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.

Holding on and Letting Go

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Holding on and Letting Go

Invariably, our enemies will become more surreal,
flushed into our memories—consigned to how we feel.

Every niggling worry and each old friend who’s lost
added to dreadful feelings that leave us tempest-tossed.

Life seeks remuneration, be it justified or not,
and we pay with guilt for sorrows that we might have wrought.

Time renders us more docile but our guilts become much stronger,
until we decide that we can deal with them no longer.

Then life slips away with one long slide and then a gasp
as all that we’ve held onto is released from our tight grasp.

 

Prompt words today are flush, surreal, docile, remunerated, enemy and invariably.

Seduction

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Seduction

The canvas is my suitor. It holds me in its sway,
seduces me with reaching arms that draw my brush its way.
I paint upon its surface and in turn it draws me out.
All those pains I hide inside on canvas learn to shout.

It stands mostly unnoticed when others are around,
attracting no attention and making not a sound,
but when alone, it prompts me to bare my soul to it,
and all the angst that crowds my mind finds a place to fit.

Written for this prompt: https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/2022/08/01/what-do-you-see-145-august-1-2022/  Image by Marti Alonso @ Unsplash

Mountain Cornflower: FOTD Aug 2, 2022

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Thanks to eschudel for identifying this flower!!!

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Romantic Fling

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Romantic Fling

It takes tremendous willpower to duck a louche rogue’s charm,
for something deep within us believes he means no harm.
His appeal is so humongous and his influence so great
that although we know at heart that he’d make a lousy mate,
still we can’t resist him. He piques romantic hopes
that make swashbuckling heroes out of misanthropes.

We bundle up our doubts and cast them overhead,
our fond expectations cancelling out our dread.
We jump into a love story we hope is never-ending,
knowing deep within ourselves its probable sad ending.
But nonetheless, we fall in love, in spite of our friends’ censure,
plunging into a fabulous romance-filled adventure!

Prompt words for today are louche, willpower, pique, humongous,
our  and influences.Image by jdb

louche: disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way.
“the louche world of the theater”

Three Phases, Gazania: FOTD Aug 1, 2022

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Gazania in three stages from Patty’s garden. Photo by jdb.

For Cee’s FOTD

A “Golden Years” Rebuttal

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A “Golden Years” Rebuttal

Those who call these “Golden Years “deserve my blunt oration,
for getting older, you should know, ain’t no free vacation!
The abundant pains of aging for sure are not a bonus,
for to suffer silently seems to be our onus.

Our skin’s variegations you may think are bad tattoos,
but what you see as sub-par art, alas, is just a bruise
from taking our blood thinners. Every blot and every dot
is a new reminder of a bumping that we got.

When you bring us nuts and caramel, we thank you for your ventures,
but we do not mention we can’t eat them with our dentures!
“Old age ain’t for sissies,” is an adage often told,
so I am not the first to bemoan this getting old.

 

(Just kidding, Dolly.) Prompt words today are caramel, abundant, oration, variegation, and golden. Retablo and photo by jdb.

What Would We Do Without Paper?

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Hats off to the advertising team that came up with this! Only 39 seconds so watch it all…the irony won’t be lost!

Animal Nature: Sunday Whirl Wordle 563

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Animal Nature

The spirit of a hollow moon slides sideways under cover
through a crack in heavy clouds that spread apart to hover.
An owl soars by on silent wings to seek his midnight feast,
the power of moonlit talons unleashed on tiny beast.
Another sacred life is sacrificed for hunger’s sake.
It’s all in nature’s plan, and yet I feel the mouse’s ache.

 

 

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 563 the words are: crack sideways covers feast ache power hollow spirits sacred owl lit heavy. Photos by jdb. Mosaic by Mazinka Rutherford, La Manzanilla, Mexico.

 

 

Day Lily, FOTD July 31, 2022

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fot

For Cee’s FOTD

Spelunking

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Spelunking

Swimming in my sorrows, I’m obliged, I fear, to share them.
My friends all shrink away and hide, hoping I will spare them.
But worries are a mother lode, and each of us a piner,
tunneling into all our woes like a trauma miner.
Then relating all of them in streams without a comma,
turning everyone we meet into a surrogate momma.

 

Prompt words for today are swim, oblige, sorrow, miner and comma.