Tour Saturday, Oct 19 in the Raquet Club, San Juan Cosala!!!

My garden will be one of the six shown in this garden tour and art show on Saturday, Oct. 19 in the Raquet club.  I’ll also be selling my books in the art show. More info below:

 

Here’s a teaser of a small part of my gardens, that include the lot next door that I purchased and am in the process of turning into a sculpture park. If we can get it installed in time, Isidro Xilonxochitl will be showing one of his large sculptures there.

 

The pictures below are a few shots of my upper garden. Click on photos to enlarge.

 

Honeysuckle, for FOTD Oct 17, 2024

For Cee’s FOTD

Falling, for Wed. Poetry Prompts 717

Falling

  I dreamed I fell into the rain 
that held me in its midst.
It flooded me with memories:
the room where we first kissed,
the tree tapping the window
as you claimed me as your own,
both caught up in that deluge 
where I now drift  alone.

For Wednesday Poetry Prompts 717, the prompt words are: dream, fall, own, rain, tree, window.

Terrace Arrangement for FOTD for Oct 16, 2024

For Cee’s FOTD

A Strange Occurrence

It is getting dark now and cool, so I got a blanket out of the metal chest I keep in the hammock gazebo for this very purpose.

I climbed into the hammock and of course Coco jumped up as well.  Once I managed to wrestle the blanket out from under him, I tried to open it up but it stubbornly refused to be unfolded!  I pulled and pulled and finally was able to pull it apart. It was as though something was gluing it together.  I investigated and found a thick glob which I pulled off the part of the blanket it still clung to and this is what I found:

A huge caterpillar had woven its cocoon into the fabric of the blanket!!!

I again tugged very hard to get it to release its hold, photographed it and thew it onto the lawn. Then I tossed the blanket out to cover my legs and feet, but alas, It again would not fully unfold itself.  So I investigated and found a second cocoon!  Here it is.

Now I am comfortably covered against the air getting ever cooler but alas, the mosquitos have arrived and in spite of Coco’s ever vigilant snapping to capture them,  in this Dengue area, I’ve decided it is time to go up to the house.

UPDATE: I found another one!

Garden Duty for the Sunday Whirl Wordle, Oct 13, 2024

 

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Garden Duty

It is no witchcraft,
this metamorphosis of garden.
For these past weeks,
I have been a whirlwind
of paintbrush, clippers, shovel and trowel—
shifting and planting plants,
then placing offerings
on the ledge built into the freshly-painted garden wall.
Plants stripped of their dead leaves
and spaced between stone hearts
 give new breath
to this beloved garden, grown rough with age.

in the former birdbath now filled
with dirt and profuse with flowers,
flightless birds of clay
are guardians of a fledgling
fallen from its nest and buried here.

Birds that can fly, do,
then circle  home
to weave between the  tree limbs and the vines—
One guardian on the highest limb
a sentinel perhaps for all.
It’s striden call
signing a mystery
the gardener has no hand in.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 675  the prompt words are: witchcraft metamorphosis garden whirl fly siren sign breath stone circle