Ice Cream Manifesto
It’s just a little kiosk in the middle of the street
between two one-way roadways, in the center where they meet.
There aren’t any tables. There isn’t any chair.
You have to stand out in the street to give your order there.
Mango or tequila, tamarind or corn.
As you can see, the flavors don’t agree with any norm.
They’ve ice cream made of purest cream , but they have ices, too,
in so many flavors that I always choose a few.
My favorite? Strawberry ice. Vanilla under it.
I get a cone so I don’t have to wait to plunder it.
I finish it as I drive home, licking all the way.
I give my dogs the empty cone. It always makes their day.
The cone is hard as any bone–sweet and chewy, too.
If I were a better mother, I’d arrange that they had two.
But though I know I’d enjoy two passing o’er my lips,
Later I would not enjoy their presence on my hips.
I love that little ice cream stand. Love it all to heck,
with its lovely homemade ice cream made in Jocotepec.
That pueblo is quite close to me. It’s just five miles or so.
So it isn’t that it is so very far for me to go.
The thing is that for me, ice cream is an impulse buy.
It’s not a major purchase, like a cake or like a pie.
If I just happen to be passing and see that fellow there
waving his ice cream scoops at me, right out in the air,
preordination says that I must stop and have one now–
a bite of crispy wafer cone, adorned with ice of cow.
I do not claim responsibility for decisions of this kind.
It’s a creative impulse, not a matter of the mind.
So if you’re a public servant–an official of this town
looking for new laws to pass, don’t tear this kiosk down.
Fill some potholes in the street or put a speed bump in.
For legislating ice cream bans is sure to be a sin!
This is an edit of a poem from two years ago. Still at my writer’s retreat with little time to do prompts in the morning and since WordPress messed up and gave an extra prompt on the 26th, I’m just doing prompts in sequence a day behind..hard to explain, but gives me a chance to get the prompt done the night before.Nov 28/29 Daily Post Prompt, One Way.
Sound Bites
When the daylight takes its bite
eating up the dark of night
I begin my daily rite
of finding all the words to cite
that serve to bring my thoughts to light.
I write and write and write and write–
filling up my blogging site
until my dogs begin to fight,
and finally I know it’s quite
necessary to do what’s right.
And this is when I find I might
secure my laptop lid up tight
and give my brain a small respite.
It is my second day’s delight
for they have tried to be polite
lest they disturb me or incite
words that in my haste are trite.
With open door, I then invite
their appetites—now at their height.
Each jumps and spins–high as a kite,
and comes to have his morning bite.
Eight of us are at a writing retreat in Puerto Vallarta so I’ll soon be doing writing to a different prompt. In the meantime, this is a rewrite of a poem written 3 years ago. The prompt today is bite.
The Knitted and the Purled
Nothing in this world can exist happily ever after.
A house is built of lows and highs: foundation before rafter.
Up and down’s the truth of it, the brilliant and the dark.
No week is composed totally of Sunday in the park.
Existence is a pendulum that sweeps across our lives.
Worker bees die every day in service to their hives.
Good seems finely balanced by a constant lurking evil.
Roses have their aphids. Cotton has its weevil.
There is so much that’s wonderful in the world we live in,
but no one wins at every game. Sometimes we have to give in,
playing with the cards we’re given—flush or straight or fold—
sometimes in the heat of luck, sometimes out in the cold.
Ups and downs create the whole of our amazing world,
its surface formed by contrast of the knitted and the purled.
Sometimes we’re given what is sweet, at other times the bile
as we choose moment by moment to live happily for a while.
Rewrite of a poem from three years ago. The prompt today is knit.
What fewer love stories there would be if we could see their endings—so many middles of romances left unread by those who read their last pages first. When I remember each past first kiss, it is in a mirror half obscured by the future reflected in it. One love is forever caught underwater where it gasps for air. Another is ashes floating out in rings to touch the edges of a lake which is shrinking inward from its banks, as though in complicity to aid their settling along its edges. Another lies in small droplets of blood on a road where it was ambushed, too late to be a message of anything but regret for love that died before the lover and a lover who died too soon. There are all these deaths of loves—like a class for the unfortunates who, kept in after school, are made to trace their lines again and again in the belief that love is taught by repetition and that wisdom comes from practice.
Copa de Oro means Cup of Gold, Zeroing in, it’s easy to see why. These two popped up right outside my bedroom door to welcome me home. Click on any photo to enlarge all.
Since I was traveling in the states this October and November, I couldn’t get enough of the fall color. Please click to enlarge.
For Becca’s Sunday Trees prompt.
Fair Fighting
I do not mind if one accuses
if they hurl words instead of bruises.
I prefer my arguments discussive
and that they never turn percussive!
Image downloaded from the internet. “The” prompt today was percussive.
