Category Archives: Uncategorized

Final Curtain

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Final Curtain

Behind a tangle of bushes and impenetrable wood,
paint peeling from its walls in strips, the ancient mansion stood.
A blemish on our neighborhood, the property condemned.
By its neighbors’ pristine hedges, its boundaries were hemmed
like burnsides on each side of an unruly mustache.
And no amount of pressure and no amount of cash
could persuade the one who lived there—a widow old and frail
to repair her ravaged property or put it up for sale.

And though neighbors voiced their protests, she challenged one and all
simply by remaining behind her crumbling wall.
At night, thin wispy music from her gramophone
leaked out through the bushes as she danced on all alone
over creaking floorboards, reliving bygone days
and a life once vivid now diminished to a haze.
Reenacting dramas of a life gone by too fast,
she played the heroine while other roles all went uncast.

 

Prompt words today are challenge, blemish, burnsides, tangle and property. Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash, used with permission.

Azalea: FOTD June 10, 2021

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I took this photo across the street in front of my neighbors’ house. I think it is an azalea, but if you know differently, feel welcome to expose my ignorance.

 

For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.

Beach Rendezvous

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Beach Rendezvous

Your andante whistle matches your advance—measured and slow, as though you know where you are going, but are in no hurry to get there. You’ve grown weird and amphibious—spending equal time in water and on land, a surfboard your new mount, your cowboy hat metamorphosed into a billed cap worn backwards.

You have achieved some notoriety due to that prowess in water that you never found on dry land. You, who crashed cars into traffic cones and bicycles into fences, weave effortlessly from wave to wave, then ride their crests. You nosh on kale and granola, leaving McDonald’s in the past. Who would ever guess that this cowboy farmer would start surfing from scratch at the age of thirty, thereby achieving a fame he’d never earned in the rodeo?

You scratch your forehead, freeing a long blond lock from its imprisonment, pull off your cap and take a playful swap at my shoulder as we draw close enough to share a hug, a kiss.  Classmates our whole lives from elementary school through college, we have somehow slipped into different generations—you the proverbial beach boy surfer, me the middle-aged mommy herding kids away from sand crabs and beached stingrays, you gliding between them on water, already a fixture in this cool beach town–your whole life composed of what for me is an occasional weekend visit lugging picnic basket, beach towels, blanket, umbrella and three children aged four to ten.

“Daddy!” the kids scream, running toward us streaming seawater from their heels. One by one, you grab them under their arms, spinning them in wild circles, then, with the smallest one on your shoulders and grasping the hands of the others on either side, you make off for the water to reacquaint them with their aquatic side. The picture I took that day shows four kids playing in the water. I had given birth to three of them. You gave birth to the fourth.

Prompt words today are andante,amphibious, scratch, achieving, nosh and weird.

Random Orders

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Random Orders

When our builder said that “It’s terribly good“
as he showed us the shipment of rainforest wood,
I, for one, uttered a silent scream,
for how could I okay this endangered beam?

In like manner, when he presented the door
of yew, it elicited a quiet roar.
So instead, he then showed us a genuine fake—
some laminate made for ecology’s sake

out of plastic and sawdust fused by black light.
Okay, I’m confused. Is night day and day night?
When we asked him for details and asked him to give
us a price for this place we were hoping to live,

he gave us one total, then he gave us a few.
An exact estimate seemed the best he could do.
As if, in his string of incessant banality,
all he could offer was ultimate reality.

my husband and I are both loyal opponents
of phrases with contradictory components.
So his exact estimate clearly confused.
It was plain that the language was being abused.

When our sawyer tried selling us a smaller half
of a board for our wall shelf, I gave a small laugh.
with passive aggression, I played the wise fool.
Was this our only choice? For this was not cool.

At first just amused, in the end we were sad,
for these oxymorons were driving us mad.
Surely these word games were only a fad.
Kids in cliques may mean good when they say it is bad,

but we were adults here and now on the brink
of retiring somewhere to have a stiff drink.
A close distance away was a favorite bar
with a mean martini served in a jar.

We gave random orders for olives and gin,
telling the barkeep what shape we were in.
Then, heads swimming with opposites, we didn’t scrimp.
We told the waiter to bring jumbo shrimp!

Word prompts today are sawyer, clique, oxymoron, fad and give. In case it wasn’t obvious, I took the prompt word “oxymoron” to excess. All of the highlighted words are oxymorons (self-contradictory phrases.)

Is Death An Illusion? Scientific Evidence Suggests It Is Not the End.

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Is Death An Illusion? Evidence Suggests Death Isn’t the End

The Doggone Doggie Blues: dVerse Poets

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First there was Frida, then Diego.
After finding homes for five puppies found on the beach after the death of their mother, I found Frida trotting toward us on the busy highway. At first I thought she was a big rat. Cars were speeding by. Of course, she came home with me.


The Doggone Doggie Blues

The naughty dogs who leave their marks when jumping up on me.
The naughty bruises that remain, spreading their stains on me.
I cannot stop this rudeness. I cannot find the means.
I cannot stop their tugging at my blouse sleeves and my jeans.

Unruly little denizens of my humble home,
they range wherever they may choose on terrace and on dome.
They jump up in the hammock when I choose to swing.
They jump up on my visitors to see what they might bring.

They dig into my planters and eat the tasty loam.
They even dig into my sleep to bring their mother home
from dreams where she evades them, living her own life
away from doggie pressures, away from doggie strife.

What pleasures might she find anew living all alone?
What pleasures might they miss for which her conscience would atone?
All in all, they make up for the problems that they bring.
All in all, their lonesome howls to sirens are the thing
that swell her heart and make her want to join along and sing.

I wrote this for the dVerse poets Anaphora/Epiphora prompt, but unfortunately missed the deadline. Been there before, will be there again, no doubt. At any rate, here it is for the world at large!

But, just had a brainstorm and posted it on the dVerse Poets Open Link Night, where we can post any poem on any topic. Tardy but still within the law!. Here is a link to others who published poems for Open Link Night.

Bad Ending, Sweet Beginning

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Bad Ending, Sweet Beginning

In the graveyard of my memory, an adventure stirs.
First it circles like a cat, then settles down and purrs.
The message that it imparts via magical vibrations
reminds me of adventure and of youthful excitations.

No rigmarole of gossip. No conspicuous inflection.
No past welling up sickeningly like some dormant infection.
Fear fades into shadow and romance swirls into view.
And I suddenly remember what attracted me to you.

 

 

 

Prompts for today are rigmarole, conspicuous, adventure, impart and graveyard. Second image from Unsplash.

Moon in Flux

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These are 20 different photos of the full moon taken within a period of a few minutes from my backyard. The only editing tools I used were cropping, light adjustment, color, saturation, and sharpen—all aspects of the Photos Application on my Mac. You’ll get a much better image of each photo if you click on them. The two photos that show two moon are photos of the moon and its reflection in my pool. They are shown in the order in which I took them.

Red Sky

 

 

 

The Green Chair

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I love this green chair spotted at Pasta Trenta, a local Italian restaurant, and I had to take a break from festivities celebrating my friend Gloria’s 88th birthday to photograph it. I should have seated her on it, like a queen on her throne, but that would have caused too long a break in the celebration.

For the Pull up a Seat Challenge

Up Close and Personal, Hibiscus: FOTD, June 5, 2021

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For Cee’s Flower of the Day Challenge