Hilarious
I am from thick ankles and steady determination. Stubborn Dutchmen, prairie dirt, waving wheat fields, night sounds that carried me away. Inkwells and Our Miss Brooks, Christmas tree tinsel that hurt your fillings when you chewed it, chicken pox and neighbors’ dogs, tiny bunnies rescued from furrows, my sister’s old prom dresses in a trunk in the upstairs hall. I am cherry trees and cherries for pitting. Pitched tents and new friends, prayer and questions, spelling bees and math, Annie-I-Over and hollyhocks. Sunday rollerskating on the basketball court. Ten-cent movies and Bit-o-Honeys, ditch ’em and long summer nights. An attic never opened, a basement too frequently explored, dust of Sunday explorations down long dirt roads. Small prairie towns and flights of fancy. Pretending my real self, while trying to be from where I was. Caught in a net with scissors. Cutting my way out. Taking any road elsewhere. A highway, a plane, a ship, an escape, a looking for, a finding, a losing, a continual origin story of my own making. Full breaths. Sinking in. Making memories. Remembering memories made for me. I am. I am becoming. What I was I still am. Self changing self and sinking back into self.
To the Spider
Insatiable monster, you spin your fine strands,
creating your trap with abdominal glands.
You then cast your nets out into the breeze
that carries them off to the bushes and trees.
With anticipation, you wait in the center
for mosquitos or flies—whatever may enter
your gossamer trap. Then, their prospects are dire,
for one tremor of contact is all you require
to be off in a flash to put them to bed
with a cocoon of silk wrapped from bottom to head.
To the Mosquito
“I am” says the spider, as she sips out your sap,
“going to have a light lunch, and then take a nap!”
The spider pulls the silk created from liquid in its body through its spinnnerets – silk-secreting organs on its abdomen. Once the thread is started, the spider lifts its spinnerets into the breeze. It’s the breeze that is the secret to the spider’s ability to spin a web from one tree to another.
Prompt words today are anticipation, insatiable, monster, require, I am and spider.
Click on photos to enlarge
I rescued this hibiscus from a pile Pasiano had clipped from the bush next to the ramp leading down to my studio. I couldn’t decide which photo to use, so created a cluster.
For Cee’s FOTD
Click on photos to enlarge.
All in Everything
My heart as empty as a room the party’s left behind,
I tell myself I am at peace and that I do not mind;
but it may be pertinent, if I am being truthful,
to admit as I say these words, that I am feeling ruthful.
Day-by-day, I improvise, insisting I am free.
‘I” can pursue anything not limited by “we.”
Driving past the railroad tracks, an engine rushing by
reminds me of those trips when I was young and wild and high.
Cheyenne out to Oregon, Sydney to Melbourne town.
Always a new place and new adventure going down.
That local train in Java, stopping a thousand times
at every local village–the hawkers and the mimes
flooding all the aisles and all the window frames
insistently proficient in their selling games.
All the places where I went teeming with new faces,
constantly observing as life put me through its paces.
Before old age annexed me, I had a brilliant life
as student and explorer, as writer, artist, wife.
Those inevitable things, grave and prompting sorrow
were always covered over by the prospect of tomorrow.
But now that tomorrow is not such a certain thing,
I simply fall in line with whatever life may bring.
Knowing that I can’t flee fate, still I have seized my power
by finding a whole universe in bee and bird and flower.
j
Prompt words today are empty room, pertinent, improvising, annex, railroad tracks and grave.
Fatal Folly
A fabulist can take the truth and spin it, change it, plan it,
but then it is no longer truth, for truth is carved in granite.
The real truth is indelible. Permanent. Etched in stone.
Don’t mess with it and call it truth. You must leave truth alone.
It can’t accommodate a stretch. It’s fierce in resolution.
It’s not right to bend it simply to find a solution.
Truth is truth and fabrication is another matter,
so do not conjure up a tale and claim it’s not the latter.
Though presidents and kings and poets scratching in their dormer
might for their single purposes stray away from the former,
there must be someone willing to call out their acts as ruthless,
for there’s no folly greater than to be led by the truthless.
Click on photos to enlarge.
When I began my journey, I was jocular and young—
no hardness in my heart and no burrs upon my tongue.
I hadn’t joined the fracas and the chilling of the years.
I had none of life’s baggage—no heartaches and no fears.
Life had not disseminated all her tawdry facts
and I had not encountered them by gossip or by acts.
No tricksters had deceived me. My heart remained intact.
I knew not what I’d missed. I was naïve of what I lacked.
And now that I am older, I’ve returned to what I had
before I had decided I must follow every fad.
The things that I’ve acquired? I am loosening my hold.
I’ve found that satisfaction is not something that is sold.
I have simplified agendas, taking time to see and do
all the things I overlooked while in the human zoo.
The progress of a caterpillar on a hanging vine
as effective as a church in reaching the divine.
The flutter of a wing, the morning calls of birds
reveal as much about the world as news reports or words.
Drawing back into what’s basic and screening the uncouth
has helped me in regaining the lighter heart of youth.
Click on photos to enlarge and see these hopeful little faces!
If They Cancel Halloween
If they cancel Halloween, what will take its place?
How else can we “do” Trick or Treat except by face-to-face?
How will we get our portion of popcorn balls and Snickers?
What will replace the sheeted ghosts, the jack-o-lantern flickers?
How will we end the week if Halloween is skipped?
No more spooky music and no tales of the crypt.
No bats taped to the window, no chance to utilize
that cool floating ghost we bought with glowing lit-up eyes?
What will replace the magic? What am I going to do
with my zombie outfit that the world will never view
if they cancel Halloween? The whole world population
will sit alone All Hallow’s Eve, in their consternation
binging on the Mars Bars, Skittles and other goodies
meant for kids in costumes, obscured by masks or hoodies.
Forever, we’ll remember the year the world turned mean—
In two thousand twenty, when they cancelled Halloween!!!
Prompt words today are week,utilize, crypt, portion, magic, Halloween and bat.
