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.

Newest Little Monster in Town

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A few weeks ago, I showed you this little monster, along with the teddy bear I got for Santiago  (not yet born) in the states.

Now it seems that little monster I brought back to Mexico from the U.S. has turned into a little angel!  This is Santiago who at a little less than a month old, fills out this 3 month old outfit pretty well.            Click on photos to enlarge.

Santiago is my housekeeper/friend Yolanda’s grandson. His folks are her oldest son Juan Pablo and his wife Emilia. I showed photos of their wedding celebration earlier this year. I am so happy to be this little boy’s honorary Grandma. Looks like he is all ready for Halloween!

Open Reading at the Nueva Posada

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Open Reading at the Nueva Posada

They gather at their tables in the heat or in the cold,
ears perked for the errors in the stories they’ll be told.
They’ll be listening for the puerile and and the grisly and the trite,
jotting down their notes for the misstatements that they’ll cite.

Then, their criticism over, they’ll play another game,
giving their approval and voicing their acclaim
for a perfect metaphor or meter that is tight. 
How you built the tension and got it all just right.

Thus do we meet to ebb and flow, to criticize and praise.—
to inform, amuse, maybe to bore or to amaze.
This is how we come together first to teach and then be taught
by sharing with each other the best that we have got!

Prompt words today are cold, table, grisly, puerile and criticism.

 

 

For Mama Cormier’s Thursday Trios prompt

Thunbergia Grandiflora: FOTD Oct 15, 2021

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For Cee’s FOTD

Flood

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Flood

The swiftly rushing current betokens something tragic—
a cavity within my heart where before there was magic.
Your piano floats on by, sounding its last chord—
that last note of “Fur Elise” before the waters roared.

Vestiges of dinner float by on their raft
of our dining table, candelabra fore and aft,
sinking to the current. Now the dishes follow after.
The whole house now floats away–floor and walls and rafter.

All flooding away from me, left here to remember
a roaring fire dampened down to one last dying ember.
The first to go, you pulled our world after you as well.—
our music  now extinguished by your funeral knell.

 

Prompts for today are current, piano, dinner, betoken and cavity.

Lest you worry–Dolly, Sam, Cee and others who always ask–this poem is an amalgam of many past memories: the death of a loved one, the two big floods here, a recent phone call with a friend who has just lost her husband. The memories are all scrambled. Fiction based on past facts and mixed together into a poem.

Unraveled

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Unraveled

The pain of love unraveling? No one knows it better,
for she wears her heart upon her sleeve, knit into her sweater.
Each day her heart unravels and lies tangled down her arm.
They say it cannot harm her. Loosened hearts cannot do harm.
But she’s a prisoner of these tendrils of love that’s come undone—
the truth of it revealed to her each day by a new sun,
while each night in her dreams, sleep knits it up again
and the ardor of her lost love once more draws her in.
She forgets the present and relives what she once had—
what she imagines in her slumber cancelling out the bad.
This unknitting and reknitting can’t be what life is for.
She must search for her dream’s exit. She must try to find the door.
Cast her old garment on the flames. Burn up that raveled sleeve.
Real love stays firmly knitted. A true love doesn’t leave.

For dVerse Poets: Pain  Image by nik on Unsplash.

Wildflowers: FOTD, Oct 14, 2021

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The mountainside above my house is covered with these flowers right now.

For Cee’s FOTD

Darjeeling, Lockjaw and Delayed Gratification

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Darjeeling, Lockjaw and Delayed Gratification

I’d make conversation but my upper plate
seems to be grinding my lower of late.
I fear there’s a fissure that’s preventing their matching
and somehow my back teeth just seem to be catching
and locking which creates a problem in chewing,
so eating’s another thing I won’t be doing.

I’m bungling everything done by my jaws.
At talking and eating I’m taking a pause.
For now I’ll just listen and watch you eat pie.
If you give me a straw, I’ll simply get by
by sipping my tea and nodding my head
in avid agreement with everything said.

I could have stayed home and stared at the wall,
but I couldn’t face not seeing y’all,
so I will just sit here and soak in the news,
forsaking my own chance to thrill and amuse.
Until I’ve seen my dentist, you’ll just have to wait
for the juicy story I was going to relate!

Prompts today are conversation, fissure, matching, bungle and upper.

Pedilanthus bracteatus: FOTD Oct 13, 2021

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PedClick on photos to enlarge.

For Cee’s FOTD

 

Bougainvillea: FOTD Oct 12, 2021

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For Cee’s FOTD