Author Archives: lifelessons

Unknown's avatar

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.

Married to the Sun

Married to the Sun

One ray makes an incision through a layer of cloud to land
like a stream of gold upon my outstretched hand.
It is no illusion that its trail of liquid gold
winds around my finger. It’s a beauty to behold.

All my life, it’s true I’ve not belonged to anyone,
but now it is official. I am married to the sun.
Why else would just one sun ray make the decision to linger
of all the places in the world, only upon my finger?

 

Prompt words for today are trail, liquid, illusion and linger.

Thunbergia: Flower of the Day, Jan 10, 2021

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Bird of Paradise, FOTD Jan 9, 2021

 

For Cee’s Flower of the Day

Natural Beauty

Natural Beauty

She’s so ravishing that she needs no adorning,
so lovely that she should come with a warning,
“Don’t alter or ornament, polish or buff.
Just as she is, she is more than enough.”

Don’t give her a fringe. Don’t mascara her eyes.
She’d be less than she is. Don’t attempt to disguise
what nature has given. It cannot be bettered.
Just let her perfection be seen thus unfettered

by ribbons or ruffles or buttons or bows.
Leave her with the ornaments that nature chose:
bright eyes and long lashes and raven-black hair,
slim ankles, long legs and a trim derriere,

a smile that is innocent, mind without guile,
an inborn sense of movement and style.
She’s a rich vein of gold not in need of refining—
a natural girl not in need of defining.

The traits she was born with should not be waylaid.
Don’t betray the choices that nature has made.
Look around at perfection that’s all around you.
Just by itself, it’s enough to astound you.

 

Prompt words today are fringe, ravishing, warning and betray. Unless otherwise stated, all images on this blog are by me.

Pasiano’s Treasure

I saw this 8-inch-wide stone sitting up on the bench under the arbor in the lot I’m developing into a little park. This afternoon when Pasiano and Jose were planting the truckload of plants and trees and cacti that were delivered yesterday, I went down to trim a century plant and pick up a few months’ trash that they’ve left strewn around the site, and Pasiano pointed the stone out to me, saying he had found it on my lot. Jose was teasing him about it and Pasiano was making a joke of it, too, calling it “his art” but he was really pleased when I was enthusiastic about it and he gave it to me. I was curious about whether it was a piece of petrified wood or an unusual  geological specimen, but when I decided to look closer tonight, I realized that the rings are all on the surface of the rock.  I wish I had looked closer at the place where it is (sadly) broken in two before I glued it back together, as that would give the best view of a cross-section, but the rings do come to the edge in a couple of places and they don’t seem to go any farther into the rock than the surface, so I’m pretty sure it is a rock painting.

Now I feel like I need to ask him if he wants to keep it. Hope he sincerely says no!  I think it is beautiful, and will give it a place of honor somewhere, and perhaps try to find out more about it. If anyone has any insight into what it may me, I’d appreciate your comments.  Even guesses are welcome!

 

 

Last Night’s Sunset

Lake Chapala, Jan 7, 2021.  Click on photos to enlarge.

Burro’s Tail: FOTD, Jan 8, 2021

For Cee’s FOTD

Pieces of Toast

Pieces of Toast

They dip into
the smooth
round yolk
of a fading dream.

They interfere,
these conscious words,
an uninvited jentacular
mob that enters

without invitation,
shedding their crumbs.
I make exception
and surrender
control,

accepting
their sharp crisp corners
into the broken centers
of my smooth round
subterranean
stanzas.

Words for the day are mob, interfere, jentacular and exception. Image by Mae Mu on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Also, for dVerse Poets Open Link Night

 

Lighthouse Point: Lynn’s Tuesday Picture Prompt

Photo by Lynn

Lighthouse Point

A rocket shape
stabs the landscape,
white and stark.
But in the dark,
its road of light
cuts through the night.

Strong and sure,
confusion’s cure,
it guides the lost
and tempest-tossed
to safety’s shore,
the stuff of lore.

A beacon streaming,
bright and beaming,
guiding lost souls
past coral shoals
through froth and foam,
securely home.

For Lynn’s Tuesday Picture Prompt, Week 30

SWC Challenge: Winter Weather

Snow’s Epilogue

We can’t count the snowflakes nor put them into order.
They fall to make a blanket or a pile or a border.
They come in a blizzard and leave us in a trickle. 
There’s something about former snow that is so very fickle.
It drips in drops from icicles and surges down the gutters.
Our attempts to modify it end in futile mutters.
I need not be prophetic to state the truth of snow.
It starts out in a flurry and ends up in a flow.

 

SWC Challenge: Winter Weather