Inevitable
I can’t stop it.
Neither can you.
Each person
Visits death anew.
It can’t be changed.
To die’s a given.
After life,
By death we’re driven.
Live your life while you are able.
Eat freely from life’s laden table.
(Click on first photo to enlarge and arrows to view all images.)
Chillin’
If I were the queen of time, in charge of all its flow,
I’d speed it at the dentist, while dessert would progress slow.
Each bite of pie, with me in charge, would take at least a minute.
An ice cream cone would last an hour while I enjoyed what’s in it.
If I controlled the seconds, the hours and days and weeks,
a hummingbird’s flight would slow way down to afford us peeks.
A fine ballet would then commence whenever they flew by––
each move so delicate and slow––detectable by the eye.
House work would vanish quickly as the clicking of a finger,
while footrubs, hugs and kisses would be the things that linger.
The time between waking and sleep would flow as swift as water
If I were grandmother of hours–time passing’s favorite daughter.
If I could slice time thick or thin and serve it out in portions,
I’d speed up each painful death as well as birth’s contortions.
I’d slow down bullets leaving guns and thus destroy their power.
I’d slow how fast the ice cube melts, the lifetime of each flower.
Sunsets would last for hours and time with friends for days,
so we’d enjoy together each evening’s parting rays.
Plane rides with their narrow seats and no room for our knees
would pass as fast as possible–as quickly as you’d please.
Time before a party would go slow to afford time
for the cleaning of the house, the cutting of each lime.
And once each flower is put in place, the buffet table done,
time’s pace would be restored again and revelry begun.
When we need more or less of it, time would be there for us.
Our favorite songs would be strung out. Braggarts would never bore us.
There’d be more time for writing, for eating and the arts.
Headaches would pass in seconds. So would anger, angst and farts!
If I controlled the hours, the world would be run smoother.
Instead of causing us much angst, time would be our soother.
If I could dole out time so it was spread on thin or thickly,
perhaps I could have managed for this poem to end more quickly!
The Prompt: Pace Oddity––If you could slow down an action that usually zooms by, or speed up an event that normally drags on, which would you choose, and why?https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/pace-oddity/
I Used to Eat Red
My sister Patti and I, posed by my older sister Betty. Those are “the” cherry trees behind us. The fact that we were wearing dresses suggests we were just home from Sunday school and church, our souls bleached as white as our shoes and socks!
I used to eat red
from backyard cherry trees,
weave yellow dandelions
into cowgirl ropes
to lariat my Cheyenne uncle.
I once watched dull writhing gold
snatched from a haystack by its tail,
held by a work boot
and stilled by the pitchfork of my dad
who cut me rattles while I didn’t watch.
I felt white muslin bleached into my soul
on Sunday mornings in a hard rear pew,
God in my pinafore pocket
with a picture of Jesus
won from memorizing psalms.
But it was black I heard at midnight from my upstairs window––
the low of cattle from the stock pens
on the other side of town––
the long and lonely whine of diesels on the road
to the furthest countries of my mind.
Where I would walk
burnt sienna pathways
to hear green birds sing a jungle song,
gray gulls call an ocean song,
peacocks cry the moon
until I woke to shade-sliced yellow,
mourning doves still crooning midnight songs of Persia
as I heard morning
whistled from a meadowlark
half a block away.
And then,
my white soul in my shorts pocket,
plunging down the stairs to my backyard,
I used to eat red,
pick dandelions yellow.
(This is a reworking of a poem from my book Prairie Moths.) The prompt today was to talk about our earliest childhood memories. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/childhood-revisited/
In the Soup
Definition: in trouble, as in “I’m in the soup with the boss.”
Without fear, we’d be in traction with braces head to toe––
Each day a speed infraction from refusing to go slow.
We’d fall off tipping ladders and land upon our heads,
or go to sleep with adders sleeping in our beds.
We wouldn’t have good sense about where we should go.
I fear we would be dense––our thought processes slow.
We’d wind up in the jungle sleeping on the ground
hoping for each bungle a solution might be found.
Since fiction often follows fact, I’ve been in many a stew.
But luckily, I chose to act, so “done to” turned to “do.”
In the past I came too near to kidnapping and rape,
and luckily by conquering fear, I’d find means of escape.
After graduating college, I became a bum;
but now I can acknowledge that I was often dumb.
Fearlessness was often what got me into trouble.
My mind would choose to soften the rub of danger’s stubble.
Traveling a foreign region, I was so naive
that my mistakes were legion, so now I do believe
it’s crazy to be fearless. Now even I succumb.
In caution I am peerless––finding fearlessness is dumb!
The Prompt: Fearless Fantasies––How would your world be different if you were incapable of feeling fear?
Rating Dating
Some men seem to run their dating game like it’s a race,
whereas for their date this doesn’t seem to be the case.
If so, I must advise the guy to try to slow his pace
lest the lady feel that she must slow him down with mace!
She may be superficial, while he is way too smart;
or he may adore motocross while she’s a fan of art.
She’s olfactorily sensitive and he just let a fart.
Such opposites do not attract in the affairs of heart.
In chick flicks when a date goes wrong, it is always funny.
She runs into a former love or he runs out of money.
But no matter how things go, the endings are all sunny.
By the credits, she is “dear” and he is always “honey.”
In real life, when it comes to love, I prefer to view it.
Much easier to say you want it than to really do it.
The problem is if either of you chooses to eschew it,
then the other one of you must admit that they blew it.
So for the couplet, I’ll admit that yes, true love is groovy;
but when it comes to dating, I’ll just settle for the movie!!!
The Prompt––Third Rate Romance: Tell us about your funniest romantic relationship disaster. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/third-rate-romance/
After Vespers
I arrived home with much ado,
removed a small stone from my shoe,
took off my girdle, straightened my hat,
smoothed my gloves and kissed the cat!
I believe in proper things––
all the joys good breeding brings.
I do not spit, smoke weed or curse.
I carry breath mints in my purse.
I go to church. I tithe and pray.
I brush my teeth three times a day.
But when I went to watch TV,
I found a strange sight greeting me,
for there sitting upon my couch,
next to my little cat treat pouch,
were two small beings––a her and he––
the lady perched on the fellow’s knee.
They both looked up with cool aplomb
as though they hadn’t dropped a bomb
appearing with no invitation.
What’s more, to my great perturbation,
balanced on the lady’s knee
was the chocolate cake I’d meant for me!!!
She took a bite and gave him one,
then turned to me when she was done,
addressing me, though we’d not met.
(I mean, just how rude could one get?)
And what she said in a haughty tone,
perched upon her human throne?
“I’m afraid this cake is rather dry.
I wonder, have you any pie?”
I’ll tell you no more of this story,
for after that, things just got gory.
My opening words would seem most pale
compared to the ending of my tale.
Suffice it then for me to say
the uninvited didn’t stay.
Afterwards, my gloves came off.
I cleared my throat and gave a cough.
I scraped the cake crumbs in the sink,
mixed myself a little drink,
closed the drapes, unplugged the phone
and stretched out on my couch––alone.
As I settled down to Downton Abbey,
I was feeling way less crabby.
Real glad I hid the pie, y’all,
because I sat and ate it all!!!
The Prompt: Unexpected Guests. You walk into your home to find a couple you don’t know sitting in your living room, eating a slice of cake. Tell us what happens next. What a hilarious prompt! I loved writing this one.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/unexpected-guests/
Flight of Fortune
Aisle seat in the third row–
a next door neighbor I do not know.
I put my seat belt on and then
look up to her all-knowing grin.
“May I tell your fortune?” is her request,
though it is not made at my behest.
A pastime really not my choosing,
still, with nothing more amusing
to pass the time, I give consent
and this is how our time is spent
in those first minutes of our flight,
until the ground is out of sight.
My fortune told, I sit and think,
ordering another drink,
pleased by some of her predictions
but finding others contradictions
to how I’ve planned my life to be.
I worry my fingers upon my knee.
Does she concoct or does she see
the lines that she relates to me?
Some things she mentions have happened, still,
I hope that others never will.
Yet I fear if I reject
the things she says, I might deflect
the good things so they’ll never be.
This is the choice that faces me.
Can the good that she foretold––
of feats accomplished and love and gold––
be accepted without the rest?
I want the warmly-feathered nest,
the stranger tall and dark and rich,
but I do not want all of her pitch.
The illness, sadness, loss of friends?
I don’t like how my fortune ends.
I press a coin into her hand,
take off my seat belt and quickly stand.
Perhaps if I just change my seat
and find a seatmate more discreet,
I’ll change my life as easily–
and react less queasily
to conversation that is not rife
with details of my future life!
Life Line:You’re on a long flight, and a palm reader sitting next to you insists she reads your palm. You hesitate, but agree. What does she tell you? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/life-line/
Freudian Slip
Caught in the tangles of last year’s castoff wreaths in our local cemetery, I found the following words. They were scrawled in a frenzied adult handwriting in fading purple ink on a curled yellowing slip of lined paper with one jagged edge, as though it had been ripped from a journal:
Behind the door of my dream, I heard a knocking. I walked down a tree-lined corridor to the door at the end. As I drew nearer, the knocking grew louder and more frenzied. I struggled with the bolt, which would not open, but as I finally drew it back, there was an explosion of sound—organ music playing a dirge in such a joyful manner that it sounded like a celebration instead of the reflection of death.
As the door creaked open, I heard the crash of glass breaking and then the tinkle and scrape of this glass being ground down to shards and powder as the door opened over it. There was such a bright light shining from behind the figure standing on the other side of the door that I could make out only her silhouette—a woman with an elderly stance wearing a long skirt. She was large of bosom and had thin wisps of hair piled untidily on top of her head. In one hand, held down to her side, was a basket. In the other hand was a jar.
I drew closer to the woman, to try to get her body between my eyes and the source of the bright glare—to try to see who she was. When I was but six inches from her, I finally recognized her as my grandmother. She was wearing the same navy dress with pearl buttons and gravy stains down the front that she had been wearing the last time I remember seeing her. In the basket was a mother cat with three kittens nursing. In the jar was chokecherry jelly, if its handwritten label was to be believed.
As I drew up to hug her and kiss her cheek, she started humming a song—some church hymn, perhaps “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” It was hard to recognize because she hummed it under her breath—with little inward gasps at times that made it sound like she was eating the song and then regurgitating it.
Her eyes were vacant as she looked over my shoulder. “Grandma, it’s me!” I said, but she still didn’t look at or acknowledge me.
“Do you want to play Chinese Checkers?” I asked. It was the one activity I could remember that both my grandma and I enjoyed.
She expressed a long intake of breath, shook her head no and held out the basket to me.
“Is this a gift?” I asked.
“No, it is an obligation,” she hissed, and as the basket passed from her hand to mine, she seemed to deflate—whooshing backwards out of sight—until only the basket of cat and kittens and the jar of chokecherry jelly lying sideways on the trail she had vanished down gave testimony to her presence.
“Bye, Grandma,” I called wistfully down the trail she had vanished down. “I love you.”
But I didn’t love her. I had this memory of sleeping with her in her feather bed and almost smothering trapped between the thick feather pillow and comforter. I have an explicit memory of holding the pillow over her face and her struggling to get free. It was a joke and I hadn’t meant to smother her, really, but there was such power in the fact that she could not fight off an 8-year-old girl that it made me hold the pillow over her face for a few seconds longer than I wanted to or should have. She was all right. Just frightened as I had been frightened so often by her stories of poor little Ella and all the wrongs done to her in her lifetime. It was as though I had to choose sides—her side or the side of the people who had done mean things to her. And like the little devil she always made me out to be—I chose the other side.
The Prompt: Everything Changes––You encounter a folded slip of paper. You pick it up and read it and immediately, your life has changed. Describe this experience.https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/everything-changes/
Lucky Duck riding the wild turkey off to a new adventure!
Lucky???
The first person I talked to today was myself, awakening from a dream and answering aloud whatever question the person in the dream had asked. So, I’m going to reblog a poem of my own that I wrote three months ago. When I look back at even something I wrote last week, I barely remember it; so perhaps this will feel fresh to you as well, even if you read it before:
“You’re So Lucky!”
Too often those described as lucky
are actually only plucky.
It’s the decisions that they make
that make their lives a piece of cake.
If they have a cushy job,
far above the teeming mob,
it is because they chose to go
to college, so they made it so.
Or if they traveled after school,
when others said they were a fool,
and tell of their adventures young,
some people tend to come unstrung
and say they wish they’d had the chance
to participate in life’s wild dance
when they had the energy,
but, you know, traveling’s not free.
The truth is that most anybody
can go to college if they study
or travel anywhere they wish.
Life’s feast is a communal dish.
There is work that you can do
from Broken Hill to Timbuktu
if you are willing to do the tasks–
whatever the situation asks.
It’s true that there are places where
life is not equitable or fair–
places where a woman’s lot
keeps her chained to stove and cot,
or places where sheer poverty
limits all that you can be.
Yet many who bemoan their fate
simply needed to leave their gate
and take the chance to see the world–
allow their lives to be unfurled.
But, lacking courage, they remained
in the place that fate ordained
was their lot in life and so
just maintained the status quo.
Many are happy where they are
and have no wish to roam afar,
but for those who moan and fuss,
saying all the luck’s with us
who have chosen to live in paradise
(and say it more than once or twice,)
I just want to say once more,
“Here is your suitcase, there’s the door.”
Luck is more often made than won,
and is, I fear, too quickly done.
So even if you’re old and gray,
do what you want to do today.
If you feel caught in the muck,
break free from it and make your luck!
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/the-luckiest-people/
Airborne
Way back in our salad years,
our endings were all sealed with tears
as each successive love affair
popped like a bubble into air.
Now that we’ve earned our seasoning,
more endings end in reasoning.
We understand that all things end
as lover, father, daughter, friend
begins to go the way of all
who stumble, falter, fade and fall.
It is the fate that’s given us,
with all our stories ending thus.
Accomplishments, possessions, love
are like the fingers of a glove
that, when all our work is done
peel off each finger, one by one.
Empty-handed, we leave this life–––
its pleasures, loving, stress and strife––
to join the welcoming arms of air.
To discover what awaits us there.
This morning, I awoke to the line, “Way back in our salad years,” running through my mind. The next lines occurred as I let the dogs out and stumbled back to bed. I completed the poem before I looked at the daily prompt, and although it doesn’t meet the exact prompt, it seems to go along with the title of “Builds Character,” so here it is! https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/it-builds-character/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 