Listen
If you would be captivating, learn this lesson well.
You won’t be so admired for the tales you choose to tell
as for the ones you listen to with your whole attention.
Your questions can define you as much as what you mention.
The prompt today was captivating.
Upright Midnight
Our night’s rest should meander, releasing us to dreams,
but my sleep took me on a trip down other sorts of streams
with rapids, eddies, waterfalls that jarred me rough awake.
I think that just one night like it is all that I could take.
Whenever I lay prone, I had another bout of coughing—
with one hack executed, another in the offing.
I could not lay my head down to soothe myself to sleep.
Instead I slept bolt upright, my covers in a heap
around me on the sofa as a cough jarred me awake.
Sleeping upright on the sofa does not sweet dreaming make.
I longed for my soft bed and former slumbering meanders
through crisp rows of wheat stalks and banks of oleanders
in search of something still unknown, a peaceful all-night search
for those soulful comforts I never found at church.
My mother’s laughter once again, my father’s joking ways
waiting just around the bend of this nightly maze.
Instead, I’ve barely three hours sleep in between my wheezes—
my dreams propelled by cyclones instead of gentle breezes.
The cold germ is not neighborly. It visits when it pleases
and brings unwanted hostess gifts of drips and coughs and sneezes.
As you may have guessed, I’ve come down with a miserable cold. Two poems in one night, one while I was still trying to stay in bed, then another after I moved to sit upright on the couch which at least furnished a half hour of sleep now and then between the coughing bouts. The prompt today is meander.
I love this silhouette of the fruiting bundle on a palm tree in front of my open-ended garage. It is the sight that greets me each time I drive into the garage and I finally got a photo of it.
For the Sunday Trees prompt.
The Spring Cold Blues
While I should be off-to-sleeping,
instead I’m coughing, sneezing, seeping.
My poor throat is scraped and raw
and herb tea sipped at through a straw
doesn’t seem to help at all.
Tissues rolled up in a ball
litter the table and the floor.
I cough, then blow, then cough some more.
I sweat and shiver and sweat in turn.
Sometimes I chill. Sometimes I burn.
I can’t lie down lest I should cough.
Propped up on pillows, I fall off,
knock tea to floor and break the cup.
No energy to mop it up.
So, with my head still in a fog,
I sit up straight and write this blog.
If I were horse or sheep or cow,
I’d know the secret of just how
I could sleep while still erect,
but since I’m not, I still elect
to sleep while prone whenever I can.
Tonight, it seems, that’s not the plan.
Hey! Just realized this is my 4,000th posting!!!
I thought this was a lantana but now see the colors are right but the leaves and configuration are wrong, so it will remain nameless until someone recognizes it.
For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.
I found this lovely arrangement outside El Jardin restaurant in the Ajijic plaza, where we had our writers retreat.
See Cee’s gorgeous lantana HERE.
Who Knew?
When new was new, I was crazy about it. A new friend, new dress, new favorite food. But what I liked best was new places. I yearned to travel, even if it was just to the next town. Strangely enough, as tiny as the towns were in my part of South Dakota, people from neighboring towns did not mix. We went rollerskating in Draper, 7 miles away, but when our eyes chanced to stray to Draper boys, we were taken aside by several of the “popular” Draper girls–the cheerleaders, in fact, and told to stay away from their boys. This really happened. We played their school in sports, went rollerskating every Sunday in their school gym, even went to movies in their tiny theater, but we did not mix. When we tried, we’d been warned.
I think I visited Presho, Vivian and Kennebec–all 20 to 40 miles away–no more than once in the 18 years I lived in Murdo, population 700. White River, 38 miles away, we more regularly visited since they had shows on Mondays as well as weekends, and the movies were just ten cents, whereas ours cost twenty-five cents! But, never did we ever socialize with White River girls. The boys, however, were a different matter.
The first boy I ever kissed was from White River, and we went steady for two years. I think I’ve told the story of that first kiss in another blog posting. Suffice it to say that after putting it off until age 16, it was about time. And, it worked. I was literally dizzy and he had to hold me up for a minute afterwards. He had opened my car door, helped me out, then folded me in his arms and kissed me. I was so discombobulated that instead of walking to my own car, I opened the back door of his car and started to get into the back seat. Not for the reasons you might think. My best friend and a boy who (as I recall) later turned to cattle rustling were already in the back seat. I just did so in utter confusion. And no, I had never had a drink in my life at the time.
At any rate, this story has veered off in a direction unintended, so just suffice it to say that after that, life continued to present new after new and I accepted most of them. I traveled widely, loved a few loves, pursued a few careers and wound up in Mexico. Now, at age 70, I suddenly find that new isn’t as necessary to me. The older I get, the more I realize that everything is everywhere. You just have to look for it closely.
No longer is it necessary for me to travel to far-off third world countries. It is exciting to take the same walk on the same beach day after day since the sea presents new treasures each day. I love getting up each morning and writing first thing, having Pepe come each Wednesday to give me a 1 1/2 hour massage after which I plop into the hot tub. I love spending hours at my desk and sometimes hate having to leave home even for activities I have enjoyed in the past.
The point is, that the older I get, the more I want to spend all my time doing what I love most. Writing. Art. The fact that each endeavor creates a new piece is getting to be enough “new.”
This is a rewrite of an essay I wrote so long ago that I only had one viewer. If it was you, you must be one of my first followers! The prompt today is suddenly.
Night Journeys
All night long I follow scripts written by some hand
perhaps belonging to a self that consciousness has banned.
Fresh from dreams, I feel released from tasks committed to,
and then remember other jobs that I’m obliged to do.
Who knows if dreams are showing us those things we could have done—
those things we have forgotten with the dawning of the sun.
If only I remembered that world that fades away,
perhaps I’d face a very different sort of day.
Instead, I slip into the role my life has led me to,
like forcing naked feet into a more confining shoe.
And I wonder if the dreams I dream in dreams might reveal more
of potential lives where I live closer to my core.
Perhaps these stories I concoct, labeling them as lore,
are simply other lives I live on this lower floor
I descend to in my dreams, where I go to ponder
all those other me’s whose gifts I might have chosen to squander.
Could it be in death that I am freed to find a goal
in the bargain basement of the building of my soul—
to find another path where I may once more start a quest
towards a self just one step closer to my very best?
This is a rewrite of a poem written 3.5 years ago. The prompt today is wonder.
