Category Archives: Poem

Weekly Prompts Color Challenge: Blue

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Some Thoughts Upon Viewing a Blue-Footed Booby

A chameleon can change his color by cue,
but what’s a blue-footed booby to do?
You can’t take off a foot like you’d take off a shoe.
And when blue is the only color you view
as you walk down the beach for a mile or two,
you might fancy a color a little bit new.
Yet, step after step, his feet remain blue!
It’s the color of ink and the color of goo—
a color that any mom would eschew
if she had a choice and a chance to imbue
her fledgling’s feet with a more subtle hue.
Instead, they’re this color that both of them rue.
Amazing to witness and lovely to view,
but admit it! You wouldn’t want blue feet, would you?

For the Weekly Prompts Color Challenge: Blue

Crossroads, for dVerse Poets, June 6, 2025

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Crossroads

You and I are at that place where roads cross—
a new place made by the need for things
going in different directions to meet.

How lonely if all roads
veered off on their own, solitary,
never coming to a junction.

It might have been thus, but for
a thousand small decisions that led to this meeting,
here on this corner of your road and my road.

We meet here and become one for as long
as we both decide to stand talking like neighbors,
each of us having veered
halfway away from private territory
to come to the spot here in the middle
where we become two parts of a center.

Neighbor, lover,
friend, acquaintance,
interloper, by-passer
or strangers when we meet,
so many possibilities
in the crossed roads
of our lives.

for dVerse Poets

“Full Volume,” for Word of the Day, June 5, 2025

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Full Volume

I hear my neighbor’s fighting cocks crow into the night,
expressing their readiness for tomorrow’s fight.
There are always noises cutting through the dark.
I hear the donkey’s braying and the dog’s loud bark.

Some neighborhood weekend party goes on ’til four or five,
expressing at great volume that they’re glad to be alive.
The singing and the music and the fireworks exploding
that sometimes make me feel as though my head may be imploding.

The church bells in the village every quarter hour declaring,
trucks advancing street by street, loudspeakers rudely blaring.
One truck selling vegetables, another selling gas,
shouting out their wares to everyone they pass.

Others selling water or cooking oil or soap,
scrub brushes or sponges, plastic buckets or rope—
Motorcycles without mufflers roaring down the street
revving up their motors for every friend they meet.

Bandas in the plaza play at a decibel
that I swear could raise the bats straight up out of Hell.
Mexico isn’t subtle. It’s bright and bold and proud.
That’s why for everything in Mexico, the volume’s turned up LOUD!!!!

The Word of the Day is “Volume.”

 

“Wallpaper” for Esther’s Writing Prompt, June 4, 2025

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Since I used to be a papermaker, I have dozens of blogs about paper in some form..from handmade washi lamps to toilet paper (not homemade.) This one, however, is the first poem in my new book of love poems, out within the month, I hope, and it is titled “Wallpaper.”

Wallpaper

DSC09880 

 

Wallpaper

Clinging to the wall
like an old wallpaper scrap
are the words
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you.

Their refrain slides up and down
the musical scale—
an old country tune,
plaintive and clear.

Why do I want you?

The first time I met you,
there was something about the curl of your hair.
Your eyes, so familiar­—puzzled, as though
you, too, were trying to remember.

After that, it was
the set of your shoulders—
the arm stretched between your seat and mine
with your hand on the back of my seat.

All of your restraint an aphrodesiac.

The truth is
that I pined
for two days after I left,
then went on with my life.

Still, that scrap
of wanting
comes up early in the morning
as I waken

and my mind walks,
looking for someone to pin it to,
and every time
it stops at you.

For Esther’s Writing Prompts, the prompt is “paper.”

When I searched 13 years of my blog  for the topic of “paper”  I came up with almost 400 blogs! As a writer and a papermaker, I guess that isn’t surprising.  I made the paper, starting out with tree bark that I soaked, pounded, then combined the fibers with formation aid suspended in water and dipped numerous times to make huge sheets of washi paper. I made some of my own forms for the lamps, to spread the paper over. Other larger forms were made by my husband and I devised shades for them out of my paper. Since we were both writers as well, paper formed an important influence in our lives. HERE  are some of our lamps.

“Tianguis” for RDP, June 4, 2025

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DSCF1510 - Version 2
(The prompt word really is wedged into the poem down below.)


Tianguis*

When I strolled down to the market to buy a piece of fish,
I had no other shopping list. I had no further wish.
Except for some cilantro to stuff into its cavity,
I suffered from no other acquisitional depravity.

But on my way to aisles that simply dealt in fishes,
I stumbled upon vendors selling other tempting dishes.
I bought some chanterelles and then some green tomatoes,
some Michoacan peaches and fingerling potatoes.

I could not resist a table covered with such things
as necklaces and bracelets and pretty silver rings.
I tried on clogs and three-inch heels, then bought their matching purses.
I purchased four used mysteries and then a book of verses.

Baby diapers by the dozen, though I have no kids.
A set of second-hand cookery minus all their lids.
Thank God I found a shopping cart for sale just half way through
or how I would have managed, I have not the slightest clue.

I mounded up my bounty, then turned down the next aisle,
my eyes seeking out treasures, mile after mile.
So by the time I found the fish, my cart was out of room
unless I hung my salmon from the handle of the broom

that stuck way out in front of me like a chivalric lance
wedged in between my brand new Spanx and bras and underpants.
I bought two whole red salmon and suspended them out front,
then turned my shopping cart around to puff and pant and grunt

wheeling it uphill this time now that I had decided
that it was time to take my bounty to where I resided.
An hour later, out of breath, I’d slowed my former pace,
a small parade of alley cats preceding me in space.

Eying my bag of salmon, they leapt onto my cart.
I shooed them off my underwear. I fended off each dart.
I avoided their advances. I matched their yowls and hisses,
grabbed up the broom and battled those felines for my fishes.

While with the other hand I dialed animal control,
I fear my cart got out of hand and it commenced to roll
down the hill that I’d just climbed, shedding pans and Spanx
while cats made off with both my fish, not bothering with thanks.

The rest of all my bounty was lost in its descent.
I do not have a single clue where all my treasures went.
The broom, a silver ring and a new hat upon my head
were all I made it home with. The rest was forfeited.

The cart has a new owner who fills it full of cans.
My Spanx no doubt are holding in other chubby fans.
Those cats are lying somewhere, dozing and replete
from all that lovely salmon that I did not get to eat.

And I have learned my lesson. The next time I need fish
or any other foodstuffs to complete another dish,
I’ll simply dial the grocery store to have it all delivered.
When it comes to the tianguis, I’m freshly lily-livered!

*A tianguis is an open-air market or bazaar selling new and used goods as well as fresh produce, meat and fish that is traditionally held on certain market days in a town or city neighborhood in Mexico and Central America.

The RDP prompt is “wedge.”

Beach Memoirs for dVerse Poets, June 3, 2025

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The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a poem in response to the Picasso painting above.

Beach Memoirs

That good old salty sea air combined with grainy sand
defined my beach vacation and went great with being tanned.
Felt great under my bare feet and squished between each toe.
And left footprints behind me, wherever I chose to go.
It crusted up my toenails and powdered all my floors.
Seeped into my keyboard and creaked up all my doors.
It maintained a constand presence once I got back home.
It sneaked into my ear canals and caked up brush and comb.
In spite of all the nuisance of the sand within my bed,
good memories of beach life still swirl within my head.
Yet I needn’t wax nostalgic, for I find behind each knee,
in pockets, luggage and the floor—the beach came home with me!

An Apologia for Indolence, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle, June 1, 2025

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An Apologia for Indolence

Those beasts that prowl the underworld with claws uncoiled to strike
assume the right to wander anywhere they like.
They thread their ways through canyons, all over the map––
through every twisting river’s course, through every mountain gap.
Stuck tight to their temples are their matted strands of hair.
Masked by tree limbs and tall grasses, they maintain their vigilance where
a hunter or a camper or a homeless, shiftless sort
unschooled in the ways of beasts, chooses to cavort.
Thus do those loved ones vanish who choose to exercise
while at home are resting those of us who are more wise!!!

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle, the words are: prowl beast claws shift strands twists  wander underworld map thread

 

Not-so-common Sense, for Sunday Poser #236

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Not-so-common Sense

The climate in the world today is generally tense.
So many of our leaders have lost their common sense––
basing their decisions just on thoughts of recompense.

For all of you who sit there, balanced on the fence
with regrets that your thinking formerly was dense,
please do better thinking as you vote forever hence

 

For Sunday Poser #236: Common Sense

Quality Control, for Weekend Writing Prompt 418, May 31, 2025

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Quality Control

As neighbors you are irreplaceable.
The prospect of your loss? Unfaceable 
What if the  folks  you sell it to 
turn out to be ones we will rue? 
Replacing you? 
We no can do! 
We’ll annex your house and then 
 use it as our adjunct den. 

The Weekend Writing Prompt 418 is to write a 44 word poem or story on the theme “annex.” (Image from the Irish Times)

Immobility, for SOCS, May 31, 2025

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Immobility

What once passed for vigor, I fear has turned into a case of fine acting. If I walk with energy, it is a forced energy expressed in spurts in situations where once I ran. I hope this can be attributed to the dignity of my age; but when I see others my age outpacing me, the jig is up and I am revealed for what I am—someone who, in spite of what I have always believed would happen, is wearing out and falling into that part of the life cycle that includes wrinkling up and slowing down. Ugh. I hate to admit it, but perhaps if I do it will be a type of therapy and in confronting it, it will go away—or at least it will lessen in its effect.

The truth is that I fear acting old more than I fear looking old. I hate it that I struggle to get up from a kneeling position and that I can in no way do it gracefully. I put both hands against the floor in front of me, raise my butt in the air and walk up to my hands—only way it seems possible without a lot of grunting and straining. In animal behavior, I would probably appear sexy as I do so, but I do not delude myself that any human being would find it so.

An additional truth to face now that I am older is that I am turning into my mother. Having to do more than one thing at once befuddles me and sometimes even one thing at a time is a bit confusing. Numbers don’t behave as they once did. I add and subtract and multiply and divide just fine. I grew up in a time before computers and handheld devices, so I’m used to doing functions mentally that youth finds better relegated to machines. The problem is in the interrelation of functions––just how to convert dimensions expressed in feet and tenths of feet to feet and inches, to enable me to equate it to the past when all dimensions were expressed as such. Why describe in tenths of feet which are traditionally divided into twelve parts, not ten? Why not just convert to a decimal system entirely, which I could then translate easily to inches and then to feet and inches?

The world is no longer my oyster. Devices get smaller and smaller as my eyes get worse and worse. I can’t wait for all of today’s young programmers and systems designers to get to be 60 and to try to make use of the apps they’ve designed primarily for phones so tiny that you can barely find the phone, let alone make out pages as small as playing cards. And don’t even get me started on the designers of medicine labels!!! If it isn’t bad enough that they are in size 2 font, they then make them white on yellow or gray on blue so it is impossible to read them no matter what size they are. What are they thinking? The clincher was my optometrist’s card that was primarily empty space with the writing squeezed into one corner, so small that I doubt it could be read by anyone­­–glasses or no glasses, and remember, people come to optometrists primarily because they can’t see in the first place! In addition, it was one of those cards impossible to look at because the two colors used not only made it difficult to read, but tended to affect one’s astigmatism, or at the very least one’s sense of good taste.

I must admit that I have never been an athletic person. Zumba, yoga and pool aerobics have been my most successful and enduring modes of exercise. But what I have done, I have always done with great vigor. I work hard, in the past did all my own housework and gardening and have been a bit of a workaholic. But very recently, I find myself wearing out faster, sneaking off to a hidden corner to huff and puff a bit or lie down for a ten-minute rest. I find myself getting a bit testier and less patient when things go wrong, but blessedly usually express my frustration (aloud) primarily to myself.

It occurred to me earlier this year, however, that passing neighbors can probably hear me when I shout “Idiot” to myself—or worse. Or, when I yell at the dogs to stop barking or stop jumping up. “Judy, you’re worse than the dogs!” a friend sputtered, shaking his head one day as I roared “Frida, Diego, Morrie–stop!!!” as they executed a deafening chorus of deep barks when I arrived home and opened the garage door. So I guess that is one place where my energy remains unabated. When it comes to expressing myself, I have great vocal cords. You could even say I’m still capable of a vigorous rejoinder!!!

The prompt for SOCS is “Walk.”