Category Archives: Prose

A Speck of Dust

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A Speck of Dust

When it is over, said and done, it was a time and there was never enough of it, but now is the only time we have and there is as little of it as there was then, so it is time to live in the now, suspending worry for the time being, as well as regrets. Leave the groceries on the counter and the cats unfed and let the kids gorge on peanut butter and jelly for once and go out the back door into your own world and notice what is around you. What you have been blessed with. First of all, you are alive. Do you realize the miracle of that? The miracle of the evolution of your brain and your sexuality and your heart?. The existence of birdsong, a fingernail, a laugh–the simplest and most varied of things, all grown out of a speck of dust–less than a speck of dust. All of these things, good and bad, such miracles that we let the self-enthused politicians and rulers and directors of our world cause us to overlook. Seize your power. Force attention to that in life that is to be enjoyed. It is what you can do. Events in the world that you cannot change, even though you try? Do not let them change you. Look at the minuscule that you overlook each day. A petal, a beetle, light on a hummingbird’s wings. Their dart and hover. Notice details. That is where the beauty you may be overlooking resides. Take it in and take it with you when you reenter the life you have stepped out of for a brief while. Take it with you and share it with your children. It is the power you have in the world.

 

For dVerse Poets Prosery. (We were to write a prose piece starting with the first line as quoted above.)

 

Wire Crow

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Wire Crow

A black crow formed of bent wire, specific in its detail, with the look of chicken wire, yet intricately twisted by hand. You had seen me come back to it again and again at the art show and had taken note. You, who usually harangued me about how hard I was to buy for, asking what I wanted, making me responsible for my own gift. How I hated Xmases and Birthdays for this reason. Hard enough finding the perfect gift for you and your 8 children and my family, but to have to pick my own gift? Unfair.

Yet this gift, a surprise on my 42nd birthday, so perfect. A reminder of that black crow poem you had written about the end of your first marriage and the decline of your second that poem that ranged so far and wide that it included even me, gathering your children and taking them to safety when we broke down on the freeway. That first poem not about past loves, but casting me as heroine––a part of your official biography.

This crow, however, has seen beyond you. Seen your death and my relocation. It sits on the highest shelf of my sala, bent over a Mata Ortiz lidded bowl that has an ear of corn rising up from its lid, as though the crow is about to feast on it. It is one of the objects that gathers you around me, even now, 18 years after your death: the wooden statue you carved in Bali, your giant spirit sled of copper and hide, your Tie Siding sculpture that fills the corner near my desk, the spiral lamp–one of our favorite collaborations.

My whole life seems a continuation of that collaboration—your pulling out of me the art and words that surround me now on my walls, my tables and swirling through my head, disconnected or connected. Metered in rhyme or collecting into paragraphs—all parts of my life. Art we inspired in each other, pulling the world in around us with wood and stone and metal and paper and ideas and words. That metal crow a part of all of it that I have overlooked for so many years now. Of the few objects brought the long miles from California to Mexico, this crow was selected innocently, perhaps more by intuition than by conscious thought, and yet it stands, highest of all, to project its message.

No one who has formed us ever dies. New loves do not cancel out the old. Like one glorious recipe, our lives accumulate ingredients. Sweet and salty, tart and crusty, effervescent and meaty. Like your presence. Ironically represented by that crow that is mainly emptiness, really. Or perhaps unseen mass. Like thought. Like poetry. Like love. Like a forgotten important detail suddenly remembered.

Mary asked to see some of the results of the timed writing exercises we did during our retreat. This is one I did where the prompt was to write about an object. I believe it was a 15 or 20 minute writing.

Uprooted

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Uprooted

“Can you get even closer to the tree?” he said—so I went inches from the trunk of the tallest of the trees, crowding the fern that reached tentative tentacles from the tree’s shade into a ray of sun that escaped the fast-collecting clouds. “I’ll protect you,” he had said years ago, when we declared our union. But now, in this time of the approaching storm, I wondered about both tree and one who over the years had been in turn protector and threat. In times of gentle rain, a shield. In times more volatile, that sudden bolt that left bruised places easily hidden. I saw the tree’s scar, devoid of bark, burned at the edges––that place now easily overlooked in the shadows. And I moved away from the tree, walking with new confidence to the car. Uprooted, finally, after so many years.

 

Italicized line is from Sharon Olds’ poem, “Pine Tree Ode.” For the dVerse Poets Pub prompt–to develop a prose piece of 144 words making use of a line from another poet’s poem about a tree. Go HERE to read what other writers did with this prompt or to participate yourself.

 

Dream Journeys

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He woke up agitated and sweating, turned over to face in her direction. She lay on the adjacent pillow, staring at him with a haze of dreaming still over her eyes.
“I dreamt I got the job,” he said, his mind swarming with the details of discarding, packing, arranging for the move.  Then, his mind switched quickly to the alternative. What if he didn’t get the job? He had been in this state of agony for weeks. Either result contained grounds for worry.
She stirred.  Reached out for him. “I had a dream,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?” he said, intent on his own quandry, barely aware of his own mechanical response. “Anything pertinent? I’m looking for signs.”
“I dreamt I was the moon.”

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For the dVerse Poets prosery prompt: The Prosery prompt starts with a line taken from a poem, and asks you to write a piece of flash fiction incorporating that line, in full, somewhere in the piece of prose. To make it a little more challenging there’s a word limit of 144 words. The line they chose was “I dreamt I was the moon.”

 

Interruption

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Interruption

The dogs made their usual frenzied protest at his leaving. “This time he’s not coming back,” I told them just before opening the gate for them, even though I knew that all I had to do, really, was to think it. They were his dogs, but they were psychically attuned to my thoughts.

Their “tracking”  brays grew fainter but more frenzied as they vanished behind hill after hill, and finally, when far away—an interrupted cry as a shot rang out.  Then the yelping of one dog. Or was it two?

Was it fear or mourning for a master already forgiven that brought about the brief caesura that followed the gunshot and preceded the wailing––that trio of sounds that have reverberated, in sequence, down through my life since then.

 

For the DVerse Poet’s Pub, we are to write a flash fiction prose piece of no more than 144 words and to incorporate this line from a Robert Frost poem, “When far away an interrupted cry.” 

Corpse of Another Day

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The  corpse of another day lay spread across the horizon. A jet stream cut through gossamer clouds stained with its blood.  If only those old men who made the decisions were teachable, she would bring them out here and show them this. Then any fool could see what they were putting more at risk every day.  This beautiful, rare world. These unique sunsets. She bent to retrieve yet another piece of plastic—this time a brightly colored molded toy. They were playing with the world, and it was a tough game, she thought, as she tossed it into her collection bag. 

The prompt words today are jet, corpse, gossamer and teachable. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/rdp-monday-jet/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/25/fowc-with-fandango-corpse/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/your-daily-word-prompt-gossamer-march-25-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/teachable/

A Roadtrip Through Five States (Cee’s Share Your World Prompt)

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Click on any photo to enlarge all:

Today I’ve been a lazy passenger as Forgottenman has driven us from Alabama through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri. In one 45-minute period, we crossed 4 rivers: the Cumberland, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi and saw two huge dams––the Kentucky and Barclay—both TVA projects I had studied about in the sixth grade. We have gone from 77 degrees in Huntsville to 53 degrees and rain. We’ve seen 13 dead deer along the interstate and over a dozen stalled cars as well as countless huge tire strips from semis—more than I’ve ever seen in a day of travel before, although Forgottenman thinks that is about par for the course.

The trees of every size, shape and variety as well as every hue of green, gold, yellow, red and brown have been spellbinding in their beauty. I don’t know that I’ve ever taken a ride through an autumn landscape this varied and extensive. Would that skies had been sunny and clear, but nonetheless, it has been a wonderful ride. In a little over an hour, we’ll be home and I can share photos of my day. Until then, I’m gritting my teeth on this rain-slickened two-lane road with no shoulders and fairly heavy traffic. Forgottenman is a good driver and “Mother,” our GPS, has not led us astray so far, although I must admit she has in the past.

Now that it is nearly dark, the traffic has thinned and the puddles on the road deepened. I can hear the water splashing against the undercarriage, as though we are driving through a car wash. Bug splashes on the front window that I’ve been trying to shoot photos around all day have been abolished by heavy rain and windshield wipers, but too late, too late. A stiff neck slowly Improved over the past two days again starts to seize up in the tension over oncoming car lights, unceasing rain and deepening puddles.

I’m glad I’m not driving and glad a good driver is, although I am wishing he was not using the cruise control. We’ve had this discussion before with me maintaining that it should not be used in rainy weather, he insisting this is an old wives tale. Since I am neither a wife nor old (in some eyes, namely mine) I reject once more his statement. But he is driving and so I surrender the argument in his favor, not because he is right but because he is driving.

Forgottenman is anxious to get home so he can look at a map to try to understand why Mother has directed us off Highway 62 onto this hilly, winding tiny two-lane road. More of a technophobe, I never go anywhere without a map along, but he is more trusting of the powers of technology to steer him aright, in spite of a number of experiences in which she hasn’t. In less than an hour, all mysteries will be revealed. In the meantime, I’m going to close my eyes and pretend I’m anywhere other than where I am.

Ha!! Finally home seven hours after we started out from Huntsville. We unloaded the car in a light drizzle, thankful for the fact that it isn’t the heavy rainfall of the past few hours. Cold wet grass made us grateful for a dry carpet and relatively warm house inside, as well as Wifi and electricity so I can post this message. We had a wonderful time with old friends but there is no place like home.

 

Cee’s questions for the week:

Would you rather take a 2 week vacation with an organized tour or take a cruise of your choice? I’d rather take an unorganized tour–going where I wished to.

Did you like swinging as a child? Do you still get excited when you see a swing? I lived across from the playground for my entire growing up years.  I loved swinging and hearing the sounds of the swings across the street when I was at home lying in bed or in the grass.

What is the most important thing that you ever learned ? (I bet it’s not something you learned in school) It is wise not to say everything you think and to think about everything you say.

What inspired you or what did you appreciate this past week?  Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination. See above!! And, there will be more tomorrow.

 

For Cee’s Share Your World prompt.

 

Most of the Time: A Serial Tale, Chapter 2

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Well, again, today’s prompt is one I’ve already done, but the prompt I did yesterday involves taking the first and last line of a favorite book and using the last line as the first line of my writing and using the first line of the book as the last line in my piece.  I did so and the results, if you haven’t read them, you can find HERE.  I then asked readers to provide the name of another book and its first and last lines so I can continue the story.  I’m going to continue so long as people keep providing me the first and last lines.  More info about that is at the end of my Chapter 2.  So, here goes Chapter Two:

Most of the Time

Chapter 2

Nothing is an unmixed blessing. The fact that my frequent trips to the firing range furnished me with an easy out any time I wished to leave the house carried certain penalties. For one, I had no permit to carry a concealed weapon, so if I was planning on really going elsewhere, I had to figure out where in the house to stash my guns so Peter would not find them and start wondering why I would be going to a firing range with no guns. It was not an option to leave them in the car. I may be irresponsible in some regards, but gun safety is not one of them. I will not carry concealed weapons. Nor will I take the risk of anyone breaking into my car to steal them.

As careful as I am, I’ve been known to forget to lock the car. What if a child were to enter and find one of the guns and, thinking it was a toy, discharge it? So it was that I purchased the lock box that I kept in a special compartment, also locked, under the gardening box behind the lawnmower shed. I had it made specially, and it was so cleverly contrived that it was impossible to see that there was a secret slide-out compartment under the large chest that held clippers, shears, weed whacker, gloves, various lawn fertilizers, garden pest sprays and powders and about a thousand Daddy Long Legs that had decided this year to use it as their main clustering spot. A padlock secured it against any child getting into the poisons or any prowler making off with our tools, but there was a crack big enough to permit access by spiders, tiny frogs, and this year’s infestation of Daddy Long Legs.

I slid my fingers into the crack on the side of the secret compartment that allowed the lock to pop out, unlocked it and slid my Ruger Mark 4 into the small tray that ran along the left side of the compartment. There was plenty of room for several rifles or shotguns in addition to six or more pistols or revolvers, but it would have been overkill to pretend to take more than one firearm on a day when I had no intention of going to the range. It would be easy for me to sneak a small pistol into the house. Not so easy to deal with smuggling an item as large as a rifle if Peter happened to get home before I did.

I clicked the tray shut, heard the automatic lock snap in place, then turned the key to position the deadlock. Free at last! I sprinted to the car and spun out in my excitement to be off on another adventure. “She cleans closets by night, comes out of the closet by day” ran through my mind, picking up a melody as it repeated itself. No song had written itself in my mind for a very long time, and even this silly line began to acquire a validity that I might have disregarded if I hadn’t felt so elated to once again have the company of my muse. Even so, I had to admit the line didn’t have much of a chance as anything outside of a C&W refrain, but I’m no snob about music. I’m open to pretty much any kind of music that comes to me.

Peter hates it when I hum. He gets this irritated look, first, and if I continue in spite of it, his usual line is, “You’re humming again!” After twenty years of being cutting short by this line, I still feel put down every time he says it. “I am not farting!” I used to say, “—or snorting or coughing without covering my mouth. I am simply revealing my happy mood, not to mention my creativity. It’s an original song I’m humming, Peter. It’s part of my expression of my art.”

Those sorts of arguments didn’t make it much past our first year of marriage. It took me less time than that to learn that such unburdenings of my soul had absolutely no effect on Peter. The next time I hummed, the look he shot me was no less lethal. “Old women hum tunelessly under their breaths,” he once said during yet another putdown. “Can’t you save your humming for private moments?”

I rolled down the window and bellered. Top of my lungs. Top of the morning. I’d reached open country and there was no one to hear me with the exception of the crows and passing motorists, none of whom even turned their heads to check me out. I was noisily invisible. That was comforting, actually. I really enjoyed being the thing overlooked in places where I knew I didn’t belong. I would soon be that person again in whatever place I chose to enter next. I headed out for the industrial part of a very large town merely twenty miles away from the house I called home. That was far enough in this hugest of towns. I had never once run across anyone I knew on one of my little sorties. These little adventures were the dessert that kept me true to the restricted diet I was on in the other ninety-some percent of my life. I was going to have fun. Even if it killed me, I was going to have fun while I still remembered what fun was.

As I pulled off the four lane onto a long straight gray street, I could hear the buzz of the telephone lines, the maddening drone of a weed whacker, the electrical current pushing the street lights off and on, the rhythmic turning of cars whizzing by, the mashed together sound of people talking, TV’s and radios blaring, When I rolled up my window, all of the noises went away; but as I pulled to a stop in front of a little lowlife dive and opened the door, I could hear its neon sign doing its own cyclical hum to join with all the other sounds. “Ninny Ricketts Place” the sign announced without the benefit of apostrophe, and it joined in the humming mesmerizing chorus of that whole grim landscape until the buzz in the street was like the humming of flies caught between glass and the window screen, with no place else to go but here and no way to get there even should they determine to go.

To See Chapter 3, go Here.

Yesterday’s Prompt: Choose a book at random from your bookcase. Use the last sentence in the book as the first sentence of what you write. Then turn to the first sentence of the book and use it for your ending sentence. (I used the ending line of the book I chose as my title, which actually is the first line of a book to my way of thinking. Hereafter, however, I will use whatever prompt I’m given as the first line of the next section of the story.)

Today’s Prompt from Patti Arnieri: My suggestion is from “The Cuckoo’s Calling” by Robert Galbraith (otherwise known as J.K. Rowling). First line: “The buzz in the street was like the humming of flies.” Last line: “Nothing is an unmixed blessing.”

If you would like to suggest a book for me to use the first and last lines of for tomorrow’s writing, please give the title of the book, the author, and the book’s first and last lines in the comments section of this posting. Remember that I’ll use the last line as the first line of tomorrow’s posting and the first line as my last line. Who knows where this tale will wind? If no one gives me tomorrow’s prompting lines, the rest of the story will never be heard, and perhaps that is a good thing. C’est la vie.

P.S. If any of you would like to accept this same challenge, just watch to see what beginning and ending lines I use and use the same ones. If you are a day behind, no problem. It would be interesting to see what varied stories occur given the same beginning and ending lines. Please post a link to your story or poem on the page it corresponds to in my blog—i.e. the one where I make use of the same beginning and ending lines.Will anyone accept my challenge? Sam? Macgyver? Laura? John?