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.

Night Traveler

Night Traveler

Beneath the moon’s rotation and a sky cobbled by stars,
I lie upon my back and search for Jupiter and Mars.
The Milky Way creates a bridge for my imagination
which journeys down its highway without any hesitation.

Sequestered as I am by walls and blackness of the night,
there are no other travelers to share my nightly flight.
Only approach of daylight can bring this traveler home
as the morning draws a curtain over heaven’s dome.

 

Prompts today are bridge, sequestered, rotation, cobbled and approach. Image thanks to Ibrahim Shabil on Unsplash.

Morning Glories and Friends: FOTD May 7, 2021

 

Went for a very early morning swim and as the sun came out, so, eventually, did these beauties.

For Cee’s FOTD

Give Me Blue

ImageGive Me Blue

If it is a blue with no sadness in it:
the blue of the sky above Colima Volcano
with no other clouds in it except one puff
of earth’s hot breath becoming visible
in the cool morning air.

If it is a blue
with no middle ground of safety,
nothing that makes it ordinary.
No hue of boredom
or gray cast of age.
No tint of ever ending––
just pure blue
holding its mood in,
letting you feel however you want to feel.
The blue of glass that reflects the sky.
Iris blue and periwinkle.
Cerulean and cobalt.

If it is a blue with not a smudge of green in it,
or yellow or white or black.
Blue-blue like my sister’s daughter’s eyes
and like the color that a blueberry Popsicle
should be its blue dusted by nature
as though frosted, even in the heat of summer.
Like blue caught in icicles.
The color of a jellyfish
or Noxzema jar.
Bluebottle fly, tenacious,
only its color not annoying.
Blue as a shiver. Blue as blood. Blue as Hawaii.

Not the blue of a heart before forgetting.
Not that blue with a lot of
dullness soaked into it.

But if you have Blue as in Australia.
Blue as in a first place ribbon.
Sky blue,
true blue,
never blue.
Blue that if it’s ever had one gram of sadness in it,
doesn’t show it.
If you have that blue,
and you want to give it to me,
then, sure.

Give me blue.

Image

 

I had to reblog this poem written in 2013 for RDP: Cobalt

Illegal Crossing


Illegal Crossing

The impatient pedestrian does not have time to wait.
If lights don’t change immediately, he’s going to be late.
The airs of his entitlement swirl busily about him.
He goes into a tirade when events begin to flout him.
He’s held his breath so long that his face is cobalt blue.
The city should adjust these lights. In fact, he’s going to sue.

Bliss for him is getting exactly what he wishes.
He is the shark who simply devours all the littler fishes.
And so he puts his hand up to stroll against the lights,
thinking all the motorists will grant him crossing rights.
But in seconds he is flattened and this just goes to show,
even if you’re a big shot, you can’t go against the flow.

 

Prompt words today are cobalt, pedestrian, bliss, tirade and entitlement. Image by Pawel Czerwinsky on Unsplash.

Succulent Cluster: FOTD May 7, 2021

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Infestation

Infestation

When she screams like a banshee, running through the house,
just because she saw a tiny little mouse,
the mouse bilks all her efforts to thus scare it away
by slipping in the closet where in time it may
produce many other creatures of its ilk
in a tiny nest it has established in the silk
contents of her drawer of sexy lingerie—
picking for its bed her favorite negligee.

So, if she’s so lucky as to score a kiss
and, planning for a night of amatory bliss,
she reaches in her drawer, completely unaware
of the little visitors housed in her underwear,
no doubt she’ll find reminders of that earlier day
and the previous companion she thought she’d chased away.
Then her latest conquest will beat a fast retreat
as her former screams she ventures to repeat.

 

 

Word prompts today are banshee, reminder, bliss, bilk and house. Illustration thanks to Frenjamin Benklin on Unsplash.

 

Bougainvillea, FOTD

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Some Grounded Reactions to the Leaked U.S. Supreme Court Opinion

Please do not miss this posting by Forgottenman re/ the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade. Thank goodness there are people more able to express their outrage than I am and would that they were on the Supreme court rather than the fools who are!!!!!

Admonitions from the Editor of the Southern Christian Monitor

Admonitions from the Editor of The Southern Christian Monitor

Good gracious, sir can you not mend your pertinent demeanor?
Clean up your language, cease your slurs. Find language that is cleaner!
When you speak, why must you be such a surly gent?
For once why don’t you try to say something we can print?
Your thoughts are fine. It’s just the words with which you choose to state them.
It simply is your word choice that makes us excoriate them.
As my southern mama used to say, “For goodness sakes, y’all,
if you can’t say it politely, don’t say anything at all!”

 

Disclaimer: There is to my knowledge no such publication as The Southern Christian Monitor. This poem is pure fiction, prompted by the prompt words!!!

Prompt words today are gracious, slur, pertinent, mend and print. Image by Roman Kraft on Unsplash.

Plumeria: FOTD May 4, 2022

For Cee’s FOTD