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.

Unfortunate Fortunes–NaPoWriMo 2016, Day 13

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At least one of these zany fortunes I thought up for a prompt a few years ago deals with synchronicity.

For VJWC’s prompt: Synchronicity.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

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Thirteen Unfortunate Fortune Cookie Fortunes

–Your ingrained habits are not gluten free.
–You will be the life of your friend’s party this weekend when you mistakenly consume gluten and start making rye comments.
–Your mother-in-law will join a motorcycle gang and become your mother-out-law.
–The roots of your problems are showing.
–You will be asked to sing “Hello Jung Lovers” at the next synchronicity symposium you attend.
–Your children are engaged in a conspiracy to turn you into your parents.
–Seventy-six trombones are seventy-five too many.
–Cadets are advised that participating in naval maneuvers will not make your outie an innie.
–The reason why your cat is always trying to trip you is because he does not like your shoos.
–Taking time to smell the roses does not necessarily guarantee that there will be roses to smell.
–At your next poetry reading, you will drop a page of your manuscript…

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Unforgivable

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Jan Wilberg’s touching words about the separation of children from their parents at the U.S. border and what we can do about it. Call your congressperson to support the Keep Families Together Act. Please read this article in its entirety. You will be glad you did.

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

The kids in the orphanage in Nicaragua where we adopted three children didn’t cry. They’d already done their crying someplace else.

They might have looked concerned but they didn’t cry when passed from one person to the next like a bowl of mashed potatoes being passed at Thanksgiving dinner. In their tiny heads they had figured out the futility of complaint. There was no use crying, it wouldn’t change anything.

They had already lost everything.

Children cope with abandonment. They will appear to cope at least. And how they appear to cope is that they don’t cry. It won’t be long before the little children who have been separated from their parents by American immigration officials, who feel the same as if their parents had abandoned them on the side of the road, it won’t be long before they stop crying. Because crying won’t change anything.

In their minds, they…

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Tabachine: Flower of the Day, June 16, 2018

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This tabachine bush near my studio was swarming with fluttering black butterflies, but they moved so quickly that I couldn’t get a shot.  I have a video of them taken a few years ago, and it is like a ballet—their graceful swooping, bending and departing.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Proddings

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Proddings

I guess that it took gumption to stray so far from home.
Who knows why certain people are driven so to roam?
For certain, curiosity plays a part in it—
a proclivity to action, a resistance to just sit.
A passion to be accurate in finding all their pieces.
A need for further education after school ceases.
But I can’t help but feel that there is more to it than this.
It isn’t only fearing those things that we might miss.
There’s always that small feeling that we do not belong––
that sense of isolation from the local throng.
It is a bit like pushing the odd fledgling from the nest
who does not belong. The other fledglings may know best
who would belong best elsewhere, and speed them on their way.
Odd ducks who display gumption or creative ones must pay.
And in becoming targets, they are prodded to depart
to find other places where they can make their start
to finding who they are in life—places where they can see
all those different people that they might be meant to be.

East Timor, 1973. Off on a long adventure

These word prompts were made use of in the above poem:

RagTag: https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/06/16/rdp-16-target/Target
Daily Addictions:https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/: Accurate
FOWC: https://fivedotoh.com/: Gumption
Weekly Prompts: https://weeklyprompts.com/: Home

Falling Water

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This is one of three waterfalls that spill down the mountain behind my house during the rainy season.

Falling Water

You, my wild and rushing daughter
remind me of falling water
spilling  from one place to another
while your sister and your brother
are calm ponds—docile and still.
Do you think you ever will
come to rest within our glade
or will you continue to cascade
from mountainside to jungle floor,
always rushing out the door
to adventures in a farflung world?
Another part of you unfurled
in some new place and some new time,
a foreign place you find sublime.
We’ve had one life. You’ve had a few.
Why, love, will one world not do?

 

For the Rag Tag Daily Prompt, the word of the day was cataract.

Although I don’t have a brother and my family did move around a bit (but not as much as I have,) this poem was based a bit on the only letter my father ever wrote to me. I had been traveling and working abroad for a few years by then, first in Australia, then in Singapore and Africa. I’ve remembered one of sections: “The wild geese have rested on the pond for the night. They remind me of you, my wild fledgling, winging your way across the world with no place to call your own.” Those words, so poetic, show a side of my father I wish he had brought out more frequently on paper, so here I’ve done it for him.

Old Age in Paradise

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Old Age in Paradise

I’d like to know on just what basis
we deserve our fine oasis?
In other places, other climes,
people our age have harder times.
They work ’til death or do not eat.
They toil in poverty and heat.
So though we may have aches and pain,
I must our grumbling disdain.
Yes, I ache and limp and groan,
yet prefer these problems that are my own.

 

 

The Daily Addictions prompt today was oasis.

Family Night

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Family Night

Grandma’s tired of pussyfooting, Mama’s tired of tact.
Daddy has lost his silken tongue. I fear that is a fact.
Grandpa has no further wish to sugar coat and pander.
We’ve had an epidemic of hereditary candor! Continue reading →

Scarlet Hibiscus: Flower of the Day, June 15, 2018

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See Cee’s last audacious peony of the season HERE.

Writing Bleak

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Red’s Wrap is one blog I never skip over in a hurry. I think this is one of Jan’s bests (of many bests,) I love how she never takes the easy way out in her writing but always gets to the true heart of the matter.

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

The problem with writing when you’re anxious or a little depressed is that everything ends up being about death – your own death, your spouse’s, your kids’, your dogs’, the death of the great American city, Death Be Not Proud, you get the idea. It’s depressing.

I considered submitting something for an essay contest. The topic was ‘the happiest day of your life.’ Oddly, I remember the happiest day of my life but it lacks drama and angst so I don’t think I could write convincingly about it.

My Happiest Day

It was a hot summer day on Lake Superior. All of our children were staying with us in our old house on the beach. I’d reluctantly come in from swimming to start dinner and, as I was chopping onions, my younger son ran into the house yelling, “Mom, why did you leave? Come back swimming.” And I put down my knife and walked…

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In the Market

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In the Market

Her mother tells her not to talk to strangers in the streets–
to count on all her kin to provide everyone she meets.
But this man has such lovely eyes, so what could be the harm?
And she’s not often left to stray this far from father’s farm.
When he walks by, she gives a smile and looks him in the eye.
He looks away, but his shy smile still gives away the guy.
She drops her basket, but he still continues on his way.
It’s only then that she decides that this one must be gay.

The store where she is going is not so very far,
and yet she takes the longest way that leads there from her car.
Although it should be blocks away, instead it is two miles.
She only has this route and back to practice all her wiles.
Whenever gentlemen of note meet her questing glance,
Her winsome smile becomes a grin, her walk becomes a prance.
Some of the men seem to be shocked. The others move away.
She’s sure it is just married men she meets this market day.

But finally, one man in plaid does not avoid her glance.
She smiles at him invitingly, afraid she’ll lose her chance.
She sees him turn as she walks by and follow in her wake.
It seems she’s finally hooked one. It was a piece of cake.
When she arrives and goes into the store, he follows her.
It’s just so he can meet her, of this she’s fairly sure.
Aisle after aisle she meets his gaze by boldly looking up
while he pretends he’s looking for food on which to sup.

Pork and beans he passes up, chili and green beans.
He adjusts his shoulders and hitches up his jeans.
She knows that he’s not used to this. He’s not so debonair.
He will not meet her flirty glance or even her bold stare;
and yet she sees him peeking when it seems that she’s not looking.
It’s clear enough to her that something’s definitely cooking.
She’s been around the livestock so she knows the signs and causes,
yet a bull just gets right to it and a rooster never pauses. Continue reading →