Please click on photos to enlarge them.
When Re-Farmer published a blog about making his lovely wooden spoons, I had to make a comment about how much I love all of the handmade wooden spoons and other wooden implements that I have purchased over the years and the Turkey with holes all over it that I bought years ago and ended up using to display some of the wooden spoons, knives, forks and spatulas I’ve purchased over the years. I have been using some of them for over 30 years and they are all still serviceable.
I remarked that I’d like to send him photos of them but in the end, the easiest way seemed to be to publish them on my blog. Holding some of the implements with handles too large to fit in the holes of the turkey is a hand-carved buna (coffee) holder that I bought in Ethiopia in 1973. The other wooden implement is my grandmother’s lemon squeezer. See Re-Farmer’s spoons HERE.
A Lonely Widow’s Lament
She advertised for company and put it on the web.
Discouraged with the “no response,” she felt her patience ebb.
She pined so much for conference and knew that it was wrong,
and yet she vowed she’d make do with whatever came along.
She promised she’d be tranquil, not expect a fast response.
She relaxed and did some weaving, there beneath the garden sconce.
The comfort of the sunlight helped her not to worry.
She’d give a little leeway, no need for any hurry.
A gentle breeze assisted her in sinking into dreaming.
It didn’t help a widow to spend her day in scheming.
And, soon enough a jerky movement set her heart to beating.
A fly caught in her cobweb meant that she would soon be eating!
Although I have the perfect photo to illustrate this poem, I didn’t want to give away the ending, so I’m leaving it unillustrated. To see the illustration for it, go HERE.
Prompt words today are conference, assist, cobweb, leeway and comfort.
Dental Discourse
She could not stand the sad sad sight
of his horrendous overbite.
She arranged to take him to a
dentist, thinking he could do a
makeover.
She asked the doc what he would charge
to make his overhang less large.
The price he set to make each tooth less
was, I fear, greedy and ruthless
overkill.
Thus began their drawn-out dicker
that I think would have gone quicker
if his teeth had been less icky,
and the job a much less tricky
overhaul.
After much talk, they struck a deal,
both thinking that they’d made a steal.
But then with little else to do,
she said if he attempted to
overcharge,
she would have his license lifted
no matter how bloody gifted
he might have been (when this all ends)
at cutting down her toothy friend’s
hangover.
For dVerse Poets prompt: Compound Word Verse Image by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash
This form consists of 5 five-line stanzas with aabb rhyme schemes, each containing 8 syllables and each stanza concluding with a three-syllable compound word that had one element the same as all other compound words in the final lines of the stanzas. Phew!
The Bishop’s Usual Cap
The Bishop’s Latest Miracle
Although his past proclivity was to regurgitate,
allow me to encapsulate the bishop’s present state.
He’s rickety and yet he has no tendency to brood.
In fact, against all reason, he’s in a euphoric mood.
And lest you think nobility has anything to do with it,
when he eats, he has a brand new medicine to chew with it.
Since they’ve added magic mushrooms to his omelets of late,
he’s finishing his breakfast and licking clean the plate.
He’s ordered a new upper plate and hopes that what he’ll do with it
is to exercise his jaws by learning how to chew with it.
Then he’ll have special omelets morning, noon and night
and justify it, saying he’s practicing his bite.
The Bishop’s New Cap
Today’s prompt words are encapsulate, euphoria, rickety, noble and regurgitate,
Casting Out Lines with Tina
Night has come to my great sorrow,
Light won’t be here ‘til tomorrow.
Can’t go fishin‘ ‘til the morning,
but I’m wishin’ that the warning
that dad made could be forgotten
and these fish were caught, not boughten!
Night has come to my great sorrow.
Light won’t be here ‘til tomorrow.
Still we will rise before day dawns,
rub sleep from eyes and stifle yawns.
There’s time left to grant our wishes,
bait our hooks and catch those fishes!
This is the trickiest prompt that I’ve seen in a looooong time. Tina’s Zigzag Rhyme rules are the quirkiest and I think I’ve followed them to a “T.” (In no place does she say that it’s not legal to end every line in a rhyme–just that you must do so in lines 5, 6, 11 and 12, so I rhymed every couplet. Words that must be rhymed by Tina’s rules are underlined in my poem, just to make your checking up on me easier. No, that’s not Tina pictured with me. That’s my big sister Patti. I’m pretending to have caught all those fish she’s holding.
Tina’s Zigzag Rhyme is a form created by Christina R Jussaume and found at Poetry Styles (site no longer accessible.)
Click on photos to enlarge and read captions. I need some help in identifying two of these birds.
Morning Birdsong
Each consecutive melody, sung with a full-throated enthusiasm and answered in kind achieves a second purpose that I’m sure is one unintended by nature. Encapsulated in deep sleep as I am, only they are effectual in actually arousing me, for they form a chorus of alarm clocks that cannot be turned off.
I smooth the matted mane of Matteo, my love who sleeps through it all, and stumble to the kitchen to put on the coffee. As I drink my first cup, the male woodpecker joins his mate in the tallest palm tree outside the kitchen window. A second later, Matteo joins me as well and all is right in the world. He croons a soft aria into my ear and I answer in perfect harmony.
Word prompts for today are consecutive, encapsulate, effectual, matteo and melody
effectual is producing the intended result; entirely adequate.
I found this photo in my files and since I seem to have never posted it before, I had to do so. Roses aren’t usually my favorites, but this one is.
For Cee’s FOTD
