Category Archives: Uncategorized

Highlights of Travel for Sunday Stills

16 Replies

Please click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

When I was little, life seemed like one long summer day,
Mom and Dad in Australia. He finally got to travel–to come visit me.
Singapore Tiger Balm Gardens with silly friends.
1973, Sri Lanka
With Andy in Ethiopia
1986
With new friends in Bali.
With Blue in Peru
With Pasiano and Yolanda and families in Tapalpa, Mexico
With Gloria and Rachel in La Manzanilla, Mexico

For me, the best travel memories always involve people. Here are some of my favorite people in some of my favorite vacation spots of my life. I could have gone on with this all day, but had to stop. Other memorable vacation spots but too little time..

 

For Sunday Stills: Favorite Vacation Spot

“Flutter” : The Surrogate

11 Replies

After seeing the green moth in my last blue/green post, Forgottenman directed me back to the time many years ago when I first posted the photo of the green moth that lit on my screen, causing me to write a poem around it and then photograph the result. He encouraged me to reblog it, so here it is. I hope you enjoy it. It was such a unique experience forming a poem around an actual creature clinging to my screen. I can no longer remember why I named it “The Surrogate.” Any ideas? I invite your comments.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Surrogate w pic 6

The Prompt: Sounds Right—This is clearly subjective, but some words really sound like the thing they describe (personal favorites: puffin; bulbous; fidgeting). Do you have an example of such a word (or, alternatively, of a word that sounds like the exact opposite of what it refers to)? What do you think creates this effect?

I’ve always loved the word “’Flutter” as it applies to a butterfly or moth.  What better word could be used to describe the motion of their wings?  The moth described in my poem, however, was noticeable because of its lack of flutter.  It landed upon my computer screen like a magnetized object to metal and remained there for over two hours.  The moth pictured in the poem is the actual moth.  Tiny and green, it became part of my writing experience. Since it had chosen to remain in one position, directly on my screen, I was…

View original post 17 more words

Sad Movies

8 Replies

Sad Movies

This movie’s so sad it should come with a tissue
and  a spare one as well with the first one they issue.
I blush to admit how my tears are just gushing. 
I’m surrounded by neighbors complaining and shushing.
It’s uncanny that I’d pay good money for this.
Nine dollars for me and nine dollars for sis.
I don’t need the mood swing. I don’t need this sadness—
exchanging for tears my earlier gladness.
If they’re going  to produce such sad entertainment,
a least they could provide adequate containment
for all of the tears and the blowing of noses.
Entertainment this year was no bed of roses!

Prompt words today are swing, uncanny, blush, issue and spare.

Silver Sightings

5 Replies

Click on photos to enlarge.

For City Sonnets May Colors and Letters: Silver Birch

Last Ride

5 Replies

Last Ride

He was a motorcycle zealot,
so when his wife said he should sell it,
he protested, “It’s too soon!”
and headed out under the moon
in zipped-up jacket and leather boot
for a ride along that route

he’d ridden in his glory days,
but this time it was in a haze.
Those gorgeous hills and dales he’d ridden
somehow now seemed to be hidden,
rivaled by McDonald’s and
Target and Computerland.

Gone all the open road that he
had ridden when he’d felt so free.
His buddies ’round him in a pack—
Rowdy Bill and Badass Jack.
That place where they had raised such Hell
now turned into a Taco Bell.

He turned his bike back homeward then,
back to his place in Shady Glen.
Tacked a sign that said “For Sale” 
over his bike next to the rail
whereupon he hung his youth,
wild and free and so uncouth:

his leather jacket, his buckled boots
his companions down so many routes.
Hills and valleys away from home
where in wild youth, he’d gone to roam.
Finally knowing those days were done
now that he was ninety-one.

Prompts today are soon, zealot, gorgeous, rival.

Vivid Mexico

12 Replies

 

Vivid Mexico

Those individuals who choose to spend the remaining years of their life south of the border have some strengths in common. Some come because it is a cheaper place to live, but those who remain generally stay because of a love of the richness of the life here. It is an existence not free of snafus—a life not for the lackadaisical or the personality set in its ways. There are fewer safeguards and rules–fewer antimacassars to protect chair backs from oily heads. Fewer lifeguards to warn someone they are too far out in the water.

If one falls into a hole where the manhole cover has been left off and sues for damages, the judge is more likely to enquire if they were blind and then to dismiss the claim. You couldn’t see the cover was gone and walk in a different place? It is a place of accountability for one’s own actions, creating less of a propensity to blame problems on someone else. Mexico is not perfect, but it is perfectly beautiful and varied and life-filled. If one wants to cram a lot of life into their last twenty to forty years, it is one of the places  where it is possible to do so.

Prompt words today are antimacassar, lackadaisical, snafu, water. In addition, Pensivity’s “Three Things Challenge” prompt words are individual, strong and border.

Hen and Chicks: FOTD, May 20, 2021

2 Replies

Fleeing the coop.

For Cee’s FOTD

Zipper: dVerse Poets

4 Replies

Zipper

This bandage wound around my heart
seals the wound, but not the smart.
Sharp words pierce faster than a knife
while kinder words can dull the strife. 
Spoken words can’t be reined in
or called back from where they’ve been.
So zip
your lip!!!!

 

For dVerse Poets prompt: Wound
Photo from Unsplash, used with permission.

Water Water Everywhere!!!

7 Replies

Click on photos to enlarge.

For the Water Water Everywhere Challenge.

Mergers and Acquisitions

9 Replies


Mergers and Acquisitions

Their marriage was nefarious for its machinations,
for it was less love story than it was amalgamations:
wedding of fluid assets, portfolio combining,
mid-cap stocks and pipelines, oil shares and mining.

Their merger started out with a proposal to borrow—
an essay for a loan that somehow upon the morrow
turned into a merger that wed family and family
to create a union that was more of an anomaly

than it was a love story—a joining of two powers 
that should have woven dollar signs into the wedding bowers.
Thus is a son or daughter turned into corporate pawn
as simply as a corporate schemata is redrawn.

 

Prompt words today are fluid, nefarious, borrow, amalgamate and essay.