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.

From Afar

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Limerance, the tag today from RDP, is “the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized any a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship.”  this post from over a year ago does an adquate job of describing that state, so I’m reblogging it.

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

From Afar

I have a penchant for you. You’re my object of desire.
You’ve already lit my embers. No need to fan the fire.
Your conflagration’s handled. There’s a trench around my heart.
I have a backfire all planned out should the ground fires start.

I have an inclination, predilection and a yen.
I know where you are going. I notice where you’ve been.
I won’t admit to stalking. I don’t follow in your wake.
You don’t know I have my eye on you and won’t, for heaven’s sake.

I’m too old for flirting. Too advanced in years for blushes.
I’m twenty years or so beyond midlife schoolgirl crushes.
I don’t go out to hookup bars, to lowlife dives or pubs.
I haven’t yet resorted to senior singles clubs.

But lately I’ve been feeling like my isolation’s stupid,
so I gathered up my courage and signed up for OkCupid.
No…

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Hibiscus with Hummer: Flower of the Day, June 10, 2018

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For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.

Our Own Little Universes: Pains, Rips, Stars, Itineraries and Insights

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Somehow, a posting on intuition got posted on the Ragtag prompt for “Insight,” so I must reclaim my honor by reblogging this actual post on Insights from four years ago.

Insight. The Ragtag Post prompt #2 was insight.

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

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Our Own Little Universes: Pains, Rips, Stars, Itineraries and Insights

Yolanda and Pasiano must have thought I was crazy when I started packing a week ago for my 2 month trip to the beach. First, all of my clothes piled on the bed in the spare room, then art and jewelry-making supplies piled on one end of the other bed, computer and photography needs piled on the other end. Bags full of other art supplies. Then two days ago, little piles of spices and kitchen tools, canned goods, disinfectant for fruit and veggies, bags of papers I’ve been wanting to sort for 13 years. (There will be time at the beach, where I know no one.)

But now it was the night before and with the car mostly packed with suitcase and bags, I still had hours more of sorting and packing to do. I knew it would probably…

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Hidden Treasure

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Hidden Treasure

What we keep hidden from each other
forms the mystery that keeps us coming back for more.
Like the relish that enhances the main course.
Like the dessert at the end of the meal,
not the real nourishment, but rather 
a reward for putting up with the day-to-day
ragtag repetitions, irritations, boredoms
of knowing each other so well.
The loyalties, down to the heart honesties,
those passions held in common, those trials shared
are the meals we feed each other day-by-day.
But what person does not need, as well,
the thrill of the unopened package,
the darkness hidden under the stairs?

 

FOWC’s prompt for the day is Hidden.

Failed Honeymoon

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Failed Honeymoon

Alas, the groom’s romanticism
failed to thrive on criticism
that paired with much pedanticism,
soon led to a marital schism.
Oh, that the bride had been less callous
in revealing all her malice.
If she had been less vitriolic
and more open to honeymoon frolic,
he might have been less alcoholic.

 

The Daily Addictions prompt word today is vitriolic.

Flower of the Day, June 9, 2018

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For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

The Little Potus goes “Tweet, Tweet, Tweet”

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When My Baby Walks down the Street,
I Bet the Little Potus goes “Tweet, Tweet. Tweet”

Alas, it seems our head of state
so schooled in the realms of hate,
lacks the wisdom to placate
by offering to abdicate.

No matter that so many hate
this fool behind the White House gate,
he just simply doesn’t get it
and is too dimwit to regret it.

He just blunders through his life
seducing one more colleague’s wife.
He lays on hands wherever they
deign to wander, deign to stray

(up every nearby skirted ass.)
But one, at least, he gave a pass.
He must have reigned it in ( I hope)
when he visited the Pope.

Much as his tweets excoriate
all of his enemies of state,
if he were smarter, he would see
He is his own worst enemy.

 

Fandango’s prompt for the day is placate.

First Kiss

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First Kiss

“Allemande left, allemande right.
Promenade your lady, hold her tight!”
Years later, I recall demands
for touching waists and holding hands.
To “Promenade. Go ’round the world.”
We do-si-doed and faced and whirled.
Square-dancing was called to blame
the day I first encountered shame.

Just six years old and mild and meek,
a boy my age dared peck my cheek.
His mother pulled him off the floor,
then jerked him rudely out the door,
shaming him with words and action
before I knew my own reaction,
which might have merely been a measure
of a friendly mutual pleasure.

Instead, for twelve more years together,
held as classmates in close tether,
much as I perhaps desired
that we might have again conspired,
he never tried what once was censured.
Another kiss was never ventured

’til in our twenties, home from college,
emboldened by our further knowledge,
home briefly for summer vacation,
heartened by a small libation,
finding ourselves in darkened car
up on a hill, his mother far
away in town, we finally kissed,
discovering what we had missed.

Then we went our separate ways—
that one night just a summer’s phase.
Years later, though, I still recall.
that first kiss, and his mother’s gall
over what was a gentle theft
prompted by an “Allemande left.”


The “guilty parties” are, it is true, pictured above, but I’m not one to kiss and tell. This true memory was prompted by today’s “Daily Addiction” prompt of promenade.

Hibiscus Twins: Flower of the Day, June 8, 2018

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For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Skinny-Dipping

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Important note: This is a shape poem , but if you look at it in Reader, it distorts the shape by left margin justifying.  Please click on the title again and you will view it from my blog where it will be centered and you can see the shape.

Skinny-Dipping 

There’s a change in the weather, a shift in the light.
The palm trees are swaying. Three stars shining bright.
The water is cooling, my exercise through.
Clouds cover the moon. I think it’s my cue
to get out of the water before I turn blue,
then clouds shift and the moon turns its usual hue.

The wind stirs the water. I think of past times
ages ago in different climes.
All those past lives, can they really be mine?
If I put experience in a straight line,
could I see the reason for things as they were
as my life sped by–—a perpetual whirr?

What gave me the courage to do what I did
since that time long ago when I was a kid
and took that first journey out on my own,
out of the house across grass newly mown,
fresh from the bathtub, laughing with glee,
nude for the whole world to look out and see.

Running down the sidewalk until I was captured
again by my mother, winded but enraptured
by this one-year-old daughter escaped from her bath,
already set out on her singular path.
So many roadways traveled since then.
So many different lives that have been

tried and discarded in favor of others.
Surrogate fathers and surrogate mothers,
surrogate sisters and friends freshly minted,
plane tickets ordered, paid for and printed.
Travel adventures. Dangers to survive.
Making it through it all still alive.

I come up     from the pool,
dripping and     shivering.
Those few    bold stars
above me    delivering
promises     that I
might still   be a rover.
While there   is breath left,
my life       isn’t over.

 

For V.J.’s Weekly Challenge prompt, shift:  “Alter your routine in some small way this week.
The idea is not to do something that over taxes your already busy schedule – just something that shifts you enough to make a difference. Or maybe, it won’t. Your response can be in the form of prose, poetry, photograph(s) or whatever moves you.”

The “shift” I did was to go out to the pool and swim and exercise for an hour before writing to her prompt word. The poem above is what resulted.