Category Archives: Uncategorized

For TamrahJo…Merry Christmas

 

I promised to show you my favorite foot shot, but here are a few others as well: (Click on photos to enlarge.)

(TamrahJo’s blog can be found HERE.)

 

Scrooge Holds Forth on Christmas

Scrooge Holds Forth on Christmas

It can be a bit frenetic, this yearly Yuletide season,
creating a fiasco beyond any rhyme or reason.
It carries us along on a tide of fir and holly,
demanding we be spirit-filled and reverent and jolly

until we’re nearly saturated with the Yultide spirit,
kind of sick of Christmas before we’re even near it.
All this peace and loving can be a royal pain—
pine needles barely cleared away before they’re here again.

We’re blanketed in blessings, gift-wrapped and over-gay
in an over-decorated binge-filled treacle holiday.
Oh for just one Christmas without reindeer-decked pajamas,
on a sun-filled beach somewhere—perhaps in the Bahamas!!!!

Prompts today are Yuletide, blanket, nearly, fiasco, carry and royal.

La Llorona by Sergio Casas

If you have never heard the song “La Llorona” you are in for a treat. This is Sergio Casas singing it at Lyn and John Scacelli’s Solstice Party. More photos coming up later. In the meantime, enjoy the music:

 

Salt White

Click on photos to enlarge.

For CFFC’s Salt White prompt.

Mostly Covered

Mostly Covered

Sheep keep snug because they’re fully
covered by a coat that’s wooly
rising right up from their thighs
to the heads above their eyes.
(Though why their legs and feet aren’t covered,
not one of us has yet discovered,)

 

The two remaining prompt words today are wooly and rise.
Neither of these prompts had been published yet when I wrote my earlier poem, so here they are with one of their very own. Image by Judith Prins on Unsplash.

More Kalanchoe: FOTD, Dec 20, 2022

For Cee’s FOTD

Egg Carton Flowers: Art Day at Judy’s House–Wordle 582

(Click on Photos to enlarge.)

Egg Carton Flowers: Art Day at Judy’s House

Fairy breath and greedy flush, scissors, paper glue—
they go about the mutual task of everything they do.
Twin sisters, they spill out in life, perpetually torn
apart since that rude splitting the day that they were born.

One demands the pink paint, the other requests blue—
their lips stained orange by Cheetos, fingers covered by goo.
Voices raspy with excitement, they call each other’s bluff
as their grandma hisses fondly, “Girls, that is enough!”

The yellowing sun descends to orange as they end their day
out on the back terrace where they have gone to play.
Safe now that frisky littler dogs are locked behind the screen,
they pet the Scottie’s matted hair, soothed by his gentler mien.

Inside, their older sister helps us clear away their messes.
Not the first time, right? I ask, “No, not quite,” she  confesses.
She fondly rinses paint brushes and points out the incredible—
blue fingerprints on cookies that someone had turned inedible.

The prompt words are bluff torn spill yellowing fairy breath greedy flush soothed safe hiss raspy for Wordle 583 on The Sunday Whirl
Last photo by Harriet Hart. Others by me.

When my good friend Harriet asked if I’d think up a project for her visiting grandaughters, I was pleased to have an excuse to get to know these lovely young ladies. Egg carton flowers it was!!!!

FOTD Dec. 18 Bed and Breakfast

 

Click on photos to enlarge.

This grasshopper has found the perfect accommodation.

For Cee’s FOTD

A Dog’s Life (The Wish)

A Dog’s Life (The Wish)

We wish our mom would come to bed but beg to no avail.
Our attempts to draw her in have gone beyond the pale!
We break our vow of silence to bark and bark and bark.
Our pleas, extravagantly loud, echo through the dark.

But she is so disorganized that she can’t come to rest.
There’s always one more task to do before she joins our nest.
Each dirty dish must be rinsed off, each Wordle game be played.
No single task so trivial that it can be delayed.

Headed for bed, there is another detour she must make
as she remembers one leftover slice of chocolate cake.
Once in the fridge, a pitcher of sangria comes to view.
Handy to wash down cake, she has a glass of it, or two.

Through the Virginia creeper, the Xmas lights are winking
and of course she must go out to end their constant blinking.
Once there, the pool calls her, so she has a little swim.
On the way to bed, she can resist no task or whim.

She trims the bougainvillea that spills over the water,
resisting not one dumb excuse to fool around and potter.
Meanwhile, we are waiting to curl up by her side
to stretch out on her legs and sleep. This wait we can’t abide.

We’ll curl up on her sweater so hastily abandoned,
right here on the bed, where luckily it landed
when she changed into her nightgown an hour ago or two—
before she found those other things that she just had to do.

It’s like this every evening wherein there’s no debate
about the fact that we will have to wait and wait and wait
until she finally joins us with no more for her to do
except work on her computer for an hour or two!

That a dog’s life isn’t easy is not hyperbolic
when you share it with a Mom who is a workaholic!!!

Prompt words are break, beg,extravagant, trivial and disorganized.

And, for Weekend Challenge: Wish

More Juan Diegos plus a Juana. Lens Artists Challenge 230

Since you enjoyed my other photos of Juan Diego, here are some more, along with a little girl who is dressed up traditionally for the Virgin of Guadalupe parade. If you didn’t see the earlier post go HERE to find out who Juan Diego was and to see another miniature Juan.

Lens Artists Challenge 230, Last Chance