Empty Pockets at Fifty
My pockets are turned inside out.
No riches do I have to flout.
This state of my intimidation
is perhaps an apt reflection
of my early hesitation
to obtain an education.
Perhaps if I had done my math,
I’d have pursued a richer path!
Prompt words today are pocket, intimidate, hesitation, spoil and reflection.
Purple Prose
Grandma grinds plums in her conical grinder, shredding the flesh from the pits. Under the table, my little brother sits, purple around his mouth from taste-testing the plums he no doubt earlier helped her pick. A stream of sugar on the table is a roadway for tiny black ants.
My father pushes a cooling cup of Postum closer to my grandmother as he resumes the story I’ve interrupted. It is another “Deafy Sterner” story, and he emulates the high explosive accent of this man from his past that I’ve never met, yet know so well.
I dash to my room, having just minutes to prepare for the dance before my car full of friends arrives, honking the horn. My Grandmother begins another story about the old country as I tear off my school jeans. I dress in their stories—patterned and purple as night.
Below is the dVerse Poets prompt today. The quote we are to use in our short prose piece is by Kimberly Blaeser from her poem “When We Sing of Might.” Image by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash.
Photo of Kimberly Blaeser from University of Wisconsin
Incorporate the above quote into a piece of prose. This can be either flash fiction, non-fiction, or creative non-fiction, but it must be prose! Not prose poetry, and not a poem. And it must be no longer than 144 words, not including the title. (It does not have to be exactly 144 words, but it can’t exceed 144 words.)
Summer Block Party
So many trillion burning stars form the signs of night.
Most of them so secret that they are out of sight.
Others are so numerous, they form a sort of haze,
spreading out a Milky Way at which we like to gaze,
lying spread-eagled in the grass, during summer nights,
cockleburrs’ sharp edges and mosquito bites.
The chattering of mothers on our screened front porch,
feline yowls and dog barks, Father’s questing torch,
seeking out the faucet to turn the water off.
A roar of laughter from the men, a smoker’s raucous cough.
All the familiar voices of our little hive—
the neighborhood we live in, cozy and alive.
All the roles we choose to fill united for this night
when the stars have chosen to bless us with their light.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 530 The prompt words are: edge, stars, roar, burn, role, chatter, hive, sign, feline, curse, haze, secret. Image by Andy Holmes on Unsplash.
Neighborhood Shopping Spree
I can’t abide the wantonness of my neighbor’s wife
and how it encroaches upon my family life.
And though her husband seems content to overlook her ways,
believing her disinterest just a menopausal phase,
when she goes out for groceries, I watch her shut the door
and know that she’ll be shopping for a single item more
than bread or milk or celery, for as she leaves her house,
I hear my back door closing and know it is my spouse
off upon some shopping spree—some sudden hungry whim
that guarantees her shopping list is bound to include him!
Prompts today are encroach, wanton, content, abide and grocery.
Image by Jessie McCall on Unsplash.
Balm
Easy to be caught up in a hectoring world,
taciturn and doleful with all its ills unfurled.
But every day the real world holds us in its cup.
Look to the right and left of you. Look earthwards, or look up
to feel the extraordinary in the common thing—
the stamen of a flower or swallows on the wing.
The sunlight on the cobblestones or stars flocking the moon.
The cheeping of a baby bird or wailing of a loon.
Cutter ants in rank and file, purloining leaf by leaf
an entire bougainvillea bush, thief by tiny thief.
Bees mining for nectar, a squirrel hoarding nuts,
raindrops on the garden loam, sculpting tiny ruts.
The wonders of the natural world, prodigious and varied
can sooth away the worries of a world that’s over-harried.
Take the time to notice. Make use of the calm
that’s present all around you, and use it as a balm.
Word prompts are the extraordinary in the ordinary, taciturn, hectoring, prodigious and feel.
Poetic License in a Temperate Climate
December’s moved south of the border where it isn’t so icy and cold,
but still of all of the months of the year, it’s the one where the weather’s most bold.
It’s that time of the year where I profit from staying in bed until nine,
my bed being where I feel warmest—snuggled in blankets, supine.
At seven and eight it is silent, each dog still curled in his bed,
as I burrow into my poem of the day, rousting it out of my head.
It finds a new home on my hard drive, thus quelling my need to relate
as all of my creative juices suddenly seem to abate.
As my poetry swells to fruition, I finally stir from my nest
to dress in my toe socks and leggings, my sweater and wooly warm vest.
A poem survives any weather, surrounded by peers on the screen,
but even in temperate countries, December remains the most mean.
By April, I’ll feel warm and toasty and I’ll need a different reason
for staying in bed until nine when it is such a perfectly temperate season.
Yes, it’s true. I even wear them in bed! Prompt words today are December, profit, silent,
quell and home.
The Dance of the Terrible Middle
Caught in the terrible middle of the animal,
in the white nerve of my sleeping grandfather,
I go with the signs of night in a straight line,
eluding the contented star animals,
breathing with the transformation of their high place.
The high mountains are my prison,
the fear of your love my punishment.
I occasionally give in to thoughts of you.
The ghost of your memory is in my center.
We are separate, but
in each of us is the house
where both of us live.
In the table of your hair,
in the locked room,
to the living heart of the beast,
we come for charity.
The sweet scent of reason
dances to my middle self.
It is of the moon,
but equally of books––
a mongrel with its tail between its legs
howling a mortal solo of our split lives
and our separate deaths.
The rolling body of the star,
my body spinning to the paradox
of what I could believe in––
the faded ochre of the one truth of your friendship,
the disparate truth of my grandfather.
All out of line, unparallel.
Lover with your full nights’ sleep
and half of your life lost to this sleep,
you dream of three futures while
I dance the tango of the terrible middle.
I’ve been to two Xmas craft shows and a weekly street market, and at each, the only person whose work I couldn’t resist was the lady pictured above.
And this is what I bought. Believe me, I could have purchased more. Her pieces were one-of-a-kind and there isn’t one I wouldn’t have purchased if I had the room. These are all Xmas gifts. Except, perhaps, for one.
for Bushboy’s Last on the Card Challenge Hope you don’t mind that I shared my last two as I figured the creator of these objects deserved to be seen, as well.
To enlarge photos and read captions that give a hint of the story told, click on each photo.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 