Category Archives: Poem

Family Reunion, Off the Grid

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Click on first photo to enlarge all.  

 

 

My sisters and dad and I.
Patti and I under the rose trellis.
This is my dad and I in front of a cabin in The Black Hills.

 

Family Reunion, Off the Grid

We find the key to the lake cabin
there where it always was above the eaves trough,
enter that family space deserted for so many years
and claim our old rooms.
Bring in firewood piled on the porch thirty years ago
and draw together at the trestle table
over dinners gathered
from the ice chests in the trunks of cars.

Dependent for so many years
on cell phones, e-mail and Facebook,
we grow listless over the loss of cell tower and wifi,
fall back on family videos from the far past,
and having exhausted that sparse shelf,
resort to family albums, dusty with accumulated years.

Over those cryptic signals from the past,
we begin to remember more,
and recall scraps of ourselves
that give a meaning to the name of scrapbook.
With no single screens possible,
we draw together over simple common images.

Dad in the neighbor lady’s hat,
sis in diapers and my mother’s heels,
my tea towel sarong and doily hat,
Mother, young enough to be our granddaughter,
in a stylish hat tipped down over one eye,

Middle sister standing triumphant at the top
of the slide she later fell from the top of—
a past truth I might have never known
if not sealed up, like this,
away from the wider world
and those parts of ourselves
that keep flying off to it.

I take her hand, grateful for her survival.
Just the two of us, now,
everyone else sealed up in this peeling album.
We put them to sleep again as we close its cover.
In the morning, restore the key,
nestle the “For Sale” sign more securely
into its mooring place and divide to our separate worlds,
the box of videos under my arm,
the family scrapbooks under hers.

The prompt words are past, video, listless and dependent.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/ragtag-tuesday-past/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/13/fowc-with-fandango-video/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/listless/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/your-daily-word-prompt-dependant-November-13-2018/

Dropped

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Dropped

The night is a broken cup,
its last sip spilled
from a shattered edge.

My thirst unslaked,
I dream
dry dreams

that go unquenched
by morning’s
gentle rains.

The dVerse Poets prompt was to write a poem that was an extended metaphor. Brief poem? Brief metaphor.

Which Way? (D.P.S.*)

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D.P.S.*

Please click on first photo below to enlarge all the photos and read the poem that is presented as their captions.

When I am home, I am up on a shelf, high up in the air, and all by myself,
but when they go traveling, I go along so I can help out telling  right way from wrong.
How far are we going?
Where have we been?
This a way.
That a way. Nine miles or ten?
Which way should I face to tell where we’re going? Which way is best to be in the knowing?
I know I’ll do better up here on the dash. 
I’ve room to spread out ‘cuz it’s less of a mash.
Should I face forward, or should I face back?

Should I inform with a wing or a quack?
Should we go left or should we go right?

It is a good thing that I’m here within sight
‘cuz Mom’s only looking at trees and at barns.

Clicking her camera and spinning her yarns.
She thinks that she’s helping me plan this excursion, 


but in fact she is simply creating diversion!
Secret

*Duck Positioning System

https://sonofabeach96.com/2018/11/08/which-way-challenge-november-8-2018/

A Surefire Recipe for Banishing Dejection

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Click on first photo to enlarge all.

 

A Surefire Recipe for Banishing Dejection

If you’re feeling down and out about this last election,
here’s a recipe that might banish your dejection.
Or, if instead your problem is way too much to do,
this selfsame concoction might just work for you.

You need to take a holiday away from all your hurrying.
Life was not created for perpetual worrying.
Take all the world’s problems and put them on a shelf.
Take a little time off  purely for yourself.

Find a ripe banana, a papaya and some ice.
Blueberries, soy milk, fiber and some apple juice are nice.
Don’t worry if the papaya has a big brown spot.
You can cut it out because, poisonous? It’s not.

Put it in a blender. Push the button with your finger.
It’s not automatic, so you will have to linger
while the magic little blades make your concoction thinner.
Take a meditation break as you watch its spinner.

After just a minute, retire with your drink.
Take it to an easy chair to have a little think.
Chances are your problem is that you do not sin enough,
so, pour a little gin in if you find it isn’t thin enough.

The Ragtag prompt today is Holiday.

The Good Wife: Page 62, Line 6

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The Haunted Wordsmith’s prompt is to pick up the nearest book and turn to page 62, line 6 and use that line in a story.  The book I picked up was Veils, Halos and Shackles and this is the line: “. . . .each night passing through a boundary.”

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The Good Wife

Each night passing through a boundary, every morning coming home.
Pinned to the day’s agenda with no free time for her to roam
the streets of her imagination, gathering images she’d share
in all the stories she would write if she had the time and nerve to dare.
What would they think if they knew where she journeyed during dreaming time?
Would the other wives revile her or tell their husband of her crime?

The lush banks of imagination where she went barefoot and unveiled
and did the things that in the real world would cause her to be shunned or jailed
were her reward for time in harness, being that person they expected.
Veiled and cloistered and obedient. Qualities they all respected.
But in her dreams she lived the wild world—unfettered, uncensored and free.
It was the only place in her life that she labeled herself “me.”

In that world that wasn’t her world—that place where she was forced to be—
She existed as observer, watching a self she labeled “she.”
She kept her true self safely hidden. Kept her opinions to herself.
All her precious thoughts and talents neatly stacked upon the shelf
waiting for her nightly visits when she could take them down and play
until the early morning sunlight drew her, regrettably, to day.

 

https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/page-62-line-6/

 

Sacrifice, for VJ’s Weekly Challenge

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Sacrifice

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Some people give their lives to it,
And others never do––
Conditions never calling for
Rash actions to ensue.
I’ve held onto my life because
Fate never asked me to
Immolate myself to save
Child, soldier, Jew,
Ensuring that I remain here
Securely in life’s queue.

I don’t think sacrifice has been anything I’ve had to do much of in my life, short of occasionally knowingly giving someone the last pork chop or the biggest piece of cake.  Perhaps this is because I had no children.

I can think of only one big potential sacrifice I made in my life and that is something I will not speak of, mainly because people it might affect are still alive. So, in lieu of writing a personal essay or poem on this topic, I invite you to read an article about the top ten most inspiring self sacrifices.  You can go  HERE to read it.

VJ’s Prompt: Sacrifice

Oblivious Seduction

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Oblivious Seduction

You’d completely
won me over
by your second stanza, 

even before you knew
I was the one
you were writing it for.

You had me
in the wink of an eye, even
before you knew

it was me
you were meant
to  wink at.

 

For dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt: Wink.

Our Newest Emperor’s New Clothes

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Our Newest Emperor’s New Clothes

How do we mentor our burgeoning youth
in these times of extraordinary stretchings of truth?
Teach them to sort out these rash acts of treason,
to approach them with heart and strain them through reason.
Teach them hating is wrong and exclusion is selfish—
that plastic’s destroying our coral and shellfish.
That medical care should be something for all
and that hoarding of wealth brings a country’s last fall.

Teach them the future is theirs to decide.
Teach them the truth of whom to deride.
Teach them that facts being taught by their teachers
may rival what they’re being taught by some preachers
and those who would rule to win their own gain,
lining their pockets again and again
with tax cuts that only extend to the rich
while the trickle down theory develops a hitch.

Teach them to sort out rhetoric from fact.
Teach them to care and to vote and to act
to stretch out the privilege to blanket us all.
We are not alone on this spinning great ball.
Our former meddling and incredible gall
is why we’re considering building a wall
to keep out the hungry and frightened downtrodden
who come to us weary, exhausted and sodden.

They ask for asylum and our protection
from dictators who have prompted defection
much as many Americans are fleeing south
to avoid the stupidity and the vile mouth
of the dictator who is now ruining our land
with illogical thinking and truth that is canned.
Who will mentor whom in this crazy new world
once the last hateful invectives are hurled?

Our world has been sold out for profit and gain—
overseen by leaders opportunistic and vain.
Perhaps it’s our youth who will now mentor us
to sort out the truth from this internet fuss.
As in the old legend, They’ll teach the uncouth
to forsake propaganda for naked truth.
It’s hoped that our youth wake us up from our doze
to point out the truth of our Emperor’s new clothes!!

 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/rdp-sunday-mentor/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/04/fowc-with-fandango-extraordinary/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/burgeon/

Political Gaming

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Political Gaming

Even a gamester must confess
that life is no mere game of chess.
Friday’s vote, Friday’s disaster
that brings on man’s end all the faster.

 

The Ragtag Daily Prompt was Friday.

Fandango’s Prompt was Chess.

 

 

Microcosm

13 Replies

Click on any photo to enlarge all.

Microcosm

Solace from this angst-filled world can best be found at home.
It wraps around me snuggly under my protective dome.
Prioritizing calm and peace, I have a little chat
with a dog or bird or two, or maybe with a cat.

I lie snug in my hammock and survey the too-long grass
of my private little meadow where no evil comes to pass
short of combat between possums and dogs too poorly trained
to entertain these welcome guests in manners more restrained.

Their battles are, alas, short lived. The dogs always the winners.
As in the world, the bounty here goes to the biggest sinners.
The possum’s only infraction? It’s not a dog or cat
and its physical resemblance is too close to a rat.

And so the world injects itself into my little nest,
insisting the familiar is what we accept best.
These battles happen when I’m gone or when I’m fast asleep,
too lost to this too-conscious world, lost in a world more deep.

As things are on the outside, I fear they’re also here.
My world is not a perfect world, but simply a small mirror
to what is happening all around. It is without a doubt
those who have most everything keeping others out!

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