The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a Clerihew. Not my favorite form. Ranks right down there with the Limerick, but here goes:
NaPoWriMo Day 14: Clerihew
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Author Archives: lifelessons
Limited Access: Thursday Doors, Apr 13, 2017
Fish out of Water: One Word Photo Challenge: Fish
Click on any photo to enlarge all.
https://jennifernicholewells.com/2017/04/13/one-word-photo-challenge-fish/
The Perfect Squelch: Spare Tire
Remember when the Saturday Evening Post had a feature entitled “The Perfect Squelch” that featured a different perfect comeback every issue? Well, then, you must be as old as I am.
Spare Tire
My blind date worked out most sublimely.
First of all, it was most timely,
for my ex had told me he
would be there with another she.
I waltzed in regally well-armed
with date both handsome, rich and charmed.
His tux immaculate, his dental
work just out-shined by his mental
acumen. He quoted Proust!
So when my ex came up to roost
on a chair next to the mirror where
I was perusing my form and hair
and said we made a lovely pair;
I answered, “Him? He’s just a spare.”
He poked my middle, then tweaked my nose.
“Well then, when your spare tire blows,
they’ll come in handy, all those guys.
Or, you could simply exercise.”
“Timely” is the prompt word today.
Sunshine and Shadow: Flower of the Day, Apr 13, 2017
Following: NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 13
The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a ghazal. A ghazal is formed of couplets, each of which is its own complete statement. Both lines of the first couplet end with the same end-word, and that end-word is also repeated at the end of each couplet.
My sisters and I. Strangely enough, there is not one photo of my mother and father and the three of us girls together. The only family photo ever taken was before I was born.
Following
The youngest of three, every day down unpaved roads, I tracked my sisters’ footprints.
Nancy Drew wannabe, who needed fingerprints when I could read their footprints?
My mother’s closet a treasure trove, hidden wonders lay obscured on the tallest shelves.
I fanned her dresses with my fingers, slipped into red high-heels that bore her footprints.
Careful where you walk, my father warned, parting tall grass near the homestead ruins.
Fearful of snakes, I fit my own feet to matted grass that marked my father’s footprints.
That frightening choice of colleges facing me, I knew no other way to decide
than to go where she’d gone, and follow in my sister’s footprints.
The obligation of college over with no more paths worn by other feet to follow,
I chose Australia, Indonesia and then Africa––following imagination’s footprints.
My niece’s teeth clamped to the old saxophone as its mouthpiece snapped in two,
worn by each of the girls in our family and then by her, as she followed in our footprints.
Untold Stories
Untold Stories
When her death left us all behind,
so many questions came to mind.
Why couldn’t I have asked them when
she could have answered, way back then?
What she told voluntarily,
about her life and family tree
was always very carefully chosen—
the details all rehearsed and frozen.
The same stories she told over again
about the things that once had been,
but so many things she didn’t say,
afraid, perhaps, she might display
sad facts of life she always hid—
the underside that she forbid.
We would laugh and joke and kid.
Unpleasantness we never did.
She was a good mother. Supportive, kind,
always helpful in a bind.
Generous and always there.
Full of loving, thoughtful care—
that same care that I tried to show her,
although, I fear, I did not know her.
That little girl who lost her dad
and favorite sister. Was she sad?
Mom never talked of it so we
simply let the subject be.
The stepfather she didn’t care for—
what were the details and the wherefore?
How did it feel to give her hand
to a stranger, then to move to land
so bare and rolling with grass like seas,
empty of people and of trees?
Was she lonely? Did she have friends?
How did they come to make amends
the time she left my father and
took my sister by the hand
and went on home, angry and bitter.
Did my father come to get her?
All these family stories bold
were hinted at but never told.
My mother’s foolish Southern pride
would not permit the underside
of life to show. She tucked it in—
to display unhappiness was sin.
To please her, we followed the rules.
Joking and kidding were the tools
we used to hide unpleasantness
and thereby circumvent the mess
of sadness and humiliation.
Easier to show elation.
We told our secrets to friends, but we
withheld them from our family.
What stories took they to the grave,
my parents, generous and brave?
All those things they thought to spare us
come about to greet and stare us
in the eye on occasions when
we reminisce about back then.
“I wonder what?” is perpetually
my thought about my family.
With parents gone, I don’t know how
we’ll ever know the answers now.
And because I barely knew my mother,
I am still looking for another.
The Day 10 NaPoWriMo prompt—yes, two days late—was to write a poem that is a portrait of someone important to you. The WordPress prompt was “pleased.”
Wisteria: Flower of the Day, Apr 12, 2017
A must-see is Cee’s tulip. See it HERE.
Morning Matins, NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 12
full moon morning 2 jdbphoto2017
Morning Matins
Cuddled and chirruping, choirs of birds
trill from their tree limbs in boisterous herds.
Like broken crystals, they tinkle in showers,
cacophonous clashings from high hidden bowers.
We cannot see these hermits in their hiding.
Until the sun rises, they will not be gliding
smoothly on air currents, sliding and slipping,
deft and most daring while doing their dipping.
Now a clashed chirping, like the chipping of ice.
The cooing of doves and a rooster crows twice.
The masked moon is waning, obscured by the light
as the first rays of day do away with the night.
Then the wrens take to wing and the grackles glide in.
Flycatchers and orioles desert where they’ve been.
They make their curtain calls, then spread their wings
in pursuit of their breakfasts and other bird things.
vermillion flycatcher jdbphoto2017
Being a night owl, I am so rarely up at 5 in the morning that it has been years since I’ve experienced the awakening of birds in the full moonlight before the sun has yet come out. It was like a concert listening to birds awakening, still obscured by darkness and their sanctuaries of trees.
The NaPoWrMo prompt for day 12 was to use alliteration and assonance in a poem.
4 A.M. (NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 12)
full moon morning, jdbphoto2017
4 A.M.
It is too early to be stirring, the world is still asleep.
The sound is all still slumbering, the darkness is too deep.
No dayness stirs the nightness. No touch is reaching out.
No stirring and no blowing. Not a whisper. Not a shout.
When I wake before the world does, it seems the end of things
instead of the beginning, when the whole world sings.
Sun rises and the birds demand. The dogs whine for their feed.
All the world around me awakens to its need.
But for now, they are all sleeping. It is a lifeless world.
Its eyes and ears and mouth closed, around me densely curled.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to use alliteration. This is quiet alliteration, like the poem. Not too much. Just a touch!
