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.

Mystery Bride

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Mystery Bride

As ceremonies go, theirs was most whimsical in nature—
as original in rite as in its nomenclature,
for to the credit of the groom, who set custom aside,
it was he who chose to take the last name of the bride.

Right off, it captured interest the day the knot was tied
when his wife-to-be was clothed with little left to hide.
Swathed in camouflage from her head top to her toes,
you couldn’t see the bride at all. You only saw her clothes.

So since no one had met the bride, when  their “I do’s” were said
without the bridal burqa being lifted from her head,
nobody really knew at all what his Mrs. looked like.
The groom was heard to say it only mattered what she cooked like.

And so the mystery of the bride remains up to this day.
If his family’s seen her, not one of them will say.
And though his treatment of his bride is thought by some as vicious,
all agreed the wedding cake she baked was most delicious.

Prompts today are cinch, ceremony, whimsical, capture and interest.
Photo by Omar Belattar on Unsplash, used with permission.

Four Days in La Manzanilla

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Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

What is this photo of a light plug doing here? The triangle in front of my house has about 8 of them sticking out of the cement in a high-traffic zone. At night each is covered up by the table of a restaurant that crops up magically at sundown, but during the day, people crossing the little plaza just have to avoid them–crossing at their own risk. It pays to pay attention when walking in Mexico. And always look down.
The painting in the La Manzanilla gallery, entitled “Infancia” is by Alvaro Chavarin. Love it.
Gallery Courtyard

Breakfast in Paradise

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Click on photos to enlarge.

I almost entered these photos for Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt. These breakfasts at a beach restaurant in La Manzanilla, Mexico were as good as they looked!  Beautiful artistry for the eye and stomach.

Ginger: FOTD Mar 4, 2020

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For Cee’s FOTD

The Red Swimsuit

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Granted, this is a lovely window, but no one can deny that the red swimsuit dominates.

Here is my contribution to the Monday Windows Challenge.

Advice to Dorothy as She Elopes with the Tin Man

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Advice to Dorothy as She Elopes with the Tin Man

I can’t fathom your limerence. Why would you settle
for an older lover who’s made out of metal?
It’s good to be flexible, but don’t you think
that this is a rather impossible link?
Your honeymoon’s bound to be rather a bust.
If you go to the beach, he is likely to rust,
or if you go skiing, his joints will freeze rigid.
It’s hard to make love to a tin man who’s frigid!
You’re young and you’re limber. Your life’s at its start.
Why pick a lover who hasn’t a heart?
Please take my advice when it comes to men:
no lions, no scarecrows, no men made of tin.

 

Prompt words for today are flexible, gambit, limerence, fathom and metal.

Pied Beauty II

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apple pie!!

I wrote this “Apple” poem as a  parody of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poem “Pied Beauty.” His poem is below mine…

Pied Beauty II

Thanks be to Sara Lee for appled things—
For pies, for apple fritters and for thin-rolled strudel crust;
For pastries of the fruit of Eve and sauce it swims within;
Fresh-cooked in ovens, how their sweet juice sings;
The sugar clotted and pierced— place it on plate we must;
And all taste, for how can tackling it be such a sin?

All things made of flour and Crisco and of apples sweet;
(How can they by nutritionists be so sorely cussed
With words professing they won’t make us thin?)
With their tart flavor are sure our lips to meet;
And meet again.

—Judy Dykstra-Brown

And now, the original:

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins

The dVerse Poetsprompt today is apples.

Anthurium: FOTD Mar 3, 2020

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This is the second blooming of this plant that just sort of petered out a few months ago. Looks like it has its strength back again. Photographed a few weeks ago before I left home.

For Cee’s FOTD

Mama’s Brief Lapse

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Mama’s Brief Lapse

I simply will not gossip. I’ll reveal not one small detail
about the time your mom decided, “No more buying retail!”
Hereafter, she’d cruise bargain basements, seeking out her booty.
Designer stores? Off-limits. Prada? Way too snooty.

This concept lasted months, at least, but it was just a phase.
One morning, she emerged as though she’d been in a haze
and had a small epiphany, there lying on her chaise,
climbed into her Ferrari and headed to Hermès

where the road to her recovery was smoothed by flattery
in corsetry and ballgowns, in sportswear and in hattery
as she restored her wardrobe with finery more grand
than she had ever managed buying second hand!!!

 

Prompt words today are smooth, snooty, details, haze and concept.

Which Way? Kitty Style.

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Which Way? Kitty Style.
(Click on first photo to enlarge and read captions.)

Which way?
This Way?
Or this way?
Oh, of course. The shortest way!

 

For the Which Way Photo Challenge.