Picky Eater
If you don’t want me in a tizzy,
French fries? Crisp, please. Soda? Fizzy.
And though I like my ice cream soft,
when I’m holding it aloft,
if I’m not constantly on guard,
better that it’s frozen hard.
RDP’s three words today are: CRISP, SOFT, FIZZY
Image by Matthew Moloney on Unsplash.
“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
It is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable”
––Sydney J. Harris
He Sits
He sits, nearly invisible, in shadowed recesses
of his mansion’s broad front porch, picking at the tresses
of a well-worn antique doll, its dress once rich, now tattered,
its fine-textured porcelain now age-checkered and shattered.
Watch how his rumpled holiness now shifts his ancient bones
to shuffle off to wander through his mansion’s inner zones.
To trail his amber fingernails over collected treasures,
weeping over memories of his rich life’s past pleasures.
Up a spiral staircase, down its upper hall,
measuring his footsteps, careful not to fall,
the skin of memory remains to guide him on this path
toward that inner sanctum that’s become its aftermath.
Passing long-unopened chambers, he cracks open a door
to see a trail of building blocks scattered across the floor.
A blackboard with last lessons chalked across its slate––
a question and an answer whose two sides don’t equate.
Seeds of contrition start to sprout in his guilt-plowed brain.
If a past could be repurchased, he would do it all again
differently, replacing all his hard-won treasures
with time spent more rewardingly in familial pleasures.
Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl are: amber rumpled holiness skin ancient bones invisible weep chambers three seeds spiral Image by AI (I will not do this often.)
If you are wondering about the quote I used to introduce my poem, here is a brief biography of Sydney J. Harris from Wikipedia:
Sydney Justin Harris was born in London, but his family moved to the United States when he was five years old. Harris grew up in Chicago, where he spent the rest of his life. He attended high school with Saul Bellow, who was his lifelong friend. In 1934, at age 17, Harris began his newspaper career with the Chicago Herald and Examiner. He became a drama critic (1941) and a columnist for the Chicago Daily News (1944). He held those positions until the paper’s demise in 1978 and continued to write his column for its sister paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, until his death in 1986.[3]
Harris’s politics were considered liberal and his work landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents. He spoke in favor of women’s rights and civil rights.[4] His last column was an essay against capital punishment.[5]
Harris often used aphorisms in his writings, such as this excerpt from Pieces of Eight (1982): “Superior people are only those who let it be discovered by others; the need to make it evident forfeits the very virtue they aspire to.”[6] And this from Clearing the Ground (1986): “Terrorism is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; war is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.”[7]
He was also a drama critic, teacher, and lecturer, and he received numerous honorary doctorates during his career, including from Villa Maria College, Shimer College, and Lenoir Rhyne College.[8] In 1980–1982 he was the visiting scholar at Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina. For many years he was a member of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. He was recognized with awards from organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In later years, he divided his time between Chicago and Door County, Wisconsin. Harris was married twice, and fathered five children. He died at age 69 of complications following heart bypass surgery.[9]
The time finally came to move this 20 or more year-old Agave from its pot on the terrace down to the sculpture garden in the lot below. I have watched countless hummingbirds feed at its flowers as I sat at my writing desk over the years and will miss it, but it has long outgrown its pot which you can see above had to be shattered to remove the plant. Good bye old friend. Here it has made its way all the way around the house and is about to exit from the front door to make its way down the street to the lower lot.
Click on photos to enlarge.
For Cee’s FOTD
René Magritte, Discovery (1927), oil on canvas
Wooden Heart
We often wash our minds clean here on memory lane,
so what was a dark portrait is illumined once again.
Daily random memories wash up on the shore
while sadder associations stand waiting by the door.
I do not choose remembering the dark spots in our past.
It is the brighter moments that I prefer to last.
The heart I formed from copper, the heart you carved of wood.
All the broken contracts healed by all the good.
Love stories come in fits and starts and so it was with ours—
we must choose our final endings by our selective powers
to decide what we will sift from memory’s fine sand,
and though the bitter moments haven’t been fully banned,
I daily choose the moments that I will remember—
that March day when our love was young, not your final September.
Photos will enlarge if you click on them.
When I met Bob, he was teaching art in Canyon Country, California. One day he brought me this pouch necklace he had made of leather in class. Inside was a wooden heart with his initial on one side and my initial on the other. Yes. I had to marry the man. Later, with his encouragement, I became a metalsmith and formed this heart out of copper for him. The pouch now also contains a lock of his hair, a lock of mine, a miniature bar of chocolate–his favorite food on earth–and a tiny dinosaur carved by one of his small sons in the studio where he worked with his dad. When I admired it, he gave it to me, just as Bob gave to me the family he brought with him when we married.
For dVerse Poets “Everything We See”
Click on above link to see the prompt. Click on THIS LINK to see other poems written to the prompt.
Stop Over
Near sunset as the bright light fades, both minds and sky grow hazy,
and all the world shifts down a gear, relaxing into lazy.
Just one urgent swirling bee seems bent upon its tasking.
She lunges downward towards my drink, and lands there without asking.
She lowers her proboscis in order to withdraw
one drop of rum and cola that lies beaded on my straw.
A screaming gull unnerves her—sets her angel wings unfurling,
but her frenzied efforts to lift off have set my mind to swirling.
Her movements are ungainly. She leans as though to fall.
Then clumsily, she flies away, colliding with the wall.
I question if she’s sober as she flies off upside down,
digressing over water, then careening toward the town.
It’s probable this summer day under a July sun
has fermented all her nectar and added to her fun.
Her slight detour while flying off to her abode
No doubt was her attempt to have just one more for the road!**
**Can Bees Get Drunk? In the summer heat, nectar can begin to ferment and create ethanol. Bees that digest this fermented nectar will experience the same effects as humans do when they consume alcohol. Also, tree sap, like that of the lime tree, can also ferment under excessive heat leading to crowds of drunk bees. How can you tell when a bee is drunk? Studies conducted on bees have shown that alcohol consumption has a similar affect on bees as it does on humans. When a drunken bee returns to its hive, the guard bees around the hive will identify it by its erratic motion and will not allow it to enter.
Holy Moly
My friend Michael and I love to issue poetry challenges to each other. We once did one on parts of the body: Knees, etc. So, when I noticed his bandaged big toe and asked if it was broken and he replied that he’d had a mole removed from it, I decided it was time for another challenge. Below is his poem and then my reply:
ODE TO A MOLE (recently removed from my toe)
Old friend, we trod the bumpy road
of ups and downs together, you and me –
I send you home with this sad ode
to join your scabby family.
You were an ugly, lumpy one
but always benign in your own way –
you did no harm to anyone,
now you’re cut off and thrown away.
Although your features did not please,
I give you this, my final thought
for one who sometimes smelt like cheese
“They also serve who only stand and wart!”
Michael Warren
This poem was written in reply to Michael’s. May he forgive me for using his personae in writing it.
Holy Moly
Oh mole that graced my biggest toe,
you had a thankless row to hoe.
I did not know your purpose there–
devoid of title and of hair.
Had I but known why you were given,
had you only come and shriven,
I might have given absolution,
reacted with less resolution
to sever our relationship
–to halt the surgeon’s unkind snip.
We have so little knowledge of
digits that fill our socks or glove.
We do not know of strange attractions
that might have influenced your actions.
Oh mole that lived beneath my knee,
my leg, my ankle and most of me––
that chose to dwell far far below,
clinging to my aging toe.
What fierce attraction brought you there
to form this most unlikely pair?
Came you from Nile or from Ganges
to wed largest of my phalanges?
How did you choose from all that were
to settle there on him or her?
(I am embarrassed here to note,
I only know my toes by rote:
big toe, second toe, middle toe, stinky,
little toe, simply known as pinky.
I do not know their names or gender,
only that they’re long and slender.)
True, I clip their nails with care––
remove the occasional long-grown hair––
but I never address my bod
lest others label me as odd.
So you must know this apology
is no means a doxology.
I do no honor to thy name.
I do not wish to spread your fame.
In short, that act would be absurd.
I simply want to say a word
explaining to you that although
your habitation of my toe
was ended by easy decision,
I felt no scorn and no derision.
I hope this ode might serve to leaven
your anger as you speed towards heaven.
I really would not like to think
that once arrived, you’d raise a stink
to blacklist my immortal soul
by making a mountain out of a mole.
–Judy Dykstra-Brown
Nightmare II
Anchored in this groggy dream, unaware of passing
of time or space or anything that I am amassing.
Triggers from the past float by, pale and half-recalled.
Corridors of memories––narrow, densely walled.
No way to check these stories from a cursed past.
How could we have known how long past memories might last?
The cattle stir, the hoot owl hoots and night birds sing their song––
accompaniment to nightmares that draw us, too, along.
The prompt words for The Sunday Whirl are: aware passing stirred check groggy trigger pale dream space anchor cursed low
Lilacs and Popsicles
A fresh whiff of lilacs on the evening breeze
sends me off in paroxysms—sneeze on sneeze on sneeze.
tuberoses give me headaches, jasmine flowers make me ill.
Whenever dates wear aftershave, I have to take a pill.
Pinesol makes me nauseous. I’d rather smell the dirt!
And please do not use fabric softener on my favorite shirt.
I can’t believe so many folks enjoy a scented candle,
for they’re another stinky thing I simply cannot handle.
When friends bring friends to visit me, they eschew scented lotions
and tell their friends to do the same, ‘cause I have these strange notions.
What I like to smell is dill, and soil soaked by rain.
The kind of things I like to smell I’m hard-pressed to explain.
Who likes the scent of curry or cabbage in the hall?
But I admit, I like them! They don’t bother me at all.
I love the smell of Popsicles—my favorite is cherry.
It’s floral scents that I abhor, so weddings make me wary.
I hug the bride and kiss the groom, contribute to her trousseau.
But I must always hold my nose and hurry as I do so.
Orange blossoms are the worst, along with the carnation.
Even roses, I admit, are an abomination!
I really do like flowers, but only how they look.
My favorite kinds of odors are kinds that you can cook!
Chocolate cake or pudding and hot dogs on the grill
are smells that inspire ecstasy—that certain little thrill.
Vanilla poured in pudding, bananas mashed for bread—
swirl around my nostrils and end up in my head.
Such romantic odors. What stories they do tell
of culinary orgasms and itchings they will quell.
So if you want to pleasure me, please, for heaven’s sake,
leave the flowers at the shop and simply bring me cake!
For dVerse Poets: Lilacs. Image by Karo on Unsplash.
See how others responded to the prompt HERE.
Sirens
Mermaids spin their slippery thread of grass from ocean’s floor,
then string it with the beads of glass and risk their skins for more.
Surfacing to comb the beach for glass rolled round by waves,
then sit in all their finery, enticing sailor knaves
to forfeit breath and life to brave the rocky ocean’s roar
and creamy waves that bear them to a fatal shore.
Words for The Sunday Whirl Wordle are: surfacing breath slippery cream bear sit glass spin beads thread risk skins Image by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash.
jdb photo
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 