For Cee’s flower prompt.
Pelicans
They float upon the gentle swells,
with chins tucked in politely.
Of all the birds, most dignified,
their movements never sprightly.
They look like grumpy butlers
named Oliver or Jeeves
in morning coats of softest gray
with wings tucked in their sleeves.
They may be only scouting
the source of their next meal,
for soon they take off to the air
with energy and zeal.
And soon they’re diving down again,
straight like an arrow shot,
down into the shallows
to see what can be caught.
Bobbing once again,
they lift their bills and then let slide
all that’s in their pouches
to another place inside.
I wonder if the fishes flop
all the long way down,
and this is why the pelicans
then fold their arms and frown?
The prompt today is shallow. This poem is a rewrite of a poem published a few years ago..
Today was mask day at camp. Hardly an understated one in the bunch!
(Click on any photo to enlarge them all.)
Two bouts of heavy rain in the past two days have left my newest hibiscus rather waterlogged. I had to hold its head up to get one of these shots:
(Click on first photo to see larger views of all)
For Cee’s Flower Prompt.
This is what the kids at Campamento Estrella (Camp Star) in San Juan Cosala, Mexico had to say today about saving their world:
(Please click on first photo to enlarge all.)
The taste of green tea is a taste to which I do not cotton.
Instead of tasting fresh and green, to me it just tastes rotten.
Although it is a liquid that I must daily swallow,
it clearly is a flavor in which I don’t choose to wallow.
Health drives us to those foods and liquids we would never choose.
Makes us eat our kale and fish oil, takes away our booze.
If we want to keep our blood pressure from simply soaring,
we’ll be giving up our salt for flavors much more boring.
So nature takes our simple pleasures from us one by one.
Things like buttered popcorn become a smoking gun.
If we want our bodies to cooperate and function,
we’ll gobble less for pleasure and nibble more for unction.
The prompt today was tea.
back when we were baby birds
feeding each other
cold spaghetti worms
in grass clipping nests
empty summer stretched in front of us
stale plastic wading pools
pressing yellow circles
into grass
that smelled like wet bandaids
during a game of hide-and-seek
dust bunnies behind the chest
full of old prom dresses
in the upstairs hall
mouse droppings
in the basement
pits from sour cherries
scattered on the back steps
scraps of soggy paper
dried into small sculptures
under the weeping willow tree
revealing part of each original message
mommy is . . .
. . . ate my cookie
I hope Sharon . . .
my doll doesn’t . . . your doll . . .
summer just an empty cup
we filled each day
with the long summer rains
of daydreams.
The prompt today way fragrance. Since I have to leave soon for the first day of Campamento Estrella, here’s a poem I wrote so long ago that I’d totally forgotten it. I’ll post photos of camp later today.
I’ve know bougainvilleas to grow to the top of huge Norfolk Island Pines here. These are regular pine trees, but they were still pretty high up.
For Cee’s Flower Prompt.
