Category Archives: Daily Post

Neap Tide

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Three years ago I published this poem with no ending, asking commenters to construct an ending.  There were a number of excellent solutions, but unfairly, I never published one of my own, so I’m giving myself the additional assignment to finish the poem  since it also makes use of today’s prompt word of  “tide.” I’ve made many adjustments in the original poem and added the last stanza. 

Neap Tide

Borne, then born.
Clothed, fed, shorn.
Housed and cuddled,
Brain filled and muddled,
schooled, polished, allowed to roam,
to make the world into a home.

In my third quarter, now sedate.
Content to let my life abate.
Find worlds inside and there abide,
to let what happens be my guide.
To try to live with less precision.
To fear less the world’s derision.

Why so hard to be oneself?
Easier when on the shelf.
Now as I pull my world around me,
memories and dreams surround me—
my solitude a crystal jar
that lets me ponder from afar.

The current of my life, its tide,
reaches without and pulls inside
the things that help me try to see
where my life has taken me.
I contemplate and sometimes share
the truths that I’ve discovered there.

You come to read and judge each word
as wise, amusing or absurd.
You give new insights to what I’ve said—
poems not completed until they’re read.
Less in the world, ironically,
more of the world’s discovered me.

 

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If you’d like to see how others  ended the poem three years ago, go HERE.

The prompt today was tide.

Long Haul

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Sins of Omission

We’ve had a long haul, dear, with a heavy load
over a long and difficult road.
That day that you left and never came back,
the whole world you left felt stretched on the rack.
The dogs howled the moon, the horses milled ‘round.
Then everything stilled, just poised for the sound
of your homebound footsteps. We listen still.
The kids often bound to the top of the hill
looking for something. Perhaps it is you.
From sunup to sundown, we still hope to view
the sight of your figure rounding the bend
so our struggles without you can finally end.

Did you mean to leave or was it a quirk?
Were you a victim or were you a jerk?
Wherever you’ve gone to, here’s what you’re missing:
my shepherd’s pie and all of my kissing,
backrubs and whispers deep in the night,
love’s deep caresses and its sweet bite.
Selfish adventurer, it’s time to atone
for the sins you’ve amassed while off on your own.
Come home to your duty. Come home to your life.
Come home to your kids, your parents, your wife.
Your old life awaits you. Wherever you roam,
there must be a road that will lead you to home.

The prompt today is haul.

Cold Weather and the Subtle Art of Wooing

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Cold Weather and the Subtle Art of Wooing

A frozen little nose and frigid little toes
plague my teeny-bopper everywhere she goes,
for she does not cover tender little parts
when the winter comes and when the snowing starts.

Flip-flops on her feet, face naked to the air—
she seems to need to show us everything that’s there.
Little mini-skirts and a tiny cotton blouse
with nary a parka as she journeys house-to-house.

She says the weather’s nothing. She says she isn’t cold,
and she will not listen. She simply won’t be told
by her mother or her father that she should bundle up.
We try to give her mittens, hot cocoa in a cup.

Now once again she’s out of here with a new boyfriend
but without a coat or sweater to protect against the wind.
But then I see her logic. for when she subtly sneezes,
he drapes an arm around her to shield her from the breezes. 

So even though my daughter might seem naive and daft
not taking due precautions against the cold and draft,
there’s a method to her madness. She knows what she is doing.
Instead of dressing for the weather she is dressing for the wooing.

 

The WordPress prompt today is frigid.

Kitchen Chores and the Art of Divination

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The art of divination need not be limited to tea leaves. Was I scraping the bottom of the barrel or merely scraping dishes when I wrote this odd ditty three years ago?

Washing Up

The churning water brings them up.
The grounds of coffee in the cup
rise like saints to water’s top
while water runs, they do not stop.

I read their shapes like tea leaves now.
I see the future but know not how.
They swirl and change, revealing lives––
swarm like hornets from their hives.

The one I wait for comes unstuck,
careening towards his future luck.
The one that’s me caught in an eddy,
stuck for now, but holding steady.

Other remnants of finished meals––
carrot shards, potato peels––
rise up and circle, forming dreams.
Reality, or so it seems.

I see a heart and charm and lies,
a future lover in disguise,
a plane, a knoll, a tree-lined path,
a woman bound in senseless wrath.

She sends out waves that push you here––
the very thing that she most fears.
I know not who or where you are.
Are you near or are you far?

As all goes rushing down the drain,
I feel a sense of loss and pain.
And so I fill the sink again.
Will I see you one time more,
or was my vision only lore?

The prompt today was churn.

Love Letter to Estrella

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Love Letter to Estrella

If they were to make a gradient
between dull and radiant,
the scale for brilliance, it is true,
would have to culminate with you.
In both countenance and mind,
I could never ever find
such a shining, clever soul
who could begin to fill the role
you have been cast to in my life.
Your clever wit cuts like a knife
through the toughest, dullest day.
Your brilliance takes shadows away—
bans them to the corners where
they’re safe to gather, for you’re not there.
My dear, if you had any betters,
life would be full of love letters,
but since I find you’re without peer,
it’s only you that I call dear.

 

The Word Press prompt word today is radiant.

Wrinkle

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Wrinkle

Once when I was younger, poundage was the thing—
as I obsessed about the growth calories might bring.
Every morning on the scale, I checked for extra girth.
Any extra poundage was how I gauged my worth.
But now that I am older, I check the mirror first
before I stop to weigh myself or slake my morning thirst.
First thing on my agenda, if I have the chance,
is to approach my mirror to have a daily glance.
Now every little wrinkle, every little line
viewed within my mirror brings a little whine.
But when I step upon the scale, there’s less there to regret.
If I’ve gained a pound or two, I vow just to forget.
For if I’ve found new wrinkles, all that I can say
is every extra pound I gain just stretches them away.

 

I wrote to this exact prompt four years ago, so here it is again. The prompt word today is wrinkle.

Costume

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Costume

I want to be an artist, a writer and a wife—
juggling all these masks with just a minimum of strife.
A lover, mother, daughter, cousin, sister-in-law, sister.
A friend to every woman and a temptress to each mister.
A master to my canine friends and slave to all my cats.
A pal to all my blogger friends, not just to swell my stats.
As well as to some Facebook friends and email friends and Skype.
(I no longer use snail mail—I’m simply not the type!)
So, if I were being truthful and I didn’t give a fig
about what others thought of me, I’d dress up like a pig.
Why the porcine costume? The tail curled in a ring?
Because in my life choices—I want everything!

The prompt today was costume.

Dark Against Light

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Dark Against Light

The universe’s fine maquette
is light on dark and dry on wet—
her quietness and stillness set
against the thrum of castanet.
It is a sort of etiquette:
opposite versus opposite.
Victory gauged against regret.
Sunrise followed by sunset.
Every lottery and bet
boundless riches as well as debt.
It does no good to fuss and fret.
This irony is all we get—
nature one pure brightness set
as backdrop to our silhouette.

 

Want more views of this sunset?  Go HERE.
The prompt today is one of the prettiest words in the English language: silhouette.

Patina

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The photo above is one of my favorites—a closeup of a copper shower head patinated by water and age.  A few years ago, when I returned to the house I rent on the beach at La Manzanilla, they had replaced it with a shiny new one.  I mourn its absence!

 

 

 

 

The prompt today is patina.

Beauty’s Clutch.

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Beauty’s Clutch

Life’s a library where we choose
book after book to read and muse
on the truth of each, or how it serves
to amuse us or to calm our nerves.
It starts with storybooks in our youth.
Cinderella’s lovely, her kin uncouth.

The pretty sister we all adore.
The others? Rotten to the core.
We judge by beauty evermore.

As teenagers, our thoughts are filled
with thoughts of hair, complexion, build—
the ways we rank and choose our friends.
For some, this method never ends.
We judge the world by what we see.
At court, the prettiest are set free.

Our dates determined by their cars,
Our peanut butters by their jars,
Our candidates are movie stars.

World is illusion, say the seers,
the thinkers and philosophers.
We cannot know reality
by going just by what we see.
Yet time and time again, we choose
our futures based upon our views.

The “curb appeal” that meets our eye
determines which house we will buy.
The crust is how we choose the pie.

Ted Bundy had a handsome face
that drew young ladies to his embrace.
An arm sling or perhaps a crutch
tricked them into his murderous clutch.
His handsomeness served to distract
till he’d performed his heinous act.

His cover perfect, his act most skilled,
he killed and killed and killed and killed—
lives ruined and ended as he willed.

So crack the book and look inside.
Talk before you choose your bride.
Drive the car before you buy.
Sip the wine and taste the pie.
See what’s inside if you are able.
Don’t go by face or box or label.

Though beauty dulled is less sublime,
scrub the tarnish from the dime.
Looking deeper takes more time.

Don’t choose the cover of a book.
Instead, take care to have a look.
One page nor twenty will not do.
You have the whole book left to view.
Avoid appearances and preening.
Look for truth and look for meaning.

George Eliot coined the adage first.
If for truth you have a thirst,
judging by the cover’s worst.

This  poem was written 3 1/2 years ago, when I’d just started my blog and had very few readers, so I don’t think many  reading my blog today have read it before. The prompt word today is clutch
.