Click on photos to enlarge.
For the Cosmic Photo Challenge we are to post photos of our autumn garden
An Autumn Garden
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Books, for dVerse Poets Open Link Night
Books
The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
it’s paper sprinkled with drops–
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory–
that rainstorm run through.
How he put it in his back pocket.
Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.
Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages–
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink–
the allure of a book and its tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.
Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial–
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us
What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Google replacing dictionaries,
Wikipedia already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?
Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs––
perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
The grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them–as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages––one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.
For the dVerse Poets Open Link Night
And….Here is a link to another poem published today: “BEGINNING”
To see how others responded to the prompt go HERE.
Skinny-Dipping for One Word Challenge
Skinny-Dipping
Important note: This is a shape poem , (at least the last two stanzas are) but if you look at it in Reader, it distorts the shape by left margin justifying. Please click on the title again and you will view it from my blog where it will be centered and you can see the shape.
Skinny-Dipping
There’s a change in the weather, a shift in the light.
The palm trees are swaying. Three stars shining bright.
The water is cooling, my exercise through.
Clouds cover the moon. I think it’s my cue
to get out of the water before I turn blue,
then clouds shift and the moon turns its usual hue.
The wind stirs the water. I think of past times
ages ago in different climes.
All those past lives, can they really be mine?
If I put experience in a straight line,
could I see the reason for things as they were
as my life sped by–—a perpetual whirr?
What gave me the courage to do what I did
since that time long ago when I was a kid
and took that first journey out on my own,
out of the house across grass newly mown,
fresh from the bathtub, laughing with glee,
nude for the whole world to look out and see.
Running down the sidewalk until I was captured
again by my mother, winded but enraptured
by this two-year-old daughter escaped from her bath,
already set out on her singular path.
So many roadways traveled since then.
So many different lives that have been
tried and discarded in favor of others.
Surrogate fathers and surrogate mothers,
surrogate sisters and friends freshly minted,
plane tickets ordered, paid for and printed.
Travel adventures. Dangers to survive.
Making it through it all still alive.
I come up from the pool,
dripping and shivering.
Those few bold stars
above me delivering
promises that I
might still be a rover.
While there is breath left,
my life isn’t over.
For Word of the Day the prompt is “Bathtub.”
Face Pots for Lou!!!
When Lou Carrera published a picture of two of his flower pots that bore human faces, I tried to send him photos of a couple of my own “face pots” but it didn’t work in comments, of course, duh…so here they are, Lou. One is new this week but looks like the tree I planted in it isn’t doing well, so I need to find a smaller plant for it. The other photo is os a pot I purchased years ago and it seems to have lost both its definition and its nose.
An October Horror Story, for dVerse Poets
An October Horror Story: Hollow E’en
They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall.
One climbs a tree to peer within. I hope he doesn’t fall.
I cower here within my house and pray they’ll go away.
Though I am not religious, eventually I pray.
Their little voices raise a pitch. They start to bay and howl.
There’s a flutter in my heart region, a clutching in my bowel.
I purchased Reese’s Pieces and miniature Kit Kats
just for all these masked and costumed little brats.
My motives were unselfish. The candy was for them,
for I don’t eat much candy in efforts to grow slim.
And yet that bag of Reese’s, those small Kit Kats and such
called to me from where they were sequestered in my hutch.
It started with a whisper, hissing out their wish:
“We would look so pretty laid out on a dish!”
I knew that they were evil. I knew it was a trap.
I tried hard to resist them, my hands clenched in my lap.
I turned up my computer, listening to “The Voice.”
Those candy bars would not be seen till Halloween—my choice!
My willpower was solid. No candy ruled me.
(If that were true, no kids would now be climbing up my tree.)
Yes, it is true I weakened. I listened to their nags.
I took the candy from the shelf and opened up the bags.
Their wrappers looked so pretty put out for display
In one big bowl so colorful, lying this-a-way
and that-a-way, all mixed and jumbled up together.
No danger of their melting in this cooler weather.
I put them on the table, then put them on a shelf
so I would not be tempted to have one for myself.
When people came to visit, I put them by my bed.
Lest they misunderstand and eat them all instead.
Then when I was sleeping, one tumbled off the top.
I heard it landing with a rustle and a little “plop.”
I opened up one eye and saw it lying there
just one inch from where I lay, tangled in my hair.
Its wrapper was so pretty—foiled and multi-hued.
Some evil force took over as I opened it and chewed!
This started a small avalanche of wrappers on the floor
as I ripped and stuffed & chewed & swallowed more & more & more!
This story is not pretty but has to be confessed.
My only explanation is that I was possessed.
They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall,
but I have no candy for them. No treat for them at all.
Surrounded by the wrappers, bare bowl upon my lap,
I think I’ll just ignore them and take a little nap.
I hear them spilling o’er my wall and dropping down inside.
I try to think of what to do. Consider suicide.
They’re coming in to get me. Beating down my door.
They are intent on blood-letting—the Devil’s evil spore.
I guess it’s not the worst death a gal could ever get.
I’ve heard of much worse endings than death by chocolate!
The dVerse Poets prompt is “October.
“Let’s Dance!” Challenge
Please show me your dance photos!
Gleeful singing and dancesteps
Two dancers, two onlookers.
Mazinka gets with the dance action.
More happpy young dancers
The Lounge Lizards instigate a crowded dance floor, as usual.
Native dancer
I was leaving when this friend asked me to dance..thus the cape!!!
You Gotta See This!!!!, for Lens Artists Challenge #367
For some reason, I just love the photo of this rhinoceros beetle. It was crawling on my garage wall and I just liked the color mix as well as the holes in the surface of the wall that echo its spots.
I also loved this display in a beauty shop. Imagine doing anything at all with nails like these!!!!
And this is another favorite photo of mine. Taken at the Archaeological Museum in Mexico City. I took the photo from the back so it was reflected in the glass in the front which also reflected the wall behind. I love the effect.
For Lens Artists Challenge #367:Everyone should see this!
Lazy Morning
Nice lazy morning after painting the sculpture in the lot down below to lie in the hammock with a good book (and by the end with all three dogs) until……
Quetzalcoatl–2 1/2 Hours Later.
The next step.
Believe it or not, it took me 2 1/2 hours to paint the green scales on the other side of the neck, the snout and the gold coil. That said, I was able to finish before the sun came up over the house and trees and I met a neighbor, his grandchild and daughter-in-law as well as a passerby with pup! Here are their photos:
(I promise I didn’t paint the shoes!!!!)
For Cellpic Sunday
Quetzalcoatl Gets a Paint Job (For Cellpic Sunday)
Body and head–painting in progress
Click on photos to enlarge.
I have been painting my “Plumed Serpent” Sculpture in the lower garden in between bursts of rain and too-hot sunny periods. I hired someone to paint the body. I’ve been working on the head, which is still in process. I’ll do the plumed tail next. For some reason, I have identified with Quetzalcoatl since I first moved to Mexico. It is a sculpture of him that spews water into my pool and this huge sculpture winds its way across the lower lot. He was my project during the Covid isolation period. The head is of carved stone..purchased in Tonala. The tail I designed with Isidro and he carved it. The body I designed and Jose formed of concrete. I had a branding iron made to press the scales into the concrete. Once I’ve painted the head and tail, I’ll decide whether the body will stay as is or have another layer of paint added. May run out of energy by then…Forgottenman insisted wisely suggested¹ I share this “in process.”
Quetzalcoatl means “Feathered Serpent” in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The name combines “quetzal” (brightly colored bird) and “coatl” (snake), symbolizing the deity’s dual nature, which represents a connection between the earth and the sky. Quetzalcoatl was a major deity in many Mesoamerican cultures, including the Maya and Aztec, and was believed to have a role in the creation of the world and humanity. His image as a feathered serpent reflects a blend of the divine, celestial nature of the bird, and the grounded, earthly nature of the serpent, symbolizing wisdom, life, and fertility.
(From the World History Encyclopedia)
I’m going down to do some more painting before the sun comes up. I’ll be back with a post of what this lot looked like before I started this project…..
Go HERE to see the results of today’s painting.
For Cellpic Sunday
¹ Unauthorized edit by ForgottenMan
