Category Archives: Hearts

Day Lily, for Cee’s FOTD

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For Cee’s FOTD

Hearts of Stone, Forever United

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And to go with this new image, more rocks, and an old story:

After my husband Bob died and I moved to Mexico, I started finding hearts everywhere on the long walks I took every morning. The first one was on the side of a cow, the other on the forehead of a calf. I found plastic hearts and the imprints of hearts on shoe bottom impressions pressed in the sand. Then I began to find heart-shaped rocks. It was uncanny.  Messages, perhaps, or perhaps just my increased consciousness of anything that could be a sign. This continued for some time, but as my initial crushing grief lifted, so did my insistence that these were messages.

Then, at least a year after his death, on a driving trip enroute  to the states, I returned to one of our favorite places—Bahia de Los Angeles in Baja California.  As I stood tossing rocks into the ocean, I suddenly felt my wedding ring slip off and go flying into the water. Stupid, stupid!  I berated myself, and knowing it was futile, I nonetheless went wading into the surf that was spreading out on the sand, then deeper into the water to where I imagined the ring had disappeared.

What were the chances? I searched for five minutes, then ten, and I was about to give up when a retreating wave wiped the ripples out of the surface of the water and there below I saw my heavy gold ring set in diamonds and lapis lazuli.  As I scooped it up, a rock that  lay buried in the sand beneath it came up in my hand as well, and after slipping the ring onto my finger again, I was about to toss the rock back into the water, when I happened to glance down at it and saw that it was in the perfect shape of a heart!

 

For Stream of Consciousness Saturday: Rock

Favorite Finds

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Black onyx and white enamel pin found in my grandmother’s drawer and given to me by her, along with assorted finds..collected to be assembled into a retablo
Beautiful face superimposed upon a beautiful face.
Sacrificial blood cup Found on the shores of Lake Chapala
1 1/2 ” round stone formed by the wave action in Lake Michigan. Found in a little stand by the side of the road
Small handformed clay dog found in a stall on the malecon in Ajijic
Bird carved from a cow horn found in an art market in Havana, Cuba.
Large replica of a PreColumbian piece found in Chapala, Mexico
Basket found on Lombok Island. basket woven from a local woman, basket base and figures on top carved and painted by her husband.
More of the same.
Bird formed from palm branch found in La Ribera, Baja California. Formed by a friend out of fronds taken from her palapa roof as they created a new one
Huge Bobo ceremonial mask found in my front driveway when African friends set up a show there. One of the few things I brought with me to Mexico. 74 inches high.

Click on photos to enlarge.

For the Favorite Finds Prompt

Wooden Heart

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Photos will enlarge if you click on them.


Wooden Heart

We often wash our minds clean here on memory lane,
so what was a dark portrait is illumined once again.

Daily random memories wash up on the shore
while sadder associations stand waiting by the door.

I do not choose remembering the dark spots in our past.
It is the brighter moments that I prefer to last.

The heart I formed from copper, the heart you carved of wood.
All the broken contracts healed by all the good.

Love stories come in fits and starts and so it was with ours—
we must choose our final endings by our selective powers

to decide what we will sift from memory’s fine sand,
and though the bitter moments haven’t been fully banned,

I daily choose the moments that I will remember—
that March day when our love was young, not your final September.

 

When I met Bob, he was teaching art in Canyon Country, California. One day he brought me this pouch necklace he had made of leather in class. Inside was a wooden heart with his initial on one side and my initial on the other. Yes. I had to marry the man. Later, with his encouragement, I became a metalsmith and formed this heart out of copper for him. The pouch now also contains a lock of his hair, a lock of mine, a miniature bar of chocolate–his favorite food on earth–and a tiny dinosaur carved by one of his small sons in the studio where he worked with his dad. When I admired it, he gave it to me, just as Bob gave to me the family he brought with him when we married.

 

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Prompts today are memory lane, daily, dark, portrait and wash.

February 13

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February 13

This morning, upon waking,
I kissed my pillow and imagined it was you.
There was no sadness in the act.
It was a simple act of adulation.

If there had been a real person here,
I would wish that it were you,
but I’m content here in my solitude—
writing tributes to past lovers—

a bit puffier (me, not you)
than even that last time we met,
when I waken, joints are stiffer.
The cat more crabby in demands for food.

I wouldn’t say time marches on.
It turns its pages, shifts its screens.
The world, more innovative since the Internet,
spins us a new tale second by second.

Vicariously, we speed through life.
Other people’s lives become our own.
We feed ourselves and perform daily functions,
our minds in one world and our bodies in another.

In that manner,
one thing substitutes for the other.
Over and over, like shuffled cards.
This reality and that one.

Tomorrow the busy street outside my bedroom window
will be full of vendors: hearts and flowers
marking half the world’s celebration
of romantic love.

Upon awakening, I kiss my pillow—
not a conscious act. Not one I will repeat.
A simpler act and one unplanned
to remind myself, perhaps, what’s in my heart.

 

Click on photos to enlarge.

 

The prompt words today are innovative, tribute, adulation and puffy.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/rdp-wednesday-innovative/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/13/fowc-with-fandango-tribute/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/your-daily-word-prompt-adulation-february-13-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/puffy/

Hearts Adrift

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flying-heart

Hearts Adrift

You’ve piqued my curiosity, riled up my blood.
Brand new possibilities surge in like a flood.
Sages say enchantment is magic of a kind
that brings down your defenses and permeates your mind
with fantastic possibilities that make it fully probable
that heavy hearts inflate until they are light and bobbable.

See them on the tide line, floating all about—
free of any tether and free of any doubt.
A sea of love ‘s an image once rendered in a song
that catches in our hearts and makes them sing along.
They form a soft accompaniment to the real world’s roar
that’s telling us we’re not the type a lover would adore.

But you’ll find that hearts may come in many makes and guises,
and when you set your heart adrift, it just may yield surprises.

 

The prompt words today were sage, pique, enchantment and blood.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/rdp-sunday-sage/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/10/fowc-with-fandango-pique/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/your-daily-word-prompt-enchantment-february-10-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/blood/

Love Stories

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Dim Sum are little love poems shaped like a heart. I challenge every reader
to write one and send it to me! For the fun of it, I made mine into a chain of hearts.

Morning Metaphor
When you rise hours early
to stand in front of the window
and watch for the UPS truck,
I shift my dreaming over
to your warm pillow.
If you are a child,
I am a
cat.
The Computer
has become the new hearth
and heart of our home, now
glowing out in the darkness
long after we have moved
to the room next door
to try to sleep
in vain.
A Clock
on the wall of every room
speaks its midnight language
and intrudes into my dreams,
each one telling me I am
another hour closer
to leaving
you.