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.

For Cee: A Non-Floral Offering for Non-FOTD

Here is an offering non-floral for Cee, suffering from the pollen in all those flowers!!! I share your pain. The Jacaranda and Primavera trees are in full-bloom here. Achoo!!!)

“Make Your Own Kind of Music” For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 17

This is actually a true story. When I was at the beach a few years ago, I had a house right on the beach and it got so I never knew who I would find on my porch when I woke up in the morning. In the end, they set a number of my poems to music and recorded them.

Make Your Own Kind of Music

One and  two and three and four.
Four little music makers pounding on my door.
One beats a rhythm, one toots a horn––
wild and sweet––sort of forlorn.
One hums a tune behind his teeth––
a sort of descant underneath
the melody on the steel guitar.
The gulls reel in from near and far
to add their screams to the refrain,
then fan their wings, silent again.

Four musicians at my gate.
I wait for their music to abate.
Then I go and let them in
to add my music to the din.
I sing my lyrics fast and slow
first soft then loud, my lyrics go
up and over the drums and horn–
out into the sandy morn.
Over the rocks and out to sea,
setting all our music free.

When the drummer leaves my porch,
he leaves just three to loft the torch.
Too soon the horn, too, fades away
but the hummer’s here to stay,
and the steel guitar swells out to fill
the morning air until until
the morning fades into full sun
and our melody comes done.

Soon guitar and singer fade,
their morning share of music made,
and I fold my songs away.
I’ll bring them out some other day.
With music left behind I wind
only words around my mind.
They weave their spell with me along.
I lose myself in their noisy throng.
Wander aimless, round and round,
in getting lost, this poem is found.

For NaPoWriMo 2024, day 17.
Thanks, Mama Cass, for making your own kind of music!! Go here to hear her:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mraLsg-G4wA

Plumeria Branch, For FOTD, Apr 16, 2024

For Cee’s FOTD

Interlopers, For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 16

Interlopers

The little dog sleeps nestled.
No elbow room, even though
just two of us in this big bed.
A truck’s roar  from the road
a mile away. Last night’s near
partiers now gone to bed, but
at 5 AM, the strains of music
from below, Sounds lifting up the mountains
like clouds to float above my bed.
For 15 years, I surrendered
my side of the bed to you.
23 years after, I still
sleep on
the

                                                   other side.

For NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 16

Plumeria for Cee’s FOTD Apr 15, 2024

For Cee’s FOTD

DNA for NaPoWriMo Apr 15, 2024

DNA

A piece of you came enclosed in your letter.
Not your heart but still a part of you,
concealed as usual,
this time between the envelope and stamp—
trapped forever as the rest of you departs,
taking all of you except
for that remainder—one last kiss of tongue
before you sealed the stamp upon the envelope.

For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 15

The Numbers Game #17, Apr 15, 2024

Click on Photos to Enlarge.

Welcome to “The Numbers Game #17”  Today’s number is 138. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find under that number and include 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.

A Semi-Tall Tale for The. Sunday Whirl Wordle 650 and NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 12

 

 

 A Semi-Tall Story

Once upon a time, dear friends, long before creation,
the spirits of the universe formed a delegation
to invent our ancestors: the cell  and then the fish,
and eons later, they decided to fulfill the wish
of the lowly haddock to wallow in the mud
with toes and feet to stay erect while walking through the crud.
And thus was born the dinosaur, king of a twig-strewn world,
crashing through the underbrush as all it touched unfurled.

Those parts of earth unbroken eventually gave birth
to animals less violent and much smaller in girth.
Warm-blooded, they awakened to divine memory,
invented words and realized that what had come to be
was what the spirits of the universe had foreseen long ago
while looking in a crystal ball. The predicted it, and lo,
that chain occurred unbroken—ending with you and me,
sitting here upon the ledge of infinity. 

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 650, the prompt words are: twigs divine wake blood wallow cell memory ancestors crystal creation ledge unbroken.  I am combining this prompt with the NaPoWriMo prompt from two days ago, which I forgot to do.  The 12th prompt of the monthly series was to write a tall story. This one is only tallish as it’s based on evolution. The Spirits of the Universe might qualify as the tall part of the tale.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 13 Poem, In Arrears!!!!

Only after I wrote my Day 14 poem did I realize I’d missed out on days 12 and 13!  Here is my Day 13 poem, in arrears, “Playing With Rhyme.”:

Light Verse

Bitter night winds blow and flitter,
singing songs that hum along
with kerosene lamps that careen.
spilling light that fills the scene,
then joins the sunset’s streaming jet
of fire across a furry sky
of fleet clouds that hurry hurry
pursing lips to blow out  light
and give a welcoming respite
to  day’s unrelenting bright
as night contains it in its purse
and stashes it behind a wall
through which light cannot shine at all.

Then shoes of night step softly through
every midnight somber hue,
tracking light, securely trussed
into tight balls, its loud rays shushed
into small whispers, star after star,
sending it back from afar,
on footsteps constant through the night.
that regather in the morning light.

The optional prompt for the day asked us to play with rhyme. We were to start by creating a “word bank” of ten simple words. They should only have one or two syllables apiece. Five should correspond to each of the five senses (i.e., one word that is a thing you can see, one word that is a type of sound, one word that is a thing you can taste, etc). Three more should be concrete nouns of whatever character you choose (i.e., “bridge,” “sun,” “airplane,” “cat”), and the last two should be verbs. Now, come up with rhymes for each of your ten words. (If you’re having trouble coming up with rhymes, the wonderful Rhymezone is at your service). Use your expanded word-bank, with rhymes, as the seeds for your poem. Your effort doesn’t actually have to rhyme in the sense of having each line end with a rhymed word, but try to use as much soundplay in your poem as possible.

Here is my word list, to prompt. Only one— “thrust,” is no longer in the poem, replaced with  “tracking,” —a word more in keeping with the poem.

bitter  sitter twitter flitter hitter jitter litter sitter titter
song bong dong gong Kong long pong wrong tong along
kerosene obscene bean scene gene Jean keen keene lean mean peen queen seen teen wean machine
sunset bet debt fret get het jet let met net pet Aquanet set Tet vet wet
furry curry furry hurry jury surrey
purse curse hearse nurse terse verse rehearse
wall  ball call doll fall gall hall loll mall  mol  wall tall
shoe blue clue due few goo hew Jew kew loo moo new anew pew queue rue sue two to too view whew  yew zoo
thrust bust cussed dust gust lust must rust shushed trussed trust
whisper Whisker  bicker spiller thinker winter finger per were blur spur whirr

Wind–For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 14

Wind

The breath of the world blows tendrils of hair,
turns windmills and dries white sheets upon a line.
It  twists into a tornado
and lifts a house off its foundations,
sets it down in a mountain meadow
where zephyrs stir the trees.

The breath of the world blows a bee from its branch,
inhales its pollen and puffs it into nostril hairs
that launch a hurricane of sneezes,
sending a whirlwind of powder
from a powdered sugar donut out the window
onto the shoulder of a passing immaculate black tuxedo.

The breath of the world launches sailboats,
then sends them into safe harbors as it swells into a typhoon.
As it exhales, it lifts kites high into the air
and as it inhales, sends them plummeting to earth.
It fuels our lungs to blast a wind of words: expletives or adamant prayers,
anthems or a tyrant’s raves,
benedictions or cheers for a favorite football team.

Windy cities draw their nicknames
from the breath of the world.
Wind in the Willows names our books.
Woodwinds breathe out melodies.
Wind gives a name to our direction
as we struggle windward.
Hurricanes quench our thirst in airless bars.
Breezes give monikers to our dispositions.

Whirlwind, breeze, zephyr,
hurricane, gale, draft, blow,
tornado, crosswind, cyclone—
from gentle puff to wild tornado,
it is the world’s breath
that sets everything into motion.

For Day 14 of NaPoWriMo we were to write a poem making use of anaphora.