Category Archives: Poetry

In the Open

In the Open

The day is balmy
with segmented clouds.
The African tulip tree
spreads its boughs wide
over the seated ones
as well as the one who stands in front of us,
leading us to ground our feet,
relax our arms with hands palms up
and to go inside ourselves
to watch our breath
and be in the now,
in the state that she calls openness.

To be in the future is not openness, she says,
and to be in the past is not openness.
Only the now is really living.
And it occurs to me
that when I think I want a cup of coffee
and leave my studio to go in search of it,
then, in the kitchen,
can’t remember what I’m there for,
(and the reason why so many
friends my age are doing the same)
is because we are in this state of openness
more frequently
as we get older.
Wanting a cup of coffee is in the future,
and remembering we wanted a cup of coffee
a few minutes ago
is having to remember the past.

Standing here in the kitchen
listening to the baby birds’
loud cheeps
from their nest in the kitchen overhang
is being in the now.
And so it is that all of us, as we age,
are in the deepest stages of meditation
most of the time
and should not worry so much
about Alzheimer’s or dementia,
because we are where Tibetan monks
and ladies leading meditiation
would have us be.

Open. Living the now
with increasingly
less memory
for what was
or was to be.

 

The Ragtag prompt today is open.

Knees

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Knees

Knees, knees, folks have knees
from Katmandu down to Belize.
In Peru, where they ride llamas
they still have knees in their pajamas.
Further north, up where it freezes,
even Polar bears have kneezes.

Knees, knees, folks have knees
to ogle, fondle, pet and squeeze.
(It’s easy when they’re under kilts.)
Some knees on roller skates or stilts
are scabbed and scaly, skinned and sore
but still they know what they are for.

Knees are great to bounce a baby,
to kick a soccer ball, or maybe
to bend in prayer when they’re in church,
or form a perfect sort of perch
for swains who fall on bended knee
to say, ‘I’d like to marry thee.’

Knees, knees, folks have knees.
In sun they burn, in snow they freeze.
Yet  knees can cross and knees can knock.
Knees can jog you round the block.
Knees are handy and dependable.
And aren’t we glad that knees are bendable?

 

The Daily Addictions prompt today is convenient.  I ask you.  What is more convenient than knees?

Blind Date

 

Blind Date

With an air of abandon, she threw off her clothes,
rolled up her hair and night creamed her nose.
She was sure she’d see no one ’til morning at work,
so she removed her bridge with a tug and a jerk.
She peeled off her eyelashes, creamed off her blush.
Did all  this slowly with no need to rush.
A natural girl now, her face put away
for her to reclaim the very next day.

She’s snugged up in flannel, propped up in her bed.
By the end of this evening, her book will be read.
The large bowl of chili that rests on the table
right by the bed, she’ll devour when she’s able.
In between page turns, she’ll take a big bite.
She’ll feast and she’ll read ’til she puts out the light.

Until the night’s silence is shattered by ringing.
The strum of guitars and some romantic singing
completes all the ruckus occurring outside
as she pulls up the covers to cower and hide.
For she has remembered, alas and too late
that this was the night that she had a blind date.
She springs to the bathroom to try to redo
all that she’s lately hastened to undo.

“Just a minute!” she calls, and she hears his reply.
Her beauty procedures are done on the fly.
She rips out her curlers, unwinding, unfurling
the locks she’d just put there for overnight curling.
The mascara wand flies. Rouge is rapidly swiped
across the same cheeks she has recently wiped.
She throws on her clothes, grabs her phone and her purse.
No more time to prepare, and no time to rehearse.

She opens the door to survey her date.
He has a nice face and a shiny bald pate.
She consults her watch and she scolds, “You are late!”
Her side of the tale, she’ll neglect to relate.
They’ll have a fine evening and he will take care
not to mention the curler in back of her hair.
Some things best unspoken are things her date knows—
like her one missing eyebrow and cream on her nose.
These slight imperfections he took in his stride
Which is why one year later she wound up his bride.

.

The Daily Addictions prompt is abandon.

Pied Beauty II

 

 

Today’s prompt being “spoof,” I decided to resurrect this parody of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poem “Pied Beauty,” one of my first blogs ever back in 2014:

Pied Beauty II

Thanks be to Sara Lee for appled things—
For pies, for apple fritters and for thin-rolled strudel crust;
For pastries of the fruit of Eve and sauce it swims within;
Fresh-cooked in ovens, how their sweet juice sings;
The sugar clotted and pierced— place it on plate we must;
And all taste, for how can tackling it be such a sin?

All things made of flour and Crisco and of apples sweet;
(How can they by nutritionists be so sorely cussed
With words professing they won’t make us thin?)
With their tart flavor are sure our lips to meet;
And meet again.

—Judy Dykstra-Brown

 

And now, the original:

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

The Ragtag prompt is spoof.

Some Cursory Comments

Some Cursory Comments

My cursory comments I doubt will draw raves,
garner no compliments, create no waves.
Words cast to the wee hours have little wit.
It would be no loss if they never were writ.
And yet they keep coming, first one, then the next.
Doubtless their readers will be sorely vexed
to see that these lines here are nothing but fluff.
Cursory comments are rarely enough!!!

For Fandango’s Cursory prompt.

Blind Potential

Blind Potential

This trail of salt reveals to me you’re led by superstition.
Eyes shut tight, you stumble on, following tradition.
Like a deer in headlights, you are blinded by the light
that others cast, refusing to be guided by insight.

There is a light inside you that will lead you much more surely.
That little nudge that prompts you will guide you more securely.
Trust that spark within you to tell you what to do.
You need not fear those  instincts you carry within you.

They are the wisdom of the universe, trying to get out.
If you do not heed their whisper, you may later hear their shout.
What you deem as accidents might be communication
from that inner part of you, prompting your education.

Although those outer voices may continue to deride,
trust your inner voices. They are firmly on your side.
What you find within you may be genius that’s unknown
that won’t come to fruition until it has been sown.

You are its only guardian. Only you can plant and tend
and bring these new world miracles to their fruitful end.
Do not let superstition or fear of the what could be
keep you from that within you that is your destiny.

 

The Ragtag prompt is superstition.
Fandango’s promt is fear.

I Just Can’t See Infinity

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I Just Can’t See Infinity

If my life was infinite,
no doubt I’d make a mess of it.
It’s hard enough to get it right—
to be law-abiding and polite—
for eighty or one hundred years.
We need time off for shifting gears.
Tyrants must get tired of
ruling the world with fisted glove,
and perfect folks must need deflection
from their lives of stark perfection.
Reincarnation is just right
for exchanging one life’s plight
for another set of woes.
For trying out some different clothes!
For giving us another chance
to trade in Omaha for France!!!
Let us be mortal. Let it be.
We do not need infinity!!!

The Daily Addictions prompt is infinite.

Spinning Top

 

Spinning Top

Is senility a resurrected prenatal state—
hearing the outer world
with limited stages of connection?
Or is it a journey backwards through a lifetime,
remembering details pushed into
the closets of the mind by daily tasks?

The hum of a life is deafening in this world.
Even with earbuds or headsets,
the noise of the world streams in,
wired direct into our consciousness,
quelling thoughts of our own,
wiping clean for the time being,
memories.

The whole world with us every minute
leads to no world of our own.
Barraged our entire lives,
more now than ever,
does senility offer a time before our death
to connect with our inner selves once more?

Relieved of the world,
do we spin like a top into that inner world,
remembering a lifetime lost to activity—
the resurrected adolescence of old age 
evolving backwards into a dreaming time
wherein we joyfully wander ourselves again?

Some choose the rope, fearing a nightmare of senility,
yet some of us hope for a return to dreams of childhood,
relieved of all care, even for ourselves.
No one comes back to tell us which it is,
yet some of us?
 We hope.
We hope.

 

For RDP the prompt was Resurrection.

Volatile

 

 

Volatile

As reliable as fireworks on the 4th of July,
you ignite. Over what? Who could guess?
We shield ourselves as if from floating embers,
ward off the sting for others and ourselves.
You bright shooting stars leave your aftereffects.
We, below, contend with them, 
and never fail to show up for your next grand display.

 

FOWC’s prompt is fireworks.
The Daily Addiction prompt is reliable.

Flip Flop (for DVerse Poets Pub)


flip flop

the sound  of ease
and summer

not much to slip into
or out of

sand between toes
and other cracks

released in sleep
to gritty sheets

grinding our sleep
and clogging up washing machines

long gone the days of high button shoes
and the shoe horns that went with them.

Waist cinchers
give way to bikinis

and bikinis
to nude beaches

half of the world
flip flopping

rubber soles
and swinging breasts.

flip flops
taking the place

of gasps
as stays are tightened

the other half
burqas and Jimmy Choo

these differences
in freedom found

and freedom
found too slowly

find release in
collapsing towers

conceal, reveal.
flip flop.

 

For dVerse Poets Pub–on summer.