Click on photos to enlarge.
I was in the pool taking these for 1 1/2 hours. Amazing skies. San Juan Cosala, Jalisco, Mexico.
For Bushboy’s Last on the Card.
These are the very last photos I took in July, ending precisely at midnight. Sorry, Brian, I couldn’t separate them. They want to stay together, so you get them all.
Open Book
Here beneath the Tropic of Cancer,
the sky is a book opened to the wrong pages.
The Big and Little Dippers?
Pages ripped from the spine.
Orion a well-thumbed page,
held directly overhead like a book
read lying on my back.
And is it fact or fantasy
that once I saw the Southern Cross
stretched on its back
near the horizon
to the south?
Floating half-asleep with mists
of water hot from the volcano
rising around me,
was it a dream or real,
those four twinkling stars
seen just once before that night our boat
slipped over the equator?
Then, as now,
all time seems wedded—
afloat in a universe
of stars and water—
tiny no-see-ums
forming their own active constellations
as they whirl up over the water
and back down in clusters.
Wee moving
stars.
The Prompt: Trick or Trick—It’s Halloween, & you just ran out of candy. If the neighborhood kids (or anyone else, really) were to truly scare you, what trick would they have to subject you to?
They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall.
One climbs a tree to peer within. I hope he doesn’t fall.
I cower here within my house. Perhaps they’ll go away.
Though I am not religious, eventually I pray.
Their little voices raise a pitch. They start to bay and howl.
There’s a flutter in my heart region, a clutching in my bowel.
I purchased Reese’s Pieces and miniature Kit Kats
just for all these masked and costumed little brats.
My motives were unselfish. The candy was for them,
for I don’t eat much candy in efforts to grow slim.
And yet that bag of Reese’s, those small Kit Kats and such
called to me from where they were sequestered in my hutch.
It started with a whisper, hissing out their wish:
“We would look so pretty laid out on a dish!”
I knew that they were evil. I knew it was a trap.
I tried hard to resist them, my hands clenched in my lap.
I turned up my computer, listening to “The Voice.”
Those candy bars would not be seen till Halloween—my choice!
My willpower was solid. No candy ruled me.
(If that were true, no kids would now be climbing up my tree.)
Yes, it is true I weakened. I listened to their nags.
I took the candy from the shelf and opened up the bags.
Their wrappers looked so pretty put out for display
in one big bowl so colorful, lying this-a-way
and that-a-way, all mixed and jumbled up together.
No danger of their melting in this cooler weather.
I put them on the table, then put them on a shelf,
so I would not be tempted to have one for myself.
When people came to visit, I put them by my bed.
Lest they misunderstand and eat them all instead.
Then when I was sleeping, one tumbled off the top.
I heard it landing with a rustle and a little “plop.”
I opened up one eye and saw it lying there
just one inch from where I lay, tangled in my hair.
Its wrapper was so pretty—foiled and multi-hued.
Some evil force took over as I opened it and chewed!
This started a small avalanche of wrappers on the floor
as I ripped & stuffed & chewed & swallowed more & more & more!
This story is not pretty but has to be confessed.
My only explanation is that I was possessed.
They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall,
but I have no candy for them. No treat for them at all.
Surrounded by the wrappers, bare bowl upon my lap,
I think I’ll just ignore them and take a little nap.
I hear them spilling o’er my wall and dropping down inside.
I try to think of what to do. Consider suicide.
They’re coming in to get me. Beating down my door.
They are intent on blood-letting—the Devil’s evil spore.
I guess it’s not the worst death a gal could ever get.
I’ve heard of much worse endings than death by chocolate!
This week’s photo theme for WordPress was “Nighttime,” but it was too hard to pick one of the many night scenes I was considering, so instead I chose a series of shots from last year’s Dia de los Muertos in Patzcuaro. Dancing, graveside ceremonies, refreshments and general revelry go on all night long. Our boat broke down half way to the island and so we had an especially long night of it as men opened the bottom of the boat to try to free the fishing nets that had been securely wound around the propellers.
Written in the morning, long before the day
sneaks in like an intruder, intent to have its say,
words born in the nighttime flower on their own,
bursting into bloom as soon as seeds are sown.
Truth is there behind us before it ever shows—
in words before they’re spoken, in wind before it blows.
Once recognized, I free these words to flow over the world—
off on their own to have a life wherever they’re unfurled.
Sent swiftly to their different spheres to live a life apart
from one who followed after, like a horse without its cart—
I like to set my words loose to canter on their own,
to feed upon wild grass that also roots where it has blown.
The Prompt: After an especially long and exhausting drive or flight, a grueling week at work, or a mind-numbing exam period — what’s the one thing you do to feel human again?
I used to roll with laughter most every day or so.
My parties were all riotous. No one would ever go
back home again till two or three or four or five or six.
And some would stay for breakfast, prerhaps hoping that I ‘d fix
my special chocolate waffles or orange berry strudels
or curried eggs or cheesy pie or strata made with noodles.
We’d story-tell and play charades and I admit, we’d drink
and stage our paper yacht races within the kitchen sink.
The guests might come in costume and some might bring a friend
for I had grown notorious for parties with no end.
When I was a teacher, I’d invite the whole darn staff.
Away from school, our hearts were gay. We dearly loved to laugh!
But this was years ago, my friend. Our hearts were young and gay.
Now that we’ve lived past sixty, we live a shorter day.
When I have my friends over to play a game or dine,
some find the spices don’t agree and others shun the wine.
Some have little dogs at home they have to feed by five.
Others have eye problems and find they cannot drive
after dark at all and so they have to leave by seven.
I guess our laughter’s done on earth. Perhaps we’ll laugh in heaven.
Daily Prompt: Roaring Laughter—What was the last thing that gave you a real, authentic, tearful, hearty belly laugh? Why was it so funny?
Remember that delicious
walking, arms linked,
down the middle
of the gravel road
in your pajamas
at five in the morning
when you were twelve?
That first slumber party
in your safe small town
when you all stayed up all night
for the first time in your lives?
That eerie first sight
of the sun coming up
when your head had never hit a pillow
since it went down?
And then you knew for the first time
the delicious pleasures
of being a night owl—
of finding time
that everyone else was wasting
through dreams.
And you have been
an aficionado of night
ever since.
All of your term papers
and exams studied for
at the last minute,
all night long.
Books written, poems written
mostly in the dark
while towns and cities around you slept.
That power of having all of your time for yourself
with not a chance of phones ringing.
Some magic happening
once you had the world to yourself
so ever afterwards
you have survived
on as little sleep as possible.
During your party years,
dancing and drinking till three,
then going for breakfast with the single crowd
and driving straight to school at six.
You were invulnerable.
Even married,
sneaking out of bed once he’d fallen asleep
and working in your basement studio all night long,
sometimes sneaking back to bed before he awakened,
at other times caught.
“It’s nine in the morning! Have you been up all night again?”
Feeling that little terror, like a vampire caught by light.
Then at 54, with no more husband,
no more job necessary,
with a new country and a new studio
above ground,
guilty pleasures no longer needed to be hidden—
watching light after light go out
as you sat piecing art together
in your studio—until suddenly,
impossibly,
light after light went on again
so you were going to bed
as your neighbor was arising
to start his day.
Then, improbably, at 62, internet romance
entered your midnight-and-after world.
Every night serenaded to sleep
from 1500 miles away
by an equally night-addicted lover bard
at two or three or four a.m.—
or whenever pillow talk led to it.
Skype became your love letters
and your trysting spot
now and then all day long;
but still, night better swaddled
that intimate invisible union
through the dark air
that has always been magic for you,
but which now joins instead of
sending you into the single space
where you unite with that within you
which you keep separate from the world.
At night, united or alone,
you know exactly what it is you want
and live it,
with no world
to lead you elsewhere.
The Prompt: Sleepy Time. More and more of us go to bed too late because of sleep procrastination. What are the nighttime rituals that keep you up before finally dozing off?
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 