Ephemera
Time drips off its pendulum from three to four to five,
trickling off the minutes that we’ve been alive.
Vapid little seconds are flung off with each tick,
hardly ever noticed as their passing is so quick.
The richest man on earth cannot buy more than he’s accorded.
Hours can’t be put in storage and so they can’t be hoarded.
Days can’t be the building blocks of a fine estate,
for they are just chalk marks wiped daily off our slate.
Prompt words today are trickle, pendulum, storage, vapid and estate. Illustration: The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali.
Catnap
I’m in the tidepool of repose, floating on my dream—
Hushed and very far away from exhaustion’s scream.
The telephone’s not ringing, I have nowhere to go
except to float in currents of my dreaming’s flow.
All my finicky habits stream out ahead of me
and vanish in the currents, to leave me calm and free.
My head falls to the chair back, waking me from my nap,
but as if to calm me, the cat jumps in my lap.
I fall in with his plans for me, do not avoid his scheming,
but as I gently stroke him, I fall back to my dreaming.
Prompt words today are tidepool, repose, telephone, finicky and exhaustion.
Solar Debacle
Dad decided it would be wise
if we could economize
by finally going fully solar
as skies turned overcast and polar.
No hot baths. No stove or fridge.
No TV, no lights for bridge.
Seeing the cards was too much trouble.
Mom couldn’t trump. Sis couldn’t double.
And so it was unanimous
that no one felt magnanimous.
We were one in our conviction
of our father’s dereliction.
All of us just felt derision
over Dad’s ill-timed decision.
Solar’s fine when there is sun,
but when all is said and done,
life is short and it’s no fun
when Mother Nature gives us none.
Since I’m in Mountain Standard time, it is only 11:42 here, so even though my blog is set for Central time, I’m counting this as getting in under the line before midnight.
Prompt words today are solar, bridge, magnanimous, convict and trouble. Free photo found on pxfuel.com
This is the entrance to the Ashton Wildwood Park that has now been dedicated to my former brother-in-law Denis Wilcox who passed away a few months ago. We had the dedication for it on Friday. The dedication arch has not yet been completed, but here is the stone marking the area that he maintained for so many years. He was also on the conservation board for the park.
Above is a photo of some of his kids and grandkids at the dedication
And a photo of the whole crew: kids, their spouses, grandkids and former sis-in-law.
For Tree Square
These are photos of my sister Betty and her future husband Denis at her spring formal at Cornell College, Iowa in the mid-1950’s. This car was his pride and joy and I remember going on weekend rides in it when I visited them.
Yesterday’s Cars
Yesterday’s cars slanted down where they should
have had fins at the tail, and were square at the hood.
Some required a stepstool to enter the door,
then had a big bump centered there in the floor
The grandfathers of cars weren’t for the faint-hearted.
They required you crank them before they got started,
and inevitably, when the tires went flat,
a service station wasn’t where you were at.
With no Triple A, the onus was on you
to figure out what you had to do.
The jacks were all manual. Tubes needed air,
so many the driver gave up in despair.
With Mom in the front seat and kids in the rumble,
dad would pump and unscrew and blather and bumble,
then put out his thumb to beg for a ride
in a car that was passing that had room inside.
He was not feinting his look of distress,
and neither was mom, although I confess
it was an adventure for sister and me
who watched the procedure giggling with glee
as inevitably, he would hoof it to town
and we’d open the car doors, jump happily down
and cavort in a field, searching out hidden treasure
and picking up cockleburs in equal measure.
Then when dad caught a ride back with a fixed wheel,
we’d drive on to a diner for a well-deserved meal,
then be on our way, trouble-free and much faster
for the rest of our trip that was free from disaster.
Prompt words today are yesterday’s cars, slope, require, feint and inevitable. Image by Philip Schroeder on Unsplash.
I must admit that this particular situation is fiction, although the predicament certainly must have been reenacted many times in an era earlier than mine.
Today on July 10th. 2021, I woke up thinking I had to record a very very strange dream and instead saw a message from Forgottenman that I had received my millionth view on my blog as I slept, so now at 8:55 AM, checking my stats, I see that I’ve had l,000,052 views. I guess I’ll never know who was the millionth. When I get home, I’m going to celebrate by actually starting the ball rolling on formatting my two completed books for publication. Please let me be as dedicated to that goal as I’ve been to the blog. My alarm just went off. Must be a signal that I ‘m on the right track??? I can see a bit of sun through a slight opening in the blackout curtain of the motel where I am staying. We’ll head back to St. Paul in a few hours. Then in a few hours more I’ll head to Wyoming. Life goes on….
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 