Author Archives: lifelessons

Unknown's avatar

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.

Happy May Day!!! Firecracker Flowers, FOTD May 1, 2023

Firecrackerplant. This is the hardest flower to photograph in my garden. I simply can’t get detail even at a close range.

Since it is May Day—once one of my very favorite holidays–I’m including some links to past May Days: This One with photos of May Baskets I made for friends in 2017 and This One entitled “Scissors, Tissue Paper and General MacArthur” written in 2013 about May Baskets made when I was a little girl.

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Putting Words in Our Mouths

 

Putting Words in Our Mouths

I do not choose and do not opt
that any of your prompts be cropped,
I know that your third word is crop
(whose past tense I have put up top,
knowing that it wouldn’t do
to alter any words that you
picked to give us as a test,
because I know that you know best.)
So know that I did not intend
to add that “ped” and thus offend.
I wrote it in addition to
the “crop” word provided by you.

The words for the Three Things Challenge are choose, opt and crop.

Feeling Blue

 

Click on Photos to Enlarge

For Travel With Intent: Blue

Hibiscus for FOTD Apr 30, 2023

For Cee’s FOTD

Scorpion in the Sacristy

Scorpion in the Sacristy

Minuscule but powerful, it causes us to shake.
The most masculine among us have been known to quake
and to seek protection whenever one is seen,
for it is rumored that their punch is wicked mean.
They inspire colorful language from the subjects of their strikes,
because it’s understatement to simply scream out “Yikes!”
when stricken by a scorpion. The occasion calls for more,
and that is why the village priest was pardoned when he swore
as he removed the host veil and was stung upon the hand,
for though the Holy Father issued a reprimand
for the sin of taking the name of Christ in vain,
since the priest was still in shock and reeling in his pain,
not one of his parishioners, it’s said, has censored him,
for each and every one of them thanked God  it wasn’t them!

Prompt words today are colorful, minuscule, punch, quake, protection and seen.

Three by Three

Click on photos to enlarge

For Carol Cormier’s Thursday Trio Prompt

Spring Picnic

Spring Picnic

That first tidbit of food
swallowed—
that morsel of potato salad
or that sip of lemonade—
activates what April picnics
are fated to attract
as surely as ants—
afternoon rains,
predicted as a slight chance
for this vicinity,
but now diluvial
in their force.

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link. Night  and also making use of these six prompts from different sites: food, vicinity, diluvial, tidbit, activate and afternoon.

(Hover over the photo for a second to read the caption.)

Pieces of Toast

Pieces of Toast

They dip into
the smooth
round yolk
of a fading dream.

They interfere,
these conscious words,
an uninvited jentacular
mob that enters

without invitation,
shedding their crumbs.
I make exception
and surrender
control,

accepting
their sharp crisp corners
into the broken centers
of my smooth round
subterranean
stanzas.

For NaPoWriMo 2029, Day 29 the prompt is to write about food personified. Piece of toast!!!
And, coincidentally, for RDP, whose prompt today is food!
Photo downloaded from Unsplash

Burro’s Tail: FOTD Apr 28, 2023

 

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Love Letters: Body of Love for NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 28

 “Did you know that the parts of letters all have names — including spines, shoulders, hairlines, ears, arms, legs, tails, and crotches?” (FromThe Complete Manual of Typography, A Guide to Setting Perfect Type,” by James Felici.) Thanks to Elizabeth Boquet for this information, which prompted this poem:

Body of Love

Stiff spine
of its beginning,
the bare shoulders
of its attraction.

I trace the hairlines
of your thoughts,
whisper love poems
into your ears.

Imagine you
wrapped around me:
arms, legs—
that animal remembrance
of primordial tails.

This is the womb of poetry,
giving birth to words.
I offer you a bouquet of them .

                                                                                                       –Judy Dykstra-Brown

For NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 28