I’ve tried so many times to get a decent photo of a honeysuckle. Along with the lipstick plant, it has been impossible. This one still isn’t ideal, but it is the best so far. One of these days!
A while ago, I published a tribute to my friend Jim Tipton, who had passed away here in Chapala, where he had resided for the past 15 years or so. Jim was an incredible poet and his friends here are trying to insure that his last book of poetry, “The Alphabet of Longing” gets its due notoriety. At $6.99 it is an incredible bargain. You will not regret acquainting yourself with the work of this lovely man whose work has been acclaimed by Isabel Allende. Go here for more information and to order his book: http://tiny.cc/JimTipton .
Blown
It whistles a soft melody, this whisper of the wind.
Sings a mysterious lullaby, seemingly without end.
We do not know its language, but know it well by Braille.
It makes a tangle of our hair and swells our vessel’s sail.
It blows into a tempest that hurls us off our course.
Where it once took us willingly, it takes us now by force.
It is that infinite mystery whose answer is unknown
until someday, perhaps, when we arrive at where we’re blown.
The prompts for today are: unknown whisper infinite lullaby
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/29/fowc-with-fandango-unknown/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/rdp59-whisper/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/daily-addictions-2018-week-30/(infinite)
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/lullaby/
jdb photo
This is a poem written when I visited my sister in the first stages of memory loss. it is a bittersweet memory that I shared with only a few of you five years ago when I first started my blog but which very few people read, judging from the number of views and “likes.” This memory, as most are, is bittersweet.
When My Sister Plays the Piano
The first notes, beautiful and true, float like a memory up the stairs.
In the week I’ve been here in her house with her, she has not played the piano
and so I thought her music was gone like her memory of what day it is
or whether I am her sister, her daughter or an unknown visitor.
Yet on this morning after her 76th birthday celebration,
music slips like magic from the keys: song after song
from “Fur Elise” to a sweet ballad I don’t know the name of—
sure and correct at first,
then with a heartfelt emotion we had both forgotten.
“Midnight Concerto,”
“Sunrise, Sunset”—
song after song
expressed
in an unfaltering language—
some synchronicity of mind and hand
her brain has opened the door to.
While I listen, time stands still for me
as it has for her so often in the past few years
as yesterday and today shuffle together to
crowd out all consideration of future fears.
For ten minutes or more, she segues
from melody to melody
with no wrong note.
Then “Deep Velvet,”
a song she has played from memory
so many times,
dies after twenty-four notes.
Like a gift held out and snatched away,
I yearn for it, pray she’ll remember.
After an uncharted caesura, her music streams out again,
sweet and sure, for a staff or two—
the sheet music giving her a guide her brain so often can’t.
But after a longer pause, I know it is lost
like the thread of so many conversations.
A hiccup of memory, folding itself away.
“Come And Worship” chimes out
like the tolling of a bell.
The wisp of the old hymn, two phrases only—
before it, too, fades.
That sudden muffled sound.
Is it a songbook displaced from its stand as she searches for another;
or the lid of the piano, quietly closing on yet another partial memory?
The Ragtag prompt today was memories.
Once a Week
To be eccentric every moment takes too much from me,
so I limit my oddness to every Saturday.
On that day my zany hats come out from their hiding,
anxious for one day a week they get to go outsiding.
I don my feathered boa and stick on rhinestone lashes.
I wear my fringe-tiered flapper skirts with neon colored sashes.
I hop onto my bicycle, my cockatoo inside
the wire basket on the front and take him for a ride.
When we drive by the playground, at first the children balk,
but I pique their expectations as we have a little talk.
The cockatoo speaks bird talk and does a little jig.
Then he does impressions of a donkey and a pig.
He does a little rap routine that every child loves
and then I don my riding hat and my driving gloves
and pedal off to other adventures up the street,
expressing eccentricity to everyone I meet.
Later in the afternoon, I pedal us back home,
turning up the driveway by the garden gnome.
I put my bike into the shed, the bird behind his bars.
I put my rhinestone eyelashes in their storage jars.
I strip off all my finery and pull on my old jeans.
Microwave a hot dog. Open a can of beans.
I sink into my Barclay lounger, flip on the T.V.
turning once again into the ordinary me,
having exorcised my cravings for eccentricity
The prompts for today are expectation, moment and eccentric:
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/expectation/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/28/fowc-with-fandango-moment/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/eccentric-july-28-2018/
This is for Marilyn–not a poem! Written over three years ago, it predated the “Me too” movement, but fits right in with the climate today of”one step forward, one step back.” Which will it be by the end of this political “reign”? Hopefully, if a woman winds up on the moon it will be literally and not figuratively.
For Ragtag’s “Moon” prompt.
“To the Moon, Alice!”
On “The Honeymooners,” Ralph Kramden (played by Jackie Gleason) had a phrase that those of us of a certain age can’t help but remember. “To the moon, Alice, to the moon!” he would rasp at his wife (played by the inimitable Audrey Meadows) whenever he had no less predictable comeback to her never predictable jibes. Of course, the idea was that this was how far he would knock her. An upraised fist often accompanied his threat.
The audience, of course, would roar. So hilarious this empty threat, for America knew that Ralph would never make good on the threat. Even Alice never flinched–supposedly because she, too, knew those words signaled an empty threat. But underneath those words and the fact that viewers found them to be so hilarious, was the idea that such threatened violence was funny–and, somehow, that such treatment of his wife was a…
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Time Out!
He was an avid sports fan. Alas, his wife was not.
With box scores and with averages, his mind was fully fraught.
Tennis, football, cricket? It mattered not a whit.
If a ball was fought over, he had to witness it.
Basketball and baseball and soccer were the same
as golf to him. Whatever. For all sport he was game.
At last, his wife had had enough and did what she was able
to cure his wild obsession. She cut the TV cable.
The TV went as black as night. The sports fan sat in shock.
He did not move a muscle. He did not blink or talk.
Then he began to jerk and shake as though having a fit.
Withdrawal from his sports fix seemed the cause of it.
As his delirium tremens overtook his life,
things were getting better for his kids and wife.
His wife could watch her soap operas, the kids watched their cartoons.
No longer did a sports announcer fill their afternoons.
This furtive arrangement lasted for awhile
until our ballgame junkie figured out their guile.
He moved into a condo to catch up on his sport
and his wife remarried to another sort
who did not know a baseball from a hockey puck.
That such a man existed, she could not believe her luck!
The blessed quiet of her house with no announcer shouting
made her glad she turned her spouse’s inning to an outing!
The Prompts:
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/27/fowc-with-fandango-arrangement/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/avid-july-27-2018/
After I posted my last “bench” gallery, I admitted to Forgottenman that there were several I wanted to include that I couldn’t find. Not only did he find them in my past files, but he found a number of others as well! If you haven’t seen them yet, to see the additional photos published earlier, go HERE. To increase side of photos, click on any photo.
For Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Benches
