Drying flower stalks, palm blossoms falling to the pool surface, crown of thorns in sparse bloom. Must be fall. https://ceenphotography.com/2017/03/18/flower-of-the-day-march-18-2017-peony-2/
I absolutely love this photo. The tables in this little cafe are actually set up on the side of the street, as you can see. I saw the milk truck coming and could see that its rear-vision side mirror was way too wide for comfort. The waitress saw this at the same time and sprinted for the table to take down the umbrella. For once, I was successful in getting my camera out in time. I should learn to wear it around my neck, because every day there are so many photo opportunities that I miss. Got this one, though!!!
For Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge.
The prompt word today was controversy. Are Kindle and Audible a blessing or a curse? Will libraries and bookstores become a thing of the past, vanished like scrolls and slates and blackboards? Will technology continue to wed the concrete and the abstract until there is no difference? In looking for one of my photographic images to accompany this prompt, I found this poem written two years ago and decided to reblog myself!
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 the 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.
Perhaps 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.
Good Fortune
How lucky I’ve been in the bad luck I’ve had,
for no matter how dangerous, life-threatening, bad,
I’ve always come out both alive and still kicking
whenever my life chose to give me a licking.
The prompt word today is luck.
Morrie’s admirer Niña lives behind these gates. I think she spends more time at our house, though! Here is Niña. You’ll see more of her later:
https://miscellaneousmusingsofamiddleagedmind.wordpress.com/2017/03/16/thursday-doors-march-16-2017/
Zit Solution
It was a tiny pimple in the middle of my chin,
but it seemed most massive to me way back then.
A zit the day before the prom seemed a tragedy
insurmountable to a teenager like me.
I squeezed it and I worried it. With Clearasil I topped it.
Still I couldn’t leave it, and eventually, I popped it,
put toothpaste on and alcohol and dabbed it with foundation;
but still it wouldn’t go away, to my great consternation.
I put a band-aid on it, but that just made it worse.
And when my dad insisted that we had to rehearse
my two-step, since I’d never danced with boys before,
I backed myself right down the hall and headed out the door.
He caught me on the porch and assumed a dancing stance,
telling me he had to be sure that I could dance.
We two-stepped to the railing and two-stepped back again,
executing dancing the way he had back when.
And when he danced me through the door and back down the hall,
He said, “You’re a good dancer! You aren’t bad at all.”
Dad whispered at my door that night, just before I dozed,
“Mom had a pimple on her chin the night that I proposed.
Of all girls on the dance floor, you will be the rage.
When the prom queen’s introduced and standing on the stage,
it will be you that everyone’s looking at for sure.
They won’t be noticing your pimple. It’s your smile that is the cure.”
The prompt word was massive.
