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.

Waiting for the Bell

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DSC07814Nine Minutes to Nine–Retablo by Judy Dykstra-Brown ( 5.5 X 7 X 1.25 inches)

Waiting for the Bell

From my upstairs bedroom window, I could see it all:
who got to school early to be first for tether ball,
the teachers driving up the street, avoiding children running
some children in the sandbox, and other children sunning
stretched out on the teeter-totters, waiting for a ride—
their friend the perfect size to balance, still locked up inside
cleaning off the chalkboards and dusting the erasers
with others who’d been tardy, or perhaps desktop-defacers.

We could hear the school bell toll the warning for
just one more bite of Cream of Wheat—no time for any more.
I stood and watched as sisters sprinted out the door.
Going on without me, for I was only four.
I waited then for recess, spread out on the grass
waiting for the hours and minutes just to pass.
Through open windows, I could hear all the teacher voices
quizzing all the children and listening to their choices.

The teacher on piano, the class singing along—
long before my school days, I’d memorized each song.
At 10:15, the bell was rung and big doors thrown out wide—
one hundred children, all at once, released to the outside.
Some ran to claim the swings and slides, or lined up for the games:
choosing sides for “Send ‘Em” by calling out their names.
But the creaking of the swing chains and whoops up on the slide
could not reveal the mysteries of what was sealed inside.

Year after year I watched and listened, storing up the clues
for the day that I could put on my new school shoes.
I’d have my school bag at my side while mother curled my curls
and keep it with me as I ate my breakfast with the girls,
spooning up my Cream of Wheat but listening for the bell
that warned the time was getting short for me to run pell-mell
across the street and up the stairs in brand new skirt and blouse.
I knew which room to look for.  I could see it from my house.

And then perhaps my mom would stand under our big elm tree
and the singing that she listened for would finally include me!

 The Prompt: August Blues—As a kid, were you happy or anxious about going back to school?

Please help

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I need three poems for a competition and seek your help. Do you have a favorite poem I’ve published on my blog that you think I should submit? I can’t use one that has been published before, but if it is only on my blog, I can submit it if I take it off the blog and leave it off. So far, someone has suggested “When My Sister Plays the Piano,” but it was published in another publication so I can’t use it. Please, please give your thoughts. I’m hopeless at choosing what to wear and what to submit! — Judy

A Girl Like Me

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The Prompt: What’s the best (or rather, worst) backhanded compliment you’ve ever received?

There was a guy in college who was the best friend of my best friend’s boyfriend. I had a crush on him but he never asked me out. Years later, I admitted this to my friend and she told me that he had told her boyfriend, “I want to marry a girl like Judy, but I don’t want to date one in college!” Hmmm. Want to speculate about what he meant?

Wise Thoughts Unsaid and Unremembered

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Wise Thoughts Unsaid and Unremembered

The perfect reply that I hadn’t yet thought of
but figured out later? I have had a lot of;
but the problem is that now they still can’t be gotten,
for though once I had them, I now have forgotten!

It’s true.  Great retorts are jewels in the crown,
but truer that one has to write them all down!
And it’s best that you write them down lickety-splickly,
for though they come slowly, they seem to go quickly!


The Prompt:  We’ve all had exchanges where we came up with the perfect reply—ten minutes too late. Tell us what it was, being sure to sign off with your grand slam unused zinger!

My Promoter

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The Prompt: You, Robot—You’ve been handed a robot whose sole job is to relieve you of one chore, job, or responsibility you particularly hate. What is it?

                                                                        My Promoter

Since Ray Bradbury wrote of one in “There Will Come Soft Rains,”
the list of things robots can do seems to have made great gains.
Some are made to wash our hair. Others shave our heads.
They build our houses, clean our floors and even make our beds.
I grant that it is handy that there’s one that scoops dog poop,
and one to stop our snoring, another to cook soup.
Lonely? One shoots billiards and perhaps it lets you win;
but do not gamble with it, for I hear it cheats at gin.
It’s great that there’s a robot that lifts patients out of bed,
but since I am still mobile, I have other needs instead.
I want a robot that can read and surf the internet
to send out my submissions and to guarantee I’ll get
an agent and a publisher to dispense all my writing
and send it to reviewers so my words they would be citing!
Send it out to libraries, to Amazon and Kindles.
Keep track of my royalties so there would be no swindles.
In short, I want a robot that will publicize and fight
so all this writer has to do is write and write and write.

As far-fetched as these robots sound, they are all based on reality.  For more information, go to: http://mentalfloss.com/article/30898/10-robots-very-specific-tasks

 

If I Followed the Wandering Poet

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If I Followed the Wandering Poet

Who cares
if I swim naked in my pool?
All other human occupants
have left this neighborhood behind,
leaving more room
for possums, skunks,
birds, scorpions, spiders
and me.

I keep a closer company with them
than I do with any human these days.
Weeks ago, it was the orb weaver spider
who filled my mind,
but this week, I talk to the large caterpillar
with one rear antenna on his tail
as he sits for a day on the Olmec head
that guards my swimming pool.
Back and forth, back and forth I pass,
adding a look at him to my lap routine.
For one long afternoon,
he sits still—like Alice’s caterpillar,
but hookah-less,
meditating in this gray place.
If he were on my Virginia Creeper,
I’d be repositioning him
to the empty lot next door, but here
he seems to be a guest; and so some etiquette
keeps me from altering his placement
as he sits on stone, moving his suction cups in sequence
now and then only to alter his direction, not his place.

Recently,
I question if I’ve stayed too long
in this one place.
Is there something else
I may yet do?
So if you are a wandering poet
and you have a place you think I need to go,
please write of it
in the way you do best
and tell me why I have to go there.
And if you create a good argument and a better poem,
I will go to that place in much the same way
that I have come to this point
in my poem.
Blindly.
Open to what comes next.

This is neither a love poem nor a singles ad. It was prompted by a blog site called “The Wandering Poet” that I recently read. I think I commented, and then as I was ready to leave his/her blog, I caught sight of the “Follow” button. The phrase “follow the wandering poet” got stuck in my mind, leading to “If I followed the wandering poet” and this poem. The challenge is real. I will pick up and go to any place that any poet, male or female, makes irresistible by means of a poem. (Be kind. Choose nothing less for me than the best place on earth you know of. I, by the way, will do the same for you if you wish. Judy)

P.S.: Thanks, Wandering Poet. If I forgot to select “follow,” I’ll do it next time.

I will never cease being amazed at the incredible capacities of the human mind, because three days ago, I wrote the above poem for reasons explained above and the next morning I woke up repeating the lyrics “I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men.  I will make you fishers of men, if you follow me.” (an old Sunday School song I haven’t thought of for 50 years). Now this morning I woke up with the song lyrics, ‘I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go” running through my mind, only to go on the WordPress site to discover that the prompt for today was: Opening Lines—What’s the first line of the last song you listened to (on the radio, on your music player, or anywhere else)? Use it as the first sentence of your post.

All three days, “Follow” has seemed to be the prompt running through my mind and so I guess it is time to publish this poem, conceived of even before I’d heard today’s prompt!!!!

Rum Dumb

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Rum Dumb

Beer is tacky. Wine’s a joke.
My preference is Rum and Coke.
Squeeze a lime in. Take a sip
to cool your throat and wet your lip.
My favorite form of inebriation
is always Cuba Libre-ation.

The Prompt: Pick Your Potion—What’s your signature beverage — and how did it achieve that status?      http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/pick-your-potion/

Money Optional

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The Prompt: Work? Optional!—If money were out of the equation, would you still work? If yes, why, and how much? If not, what would you do with your free time?

Since I am already retired and spend most of my day making art and writing, I guess my answer is yes. I do it because I feel it is my reason for living and without that work, life seems to lose its importance. I do it because it forces me to look closer and to think more deeply. I do it pretty much every minute I’m not sleeping. Really, I always did what I wanted to do without taking into consideration what would sell and that still seems to be the case since I’m not getting wealthy on what I do, but I swore when I retired that I would stop doing all those parts of making art that I hated: the applying for shows, the promotion, the pictures, the resumes, the mailing lists. Now I just enjoy the creation and if I am sending them out to an unaccepting universe, nonetheless, I’m having the experience of creating, which any serious writer or artist will tell you is  the most important part and why we really do what we do.

Today is my 221st post, and since it is a short one, please scroll back and read an earlier post you haven’t read before and if you have the time, please comment. 

For instance, if you’d like to know why I ended up in Mexico, read this: Foreign Tongues or, if you want a love story with a happy ending, read this: The Ballad of Poor Molly.

Thank you for reading my blog.  Although yes, I do it for myself, I can’t help but feel gratified when others find what I write to be of consequence or enjoyable.  Judy

Let There Be Light

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Let There Be Light


My mind is a growling dog.
While I stew and fuss,
fulfilling lists,
she jumps the screendoor,
beckoning.
Rude me, to turn my back
on the only playmate
who wants to play
the same games I do
every day, every hour,
because I fear that initial
plodding through silt
page after page
in search of the stream
of words.

Sometimes boredom
yawns so wide
that I have to enter it,
to wander its inner closet
where for decades
only cobwebs
have stirred.
In some dark corner
where I spank the dog
or search the bedside table drawers
of a lover called out at midnight,
I find the river’s source,
but then
the phone
rings and I’m off
gathering crumbs from a forest path,
leaving lost children
stranded in their own story.

Stray puppies—I collect every one,
wild orange funnel flowers
and guava
washed in an afternoon kitchen
just before the invasion
of five o’clock sunlight.
All of them I carry back
to hidden places
to rub against each other
and ignite
into the language of this place
where life goes in,
plays dress-up,
but emerges
nude,
like poetry.

 

The Prompt: Is there a cause — social, political, cultural, or other — you passionately believe in? Tell us how you got involved . The cause I most believe in is getting in touch with your authentic and true inner voice.  This is what I do when I write. Would that more people involved in making decisions that will alter our world would do so. This poem is really about the creative process where, when done right, there is only truth. It is also about all the things that get in the way of this process.

Tunnelled

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The Prompt: Tunnel Vision—You’ve been given the ability to build a magical tunnel that will quickly and secretly connect your home with the location of your choice — anywhere on Earth. Where’s the other end of your tunnel?

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The Tunnel

Wave after wave for watching and sand for walking on—
always in the darkness, just before the dawn.
It’s not the sun I’m looking for or surfing or for fishing.
A flat and quiet walk each morning is what I am wishing.

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I exercise by bending to see that special stone
the sea has freshly churned up, just for me alone.
Arrangements of sea weed, coral and a shell
create what is beautiful–not merely what will sell.

All of them are beautiful, exactly where they land—
perfectly arranged as by some artist’s hand.
Is it design or accident? The argument still rages,
removing us from this free place and putting us in cages.

It matters not who made it and matters less the reason.
Believe in God if that’s your thing, but doubting is not treason.
It is enough to have this place that I am drawn back to
winter after winter, to memorize the view.

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I fill up all my pockets with sticks and stones and  sand—
a tiny brittle  seahorse carried in my hand.
Gathering my treasures before the sun appears,
for all the sadnesses of life, my payment in arrears.

If I’d a magic tunnel to carry me away
to any place I wished for, for an hour or a day,
the beach is where I’d always go, the choice for me is easy—
before the sun is fully out, it’s shaded and it’s breezy.

My skin is pale and colorless.  It welcomes not the sun.
So when the fiery orb appears, my beach combing is done.
I can retreat onto the porch to ponder and observe
the menu that the day serves up—my visual hors d’oeuvre.

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To rearrange the treasures the sea has given me,
to fasten down forever what recently was free.
For art is just our method of sharing what we feel
and trying to communicate the things we know are real.

I am not talented with brush or clay or bronze or wood.
But when I was still tiny, I discovered that I could
rearrange whatever came within my grasp
and make a little tableaux that made my family gasp.

I’d sneak into the bathroom , to the medicine chest
and rearrange the bottles in the way that I found best.
My father would protest in vain to please leave his alone,
for I kept my eye peeled like a mongrel’s on a bone;
and if he moved a bottle or a razor from its place,
extreme agitation was written on my face.

So now that I am grown up and I can freely travel,
I can arrange lovely things in ways that don’t unravel.
I can glue down elements once I rearrange them
so no errant viewer can pick them up and change them.

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For Mother Nature’s hand is vast.  She has a billion fingers
for picking up and placing things, but then she never lingers
to insure they stay in place, for this she has no reason.
Those billion fingers rearrange season after season.

Every second, every day, she can continue freeing
all the things she has arranged—it is her reason for being.
But for mortals  with two hands and with less renown
It becomes important to try to pin things down.

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And so although my efforts may often seem absurd,
to fasten down each object, to write down every word;
it’s proof here of my being.  Evidence I am.
Part of me an artist, the other part a ham.

I want to be noticed.  Want for you to hear.
Want to be remembered when I’m no longer here.
I want to build a tunnel through poetry or art
so you can visit anytime what once was in my heart.
I may change by tomorrow. I will not always be.
But what I have created might live after me.

 (To see some more of my beachwalk assemblages, please click on this link:  Assemblages)