Can’t Resist!!!
I found this photo on an old backup drive and can’t resist using it as my flower of the day.
Can’t Resist–Cee’s Flower of the Day, New Year’s Eve, 2015
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Author Archives: lifelessons
Depth of Field
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Depth of Field
This may be my favorite photo I’ve ever taken. It reminds me of a Monet painting.
This photo of Yolanda’s daughter and son was taken the same day as the trees. I love the sense of wonder both of them gazing into the hazy landscape provides.
I also love the crispness of this turtle against the more muted lily pads.
I don’t know if this shot qualifies as an example of a depth of field shot as prescribed, since most of it is slightly out of focus; but I like the shot and how the flowers stand out a bit. This building conveys such a sense of mystery to me.
I couldn’t decide which of these “Monet” shots I liked best, so I included them both.
I Used to Eat Red
I Used to Eat Red
My sister Patti and I, posed by my older sister Betty. Those are “the” cherry trees behind us. The fact that we were wearing dresses suggests we were just home from Sunday school and church, our souls bleached as white as our shoes and socks!
I used to eat red
from backyard cherry trees,
weave yellow dandelions
into cowgirl ropes
to lariat my Cheyenne uncle.
I once watched dull writhing gold
snatched from a haystack by its tail,
held by a work boot
and stilled by the pitchfork of my dad
who cut me rattles while I didn’t watch.
I felt white muslin bleached into my soul
on Sunday mornings in a hard rear pew,
God in my pinafore pocket
with a picture of Jesus
won from memorizing psalms.
But it was black I heard at midnight from my upstairs window––
the low of cattle from the stock pens
on the other side of town––
the long and lonely whine of diesels on the road
to the furthest countries of my mind.
Where I would walk
burnt sienna pathways
to hear green birds sing a jungle song,
gray gulls call an ocean song,
peacocks cry the moon
until I woke to shade-sliced yellow,
mourning doves still crooning midnight songs of Persia
as I heard morning
whistled from a meadowlark
half a block away.
And then,
my white soul in my shorts pocket,
plunging down the stairs to my backyard,
I used to eat red,
pick dandelions yellow.
(This is a reworking of a poem from my book Prairie Moths.) The prompt today was to talk about our earliest childhood memories. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/childhood-revisited/
Discarded Dreams: Cee’s Flower of the Day Challenge, 12/30/15
Discarded Dreams
What story does this discarded and abandoned wedding corsage tell? You tell me.
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/12/29/flower-of-the-day-december-30-2015-amaryllis-bud-day-4/
Rouge Review––Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Red Flowers 12/29/15
The Moon is Full and Waiting
The Moon is Full and Waiting
The moon is full and waiting,
but the night is full of chill,
though my true love expects me
over yonder hill.
His ardent calls invite me
to join him for the night,
and yet I dread the cold cold wind
and the night air’s bite.
If I were only twenty
I’d have no choice to make,
but I have guests arriving
and sweet bites yet to bake.
My true love lies waiting
over yonder hill,
but he’ll return another night.
I’m confident he will.
For he has no other
to overlook his flaws:
the roughness of his ardor,
the power of his jaws.
His embrace often bruises,
though this is not his intent.
In the excess of his ardor,
only tenderness is meant.
The warm cave of our meeting
still carves out yonder hill,
but tonight I will not join him.
It may be I never will.
Tomorrow night the full moon
will partially be spent,
and perhaps by next month’s equal,
I will once more not relent.
Perhaps I’ll find another
closer to my kind,
though an equal to his passion
I’m unlikely to find.
A mild wind blows the clouds away
to clear the shrouded moon.
My guests will be arriving.
I know it will be soon.
I stir in leavening powder.
I stir in heavy cream.
Across the hand I stir with
falls the moon’s broad beam.
I drop the spoon and go again
to open up the door.
I hear the gentle song of wind,
my lover’s beckoning roar.
I answer with a beat of blood.
A spasm in my thigh
invites me to be climbing
over distant hill and high.
The crumbs fall from my fingers
as I run into the night.
I do not feel the bruising stones
or the wind’s cold bite.
My lover calls me onward,
and once again I go.
For when the full moon calls me,
not once have I said no.
Both of these photos were taken on Christmas Eve, 2015, from my sister’s back terrace in Peoria, Arizona.
The Prompt: Earworm––Write whatever you normally write about, and weave in a book quote, film quote, or song lyric that’s been sticking with you this week. (The song lyric I was inspired by was “Baby it’s cold outside,” but when I finished, it had no actual place in the poem other than to be its inspiration.) https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/earworm-2/
How Now?
How Now?
I love this sequence of expressions as my long time friend Marti was relating a story to us. Since I’ve known her for 50 years–yikes!–I know these typical expressions. Only by taking almost constant photos was I able to capture them all. I enjoyed stretching this longtime friendship into the “now” during our 5 days together over Xmas.
Bougainvillea, Overgrown–Cee’s Flower of the Day, Dec. 28, 2015
Bougainvillea, Overgrown
Behind the bougainvillea, honeysuckle and morning glory vines–all badly in need of trimming––is the plumeria tree I told Pasiano to cut down months ago. Obviously, he doesn’t want to! In between bloomings it loses all its leaves and is pretty ugly. It is also really messy and much as I love its blooms, I’m allergic to them. Reason enough to kill a tree???
For a gorgeous evolution on an Amaryllis bud, look here: http://ceenphotography.com/2015/12/27/flower-of-the-day-december-28-2015-amaryllis-bud-day-two/
Holy Moly
Holy Moly
My friend Michael and I love to issue poetry challenges to each other. We once did one on parts of the body: Knees, etc. So, when I noticed his bandaged big toe and asked if it was broken and he replied that he’d had a mole removed from it, I decided it was time for another challenge. Below is his poem and then my reply:
ODE TO A MOLE (recently removed from my toe)
Old friend, we trod the bumpy road
of ups and downs together, you and me –
I send you home with this sad ode
to join your scabby family.
You were an ugly, lumpy one
but always benign in your own way –
you did no harm to anyone,
now you’re cut off and thrown away.
Although your features did not please,
I give you this, my final thought
for one who sometimes smelt like cheese
“They also serve who only stand and wart!”
Michael Warren
This poem was written in answer to Michael’s. May he forgive me for using his personae in writing it.
Holy Moly
Oh mole that graced my biggest toe,
you had a thankless row to hoe.
I did not know your purpose there–
devoid of title and of hair.
Had I but known why you were given,
had you only come and shriven,
I might have given absolution,
reacted with less resolution
to sever our relationship
–to halt the surgeon’s unkind snip.
We have so little knowledge of
digits that fill our socks or glove.
We do not know of strange attractions
that might have influenced your actions.
Oh mole that lived beneath my knee,
my leg, my ankle and most of me––
that chose to dwell far far below,
clinging to my aging toe.
What fierce attraction brought you there
to form this most unlikely pair?
Came you from Nile or from Ganges
to wed largest of my phalanges?
How did you choose from all that were
to settle there on him or her?
(I am embarrassed here to note,
I only know my toes by rote:
big toe, second toe, middle toe, stinky,
little toe, simply known as pinky.
I do not know their names or gender,
only that they’re long and slender.)
True, I clip their nails with care––
remove the occasional long-grown hair––
but I never address my bod
lest others label me as odd.
So you must know this apology
is no means a doxology.
I do no honor to thy name.
I do not wish to spread your fame.
In short, that act would be absurd.
I simply want to say a word
explaining to you that although
your habitation of my toe
was ended by easy decision,
I felt no scorn and no derision.
I hope this ode might serve to leaven
your anger as you speed towards heaven.
I really would not like to think
that once arrived, you’d raise a stink
to blacklist my immortal soul
by making a mountain out of a mole.
–Judy Dykstra-Brown
In the Soup
In the Soup
Definition: in trouble, as in “I’m in the soup with the boss.”
Without fear, we’d be in traction with braces head to toe––
Each day a speed infraction from refusing to go slow.
We’d fall off tipping ladders and land upon our heads,
or go to sleep with adders sleeping in our beds.
We wouldn’t have good sense about where we should go.
I fear we would be dense––our thought processes slow.
We’d wind up in the jungle sleeping on the ground
hoping for each bungle a solution might be found.
Since fiction often follows fact, I’ve been in many a stew.
But luckily, I chose to act, so “done to” turned to “do.”
In the past I came too near to kidnapping and rape,
and luckily by conquering fear, I’d find means of escape.
After graduating college, I became a bum;
but now I can acknowledge that I was often dumb.
Fearlessness was often what got me into trouble.
My mind would choose to soften the rub of danger’s stubble.
Traveling a foreign region, I was so naive
that my mistakes were legion, so now I do believe
it’s crazy to be fearless. Now even I succumb.
In caution I am peerless––finding fearlessness is dumb!
The Prompt: Fearless Fantasies––How would your world be different if you were incapable of feeling fear?
