Watching kids in the playground
When I was young and limber and given to wild rambles,
I came home from my wanderings complete with burrs and brambles.
I shed them on the carpets, I shared them via towels.
Never taking credit for the curses, shrieks and howls.
I thought my lovely meanderings among the fields and ditches
were worth the sacrifice of things brought in on my britches.
For Thursday Inspiration, the prompt is “Young.”
jdbphoto
Punished
There is something one can do with anger—
some sign that can be recognized
and answered—
a scab to be picked,
a mystery that leaves clues.
The only punishment
impossible to rectify
is
silence.
“Rewind” asks that we. republish a post from a past year that was published on the same day of the month. In this case, July 23. This poem was one I published on this date ten years ago.
Love in a Warm Climate: Bali/Mexico
Why did we think that love would be any easier in a warm climate?
Shed of clothes in Bali, we didn’t shed our different skins.
You were prickly as a rambutan,
while I slipped in and out of moods
like one directed
by a maestro.
You once said you couldn’t write when you were happy,
and when you didn’t write for years with me,
you were unhappy in your happiness.
All the planets of your family were pulled by the gravity of your moods.
Could we break the fatal pull beneath the Southern Cross?
Pulled back into love by a climate Equatorial?
We tried again, but once there,
you said you couldn’t stay in Mexico for three days,
let alone a year,
and lobbied for our ejection from this paradise.
Then one week later,
you asked me how I knew
that this was what we were supposed to do,
and you won the argument I never thought I’d let you win.
We bought a house in Mexico.
Perhaps we both thought we could warm our hearts once more
to find that hot love that had fueled our beginning,
and I am left to wonder how our story might have ended
if you had lived to try with me––
love in a warm climate.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is “Eject.”
This is the dress made for me by my sister, Betty Jo, in 1957 for the parade celebrating our town’s founding fifty years before. The theme was “fairytales” and you have probably already guessed that I was Little Bo Peep.
Our dVerse Poets assignment today was: Now write a list poem that begins ‘These I have loved:…’ of the everyday things that are important or precious to you. Be specific, picking out tiny details, and don’t stop until you get to the bottom of the page.Finish with ‘All these have been my loves’. Leave yourself time to refine your draft.
Here is my answer to this prompt:
Pleasure/Pain
These I have loved:
Tastes abandoned, former loves,
outgrown pleasures, bleached white gloves
worn for church or the senior prom,
fresh cherry pies cooked by my mom
from cherries pitted by our juice-stained fingers.
How memory of both labor and reward still lingers.
The cold bite of a walk-in freezer on a sweltering summer’s day.
The smell of sweet clover and itch of hay.
The press of leather constricting toes in my first pair of three-inch heels.
The squeak of rusted bike chains and the crunch of wheels
on gravel roads in our small prairie town,
the pelt of hailstones coming down
deafening on the metal of our brand new ride
with myself and sister sealed, terrorized, inside.
Hurtling across the street to the last school bell’s pealing.
Scabs peeled from skinned knees too slow in their healing.
The squeeze of painful memories of love gone wrong,
resurrected by the lyrics of a song.
Placing flowers on a sister’s grave,
remembering the past gifts that she gave:
that tiny dress that she once made
for me to wear in the parade
Recalling the pleasure and then afterwards, the pain
of the swell of memories the heart no longer can contain.
Grandma’s crazy quilt, of family clothing scraps stitched thin and wide,
left abandoned on the bed wherein my sister died.
Homes left to the lives of others, families left for other lives,
memories like bees swarming to other hives,
memories crumbling in boxes stored on shelves,
these bygone relics of our other selves.
All these have been my loves.
And this is that same dress, 69 years later, brought to me by my niece Cintra when we met in Peoria, AZ a few months ago. She had found it in her mother Betty’s things when she passed away a few years ago. More mingled pleasure and pain.
Label Machine
Pure rayon or crepe de chine?
Trust the labelling machine.
It for sure will have it right
and easily can solve your plight
when you have that puzzling quandary
over what to call your laundry.
It’s easy. You are simply able
to look inside and read the label.
With people, it is not the same.
Labelling may unfairly blame
someone of a certain hue
for something they would never do.
You may as well class cleft of chin
as a mark of sloth or sin
as to choose one’s place of birth
as a determiner of their worth.
It’s clear we’ve failed our populace
when we see how many of us
trust bigotry and generalization
to determine policies of nation.
“Give us your tired and your poor”
has been swept right out the door.
The symbol of what’s free and fair
now stands forlorn with empty stare.
Behold: the Statue of Liberty—
a symbol of hypocrisy.
Esther’s Word of the Week is “Label.”
Meeting an Old Friend
Sixty years since you lived one block away.
In one hour we meet for brunch and memories.
Really my sister’s friend,
but in small towns, so devoid of much else to do,
people still living and moved away
become legends.
Your mother the nightclub singer
with the distinctive whistle that called you home
from behind trees and low in ditches at night,
the rest of us still caught in the thrlll of “ditch ‘em”–
our version of hide-and-seek.
I was the tag-a-long, the watcher
to your cowboy games
and the neighborhood plays
raising nickel-after-nickel for a memorial plaque
for the small boy killed from a fall from the tallest slippery slide.
That slide gone soon after, the plaque never installed,
as you were gone to a larger town
and voice lessons translating your pure high voice
to the more studied operatic perfection
of a sweet bottom in a tight girdle.
Still a small town girl at heart
now, all these years later,
you pull our somewhat
off-tune unschooled
voices to you
over years
and miles
to sing
the
old
school
song.
For FOWC the prompt is “Killed.”
The prompt word is just a tiny tragic detail in this nostalgic poem of a past
and a present that has now become the past as well.
Back row: Patti Dykstra Arnieri, Val Lecke Halla, Ed Jackson
Front row: Mick Penticoff, Judy Dykstra-Brown and Mick’s granddaughter Melissa
School Reunion
Wind strums the grass
around the Dakota town
where we gather under a prairie sky.
Back home again after sixty years
all the world constricted to this gymnasium––
forgotten friends are again remembered,
denied loves again brought to mind.
Folklore of the past is stirred up to reveal new truths
as facts and rumors buzz around our heads
like bees that store old stories like honey,
then lie fallow to be stirred up again in 5 years.
We leave each other again, then,
for one more time,
wondering with departing sighs
whether pleas to keep in touch
will be remembered.
For The Sunday Whirl, the prompt words are: home world denied bees pleas forgotten folklore wonder fallow sigh sky strum
I am riding home from my 2-day school reunion in South Dakota as I write this poem wherein I’ve added the restriction of making use of the twelve prompt words above. It was the best reunion ever–the 61st year after my high school graduation, but since the all-school reunions (meaning they are for every class who ever graduated from the school) for the tiny high school I attended are staged only every 5 years, it was only my 12th reunion, not all of which I’ve been able to attend. It was, however, the best one to date. (But then my sister says I say that every time.) This time there were lots of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of schoolmates who attended and it was wonderful to see these additions to their lives and continuations of their stories.
More Photos: 
Reunion Parade combined with 250 year celebration..Horsemen with flags of all 50 states. Photo by Patti Arnieri.
doll by Louie Gann, jdbphoto
Sleight of Knees
When the circus clown was lauded,
marveled at, praised and applauded
for hanging from the high trapeze
for 24 hours by his knees,
though he was admired for his moxie,
it turns out it was just epoxy!
For Blast from the Past, here is a silly poem from july 15, 2017. I shared a house with Louie for two weeks at Cannon Beach, Oregon. in 2001 and still have her wonderful doll. It made the culling before my move to Mexico. Louis, if you see this, drop me a line…
Sign Language
I know our birth tongues aren’t the same,
but still I think words aren’t to blame.
It is your means of understanding
that convinces me you’re underhanding.
For every time I give you kisses,
it seems you go to other misses
in search of the translation tips
they give by laying on of lips.
My dear, if we were dumb and blind
then translation service of this kind
might make some sense, but I must say
your excuses will not work today.
Please have your translator of prose
stick this finger message up your nose!!!
The Word of the Day is “Translate..”
The Eighth Deadly Sin:
(Advice for Errant Males)
Wrath and avarice and pride
can be safely kept inside.
So although we all may be them,
it is often hard to see them.
If you are a seasoned actor,
sloth will never be a factor
leading to your firing
or premature retiring.
Often envy, I confess,
is one more way that I transgress;
but even though we’re caught inside it,
almost all of us can hide it.
Lust is the sin that’s most unfurled
upon us in this modern world
in every book and magazine.
In movies? It’s in every scene.
And though sex is oft debated,
we only label them X-rated;
and though we profess to abhor them,
in solitude, we may adore them.
Gluttony’s the only sin
we cannot seem to keep within;
for everything that meets our lips,
alas, is carried on our hips!
Each is labeled “deadly sin”—
the one outside, others within;
but I’m inclined to add another
perhaps not taught you by your mother.
These deadly sins from one to seven
may be what keep you out of heaven,
but it’s transgression number eight
that will ban you as my date!
You may talk as you pour wine,
and continue as we dine;
but when I start to tell a tale,
heaven help the errant male
who utters “Me, too . . . ” then proceeds
to list more of his facts and deeds.
As music fades and lights all dim,
bringing the subject back to him!
I know that sinning is the fate
of many couples on a date.
So lust may now and then corrupt me,
but no one gets to interrupt me!!!!
For the “Classic Material” prompt, we were asked to reblog material posted on this date..July 12, in another year. This was posted in 2019. I was actually a reblog from 2019, but I am telling the tale again in hopes those it describes might recognize themselves and repent before it is too late.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 