His Hopes: Love Messages
Long after sleep is over and you’ve made your morn’s retreat,
I find an image of your kiss pressed into my sheet.
It summarizes passion and the pounding beat
of two dazzled lovers united in their heat.
I gently kiss your absent lips and smooth the cover neat,
hoping that tonight you will return for a repeat.
Prompt words today are sleep, summarize, dazzle, beat, lipstick.
For Cee’s FOTD. Photo of Leah’s portion of the altar. The altar isn’t quite finished. The area in the middle of the arch needs to be completed by Stephanie’s fine hand. My niece Stephanie, nephew Ryan and Ryan’s sweetie Leah are visiting. I’ll post photos later.
Dearly Missing Diego
No amount of paranormal could make this holiday worse.
It carries with it sadness I don’t have to rehearse.
I do not fear the skeletons who wander far and near
Has-been-dearly-departeds are not the ones I fear.
Made-up horrors all take flight and vanish o’er the hill
as I recall his silent passage over the kitchen sill
to steal three dozen cookies that no doubt he found yummy
since when he next passed over it, they were in his tummy.
Whole chickens and entire plates of Christmas eats
vanished as he made them his own personal treats.
For eleven years, he upgraded my life
with gentle affection that mitigated strife.
Life oscillates between the pleasure and the pain
as I have to lose a much-loved one again.
Dear Diego passed from us this morning suddenly,
with a brutal speed that I did not foresee.
R.I.P. my lovely friend. Milk Bones are piled up
under your altar picture, just there for you to sup.
My neighbors say when I drive up after it is dark,
they will not know I’m safe at home without your greeting bark.
You won’t be there to moderate Zoe and Morrie’s spats.
And there will be one fewer to bark at owls and bats.
No one will nudge my hand for pats quite the way you do,
and you’ll be missed forever in the family queue.
R.I.P. Diego, Oct 29, 2022
For Cee’s FOTD.
(Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.)
Art and Acquisitions
Those who patronize fine art
start out congenial at the start
but then upset the apple cart
by arriving early at the mart
and increasing rate and pace
so they can win the prestige race
by obstinately using cash
to win the collector’s ten-yard-dash.
Marble statues and fine oils
are thus simply used as foils
used within the competition
between those whose one ambition
is to amass all those things
that a pile of money brings.
But in fact, it is the making
of great art, and not the taking
that produces joy in living.
Buying can’t compete with giving.
Prompt words for today are congenial, race, marble, obstinancy, patronize, art
Food for Thought?
Waiting for the words to prompt that thrill of excitation
that produces more words that lead to motivation,
I clutch my loose leaf binder, hoping for a new addition
that will bring another poem to final fruition.
Yet no gleam of insight shines within my brain.
All the words that join the prompt words seem to me inane.
So, though today a profound poem I probably won’t carve,
I don’t work for payment, so at least I will not starve.
Today, prompt words were culled from five different sites. Click on each word to find its site: gleam, payment, produce, motivation and loose leaf.
Dear Daughter:
Your frenetic new admirer is not my cup of tea,
for even though I told him that he’d have to let you be,
he resorts to tactics like climbing that big tree
to gain visual access to our property.
You, too, must be incisive in telling him to cease
if you’d like his constant efforts to come to a surcease.
For though I am your father, he allots to me no power
but simply remains stubbornly in his leafy bower.
His persistent efforts prove that he is from that faction
that they label OCD, for he shows no reaction
to my constant pleas, so do you agree with me
that it’s necessary to just cut down the tree?
Dear Papa:
Alas, though my new suitor is not your cup of tea,
I find that his flavor is agreeable to me.
I am not your teenage daughter, for I’m almost thirty-three.
So please do not molest him, and do not cut down his tree.
It is a fact, dear parent, I’m of marriageable age.
So cease with your obsession and curb parental rage.
It’s time to cut the apron strings and set your daughter free,
for I prefer another perch to my father’s knee!
Prompt words are frenetic, incisive, faction, allot, and almost.
