For Granny’s Bird Prompt.
Wanderlust
When I was a little girl, no more than just a snip,
I longed to be up in the air or on a sailing ship.
I lusted for adventure––for travel and for more.
I brooded over my dull life––such a crushing bore.
At five I was a dreamer. A backyard visionary.
I imagined me as gypsy, tourist or missionary.
My fantasies weren’t random. In all of them I traveled.
Year after year more restless and wandering dreams unraveled.
Tarzan was my hero and Superman my crush––
their journeys through the jungle or air currents a rush.
I longed for all their freedom––to fly and move at will.
All of their adventures dreamed from my windowsill.
All night I took such pilgrimages over hills and ridges,
crossing raging rivers over extension bridges.
At sixteen I sneaked out at night in my father’s car
and drove for hours through the night, going just so far
that I could be back home before he arose at five
to snuggle back into my bed in our familial hive.
Then slowly I transitioned into who I longed to be.
I swung down from the branches of my family tree.
Trips to far-off places: Australia and Japan,
Africa, Sri Lanka, Bali and Bataan
all came true. As time passed, I ended the charade
of my stationary life and joined the grand parade.
The world one grand excursion, for many years I quested,
thinking that the life that I was born to could be bested,
until at last I learned the truth that what I journeyed for
was simply to unlock the lock and open up that door
that led me deep into myself to find that private world
that lived inside me all those years, so securely curled
that I only found it by first venturing afar.
Thus do we wander far afield to discover who we are.
Prompt words today are transition, brood, random and snip.
The Other Side of the Story
I think it’s just fair dinkum that you suffer repercussions
from the things you said to me during our last discussions.
I grant that breaking up is something that is hard to do,
but for sheer brutality, I give the prize to you.
I must say it’s unfathomable that you have forgotten
all those infidelities to which you’d never cotton.
I hate to raise old issues that we’d both rather ignore,
but before you pick your suitcase up to storm out of the door,
I feel I must remind you that the suitcase that you’ve packed
does not belong to you but is my favorite, in fact.
And the car you might intend to drive away in in a huff
packed with all “your” furniture and other handy stuff,
is registered to me, in fact, and all that’s packed inside
was paid for by my paycheck, and so it will reside
right here with me as you embark on your lonely shuffle
out into the cold with your belongings in a duffle.
Ta ta my dear malingerer, I hope that you do well
as you descend from easy street down to your private hell.
Prompt words for today are repercussions and dinkum,
and, since Your Daily Word hasn’t published their August prompts yet, I’m going to use the three prompts of theirs that I missed on the 26th, 27th and 28th while I didn’t have internet connection for three days: Raise, ignore and unfathomable.
Nostalgia Reexamined
The sublimity remembered when memory has its turn
often has beginnings in nostalgia’s timely churn.
That teenage bliss that we recall as being overjoyed
if remembered correctly would be being over-boyed.
Our adoration of the past is easier than giving
all the same attention to the life that we are living.
Prompt words today are nostalgia, overjoyed, adoration and sublimity.
Aroma Therapy
There’s a distinctive odor coming from your shoe.
I don’t know what is causing it. I’m sure it isn’t you.
An acquisitive vampire might pay big bucks for it
to augment the fetid odor in his burial pit.
When it comes to hygiene, I have very little tact,
so I have used hyperbole to illustrate the fact
that from the big toe of each foot right over to its pinky,
the fact is not debatable. Your feet are very stinky!
Prompt words today are odor, vampire, illustrate and acquisitive.
