Celebration for Two
The radiator’s sputtering and crumbs of birthday cake
fly out from the thrown back sheet and spread out in your wake.
Red wine from toppled glasses forms a little lake
so perhaps staging the party in our bed was a mistake!
Prompt words today are sputter, manage,, mistake.
Word of the Day didn’t publish a word today.
Layers
Layer of this and layer of that,
layers of sofas and ladies and cats.
Layers of flower and pillow and cloud.
No single layers of things are allowed.
Layer the apples in a fine pie.
Pile up houses into the sky.
Things seem to want to settle in tiers.
I’ve been assembling piles for years!
Click on photos to enlarge.
I was the token poet reading at this Open Mike in Chapala on Friday. Lots of good music by talented musicians. (Click on first photo to enlarge all.)
All good things must end. Heading home from the open mike!!
Gloria’s Assignment, Day 5
photo by Gloria Palazzo “Her majesty.”
Click on photo to enlarge. This is a sculpture from my garden photographed by Gloria as part of her daily assignment while staying with me. She says she may resume her photography when she goes home as she hasn’t done it for some years. Lucky for us.
Though we’re at day 14 of Gloria’s assignments, we’ve fallen a bit behind in posting her daily photos so I’m just labeling them as I post them. She’s going home tomorrow but perhaps she’ll continue to post. This batch is very intriguing. Click on photos to enlarge.
This giant rubber tree stands in the back courtyard of the Nueva Posada in Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico. These are plants growing at its base, not its own leaves.
photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash, used with permission
The Drying of Sheets in the Wind
When the world seems in a mess and you wax sanctimonious,
railing at the ills of those who make it less harmonious,
remember that life’s curses are only temporary.
When world events eat at your mind and the world feels scary,
remember bed sheets on the line, drying in the sun—
the sound of flapping in the wind as their drying was done.
The smell of bright clean sunlight on each wind-softened fold,
or the cracking of their ice crystals stiffening in the cold.
Remember their warmth around you, fresh from mother’s mangle?
Snapping them out in the air, her bracelets’s harmonious jangle?
Her even movements folding them, then spreading them once more
for you to slip into your bed as she stood at the door,
storybook in hand for that nightly big procession
through story after story, read in that grand progression
of venturings into a world that seemed so vast and magic,
long before you knew the world to also be so tragic.
Let memories of your mother still be a comfort to you—
with memories of fresh white sheets. And let them both renew you.
Prompt words are sheets, temporary, curse , sanctimonious. Wow. What a list. How are these going to come together?
