Category Archives: Poem

Supine Flu

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Supine Flu

Do you struggle when the alarm goes off every morning? If you have a really hard time, you could have something called dysania. This means you simply can’t get out of bed for about 1 to 2 hours after you wake up.

Doctors have reported an outbreak of dysania.
Folks suffer from the syndrome from Missouri to Albania.
It’s interfering with world markets and sustainability,
and athletes have determined it’s affecting their agility.

Campers seeking all the pristine beauty of the wilderness
report that they are sleeping in and therefore they are hiking less.
Card sharks spend more time at home, bed-bound in their lair
for hours in the morning, playing solitaire.

Moms trying to spark  interest in starting their kids’ days,
are equally lethargic, and prone to merely laze.
When it comes to what to call the curse, science is still vague,
for It seems most of the scientists have come down with the plague.

They put off their experiments and their cogitations
in lieu of morning lollings-about in their habitations.
Coffee shops are suffering and worldwide, gyms are closing
as people give up other morning hangouts for reposing.

The whole world has gone lazy and is given to the lying-in.
So much for morning exercise, conditioning and getting thin.
And although most joggers have ceased morning exploring,
Sealy Posturepedic stocks have been reported soaring!

They’ve tried to conduct seminars from New York to the Hague
to try to solve the puzzle of this early morning ague,
but the lazy attendees have said we’ll have to guess,
for science cannot seem to conquer this new laziness!

They haven’t even named it yet, so in their usual fashion,
world wits have exercised their nomenclature-driven passion.
Since the scientists are sleeping in, they do not have a clue
that the whole world has agreed that they have the Supine Flu.

 

 

Prompt words today are shark, spark, dysania, pristine and sustainability.

Craft Maintenance

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Photo by Simon Goetz on Unsplash, used with permission.

Craft Maintenance

Love is like a speedboat, threatening disaster
as we plummet toward our fate, going ever faster.

In youth, insecurity helps to fuel the pace
as our fear of failure keeps us in the race.

Thus is our pursuit of love fueled by the chase,
but as we proceed in life, this may not be the case.

Our boats fill up with children and the race  soon ceases.
The boards begin to shrink and paint curls off in pieces.

Still, since marriage is a boat we need to keep afloat,
love is our incentive to renovate the boat!

 

Photo by Anne Nygard on Unsplash, used with permission.

Prompt words today are pursuit, renovate, incentive and boat.

March 7

37 Replies

 

 

March 7

Measures taken for my comfort are way beyond the norm.
My sofa is commodious, my blanket snug and warm.
I’ve opened up the damper and lit a cheerful fire.
The coffee table’s covered with things I might desire:
snacks both sweet and savory, a small flask of gin,
bottles of iced tonic for me to put it in,
magazines and books on tape installed upon my phone.
I’ll barely have to stir now that I’m left alone.

Yet, all these creature comforts won’t make up for a world
where there is not another loving body curled
at the sofa’s other end. Perfection is perverse
when I have not another with whom I may converse.
The hottest fire is lukewarm, though it may crack and spark.
Its brightest flame does nothing to dispel the dark.
I’ve been more years without you now than those we spent together.
I’ve built a life and learned to live without a secure tether.

Other loves fill in a part of what you took away,
and yet when I remember, on this our wedding day,
how you might have been here had fate not removed you,
I wonder if this new life we had planned would have behooved you.
What life takes away it fills in with other pleasures.
It does no good to rail against all those severe measures
it takes to move us on into new lives that we choose
to compensate for all the old loves that we lose.

Exactly 34 years ago, we chose to follow heart.
Then 15 years later, our pathways split apart.
You began your new adventure, though not the one we’d planned,
while only I pursued our dream in this foreign land.
Though anniversaries weren’t our thing, a friend thinks to remind me,
and for once our wedding date I cannot put behind me.

 

Please click on photos to enlarge them.

For all but one of our 15 years together, Bob and I forgot our anniversary and on the one year we celebrated it, we later found out we’d celebrated it on the wrong day. I’ve told of this before, and this year, as usual, I would have forgotten it if Forgottenman (ironically) had not reminded me that it was Bob’s and my wedding anniversary date. Somehow, that reminder and the prompt words led to this poem being written. And, I had to light a little candle at a shrine constructed to commemorate our wedding day. The plans to move to Mexico, by the way, were mutual ones. Sadly, Bob passed away before we could move into the house we had purchased there. This is the house I’ve lived in for the past 20 years.

Prompt words today are blanket, article, lukewarm, commodious and world. And for dVerse Poets Open Link Night

Knit and Purl

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Image by Ursuala Castillo on Unsplash, Used with permission.

Knit and Purl

Back and forth between my worlds, a steady pace I keep,
weaving between consciousness and much-needed sleep.
I interlace the two into what becomes a life:
dreamer, writer,  parent, teacher, artist, wife.

I am both what I dream of and the one who dreams,
and somehow in the dreaming, I join me at the seams.
Thus I am both facer and the one I’m facing.
I’m in the dream and out of it with both parts interlacing.

Which part of me goes with me when I leave this world?
Will it be the knitter or the one who purled?
As this fabric of my being slowly comes unknit,
both the knitter and the purler will unravel it.

Image by Judy Dykstra-Brown

 

 

 

 

Providence

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Providence

The angriest skies contain the germ of the next day’s sun.
No matter what pervades your day, once that day is done,
your prospects for a better day already have been cast,
for the material of our future is gathered from our past.

Clear skies are born from thunder clouds and summer days from mist.
Tomorrow’s field of flowers is held in the tempest’s fist.
You may call me Pollyanna, but I can attest
to the truth that oftentimes the worst is followed by the best.

 

 

 

 

 Prompt words today are clear skies,contain, angry,pervade and material.

Gone Fishing

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Gone Fishing

I brandish my brain and confer with the night,
assiduously, wait for new thoughts to bite.
I go fishing for words that will serve as the bait
as what I am thinking I try to relate.

Floating on dreams, I troll their broad sea.
As I fish in them, I’m fishing in me.
Pulling out words from the seas where they ride
bright flashes of light that bring them topside.

Who knows what deep currents wash shores of insight
unless we cast nets to draw them to light?
In our forgotten midnights, their legions are teeming.
We must troll their dark depths for these riches of dreaming.

The lush waters of night invite interruption.
They do not view our hooks as corruption.
We’re their reason for being. They are food for our thought.
We cast lines in their depths that we may be taught.

Prompt words for today are brandish, confer, assiduous and forgotten. Painting by Isidro Xilonzochitl.

Skywriting

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Skywriting

Invisible patterns are there, nonetheless,
and they are what write my poems, I confess.
That’s why they’re birthed without any strain
and what brings me back again and again
as a surrogate mother for verses and stories
that repeat life’s foibles, beauties and glories.
Varied in humor and import and skill,
they may display failure or conquest or will.
Some may tell truth and others small lies.
They instigate laughter or irrigate eyes.
But however, once birthed, my expressions may fare,
they were there all the time–right out in the air
for anyone to arrange or abuse them.
I’m just the one who elected to use them.

Prompt words today are invisible, pattern, foible, variable and strain.

Over Head

10 Replies

Over Head

Lying in the hammock, searching for my words,
I come up with nothing, so I consult the birds.
They lift up off my trees to circle in a ring
as though they’re reconnoitering every single thing.

Swooping to partake of swirling clouds of  gnats,
eying all my fruit trees, teasing both the cats,
who, crouched up on the roof, dream culinary wishes—
far above their heads, those tiny feathered fishes

far out of their reach, but so mesmerizing that 
they far exceed temptation of squirrel or of rat.
Cats find bird movements insolent, drifting high up there.
Such an outrê thing to do, floating in the air!

Prompt words today are consult, insolent, outré and reconnoiter.

For Cee’s FOTD

Containment

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Containment

Flitting here and flitting there,
sometimes just in my underwear,
unsmitten by the winter weather,
rarely am I aware whether
there is sun or snow or rain
outside the walls of my domain,
the fervor of the climate being
something far beyond my seeing.

The phrase that March is coming in
like a lion? Beyond my ken.
They’re merely lyrics in a song.
I’ve been a shut-in for so long
that weather doesn’t apply to me.
For one year, I’ve been climate-free,
nestled here, cat on my knee
in front of laptop or T.V.

Two thousand twenty and twenty-one
have addicted me to other fun
than outside social interactions.
I have narrowed my reactions
to the confines of four walls.
No homes of friends, cafes or malls.
It’s been a year since forced to choose
any other type of shoes
than flip-flops or my Birkenstocks.
Or since I donned a pair of socks.

Have styles changed, or is the blouse
purchased before banned to my house
still in vogue? How would I know?
Where does anybody go 
that it is possible to share it?
There’s nowhere left for me to wear it!
My social life is now in traction,
suffering from under-action.

No pub-crawls, dining out or dancing.
No hobnobbing and no romancing.
No skiing and no beach vacation.
Simply solo relaxation!
We suffer lives of self-containment.
No other trips or entertainment.
The whole world sharing one elation—
the prospects of a vaccination!

Prompt words today are flit, smitten, phrase and fervor.