I swear these photos are not staged. When I walked around the garden to find a flower to photograph for Cee’s FOTD, I found these reminders of my gardener Pasiano, just as though he’d left a trail for me to follow. And he had, of course, departed for the day. I guess picking up after him is easier than doing all my own gardening. Plus, he did fix the broken pipe my plumber never did come back to fix, so I forgive him his trespasses.
For those of you who read my “Fancy Word” poem early on, I discovered hours after I published it that the last word of the penultimate line as well as the entire last line had been left off the poem! Ironically, the second to the last word of the penultimate line rhymed with the two lines above it, so the deletion wasn’t obvious, but it is funnier with the last line, so here is the poem with all of its lines. I’ve also corrected it on the original, so if you read it later on, you’ve already seen this version:
Fancy Words
Don’t we adore fancy words? Don’t we love to use them?
Still, it is annoying when some choose to abuse them.
When “geddouddahere” would do to tell pests when to go,
they use “begone!” to banish them in words more rococo.
Their need to parlay simple words, I fear I find most gruesome.
A tasty meal’s not good enough. They see repasts most toothsome.
While we argue, they asservate, assiduously stating
things that all of the rest of us are fine with just debating.
They see themselves as bon vivants, most clever and most charming,
They complicate the simplest words at rates we find disarming.
A lady we call beautiful, gorgeous, lovely, cool,
they find pulchritudinous. Where did they go to school?
“Piquant” they use religiously, though most of us denounce it.
Yes, we agree it’s pretty, but we just can’t pronounce it.
Slow music is andante, dark closets are aphotic.
As they rave on, each alloquy tends to get hypnotic.
What the rest of us get rid of, they alleviate.
They do not use contractions. They don’t abbreviate.
They’re intent on gamboling while we’re just being silly.
They see the landscape undulating. We just find it hilly.
Forsooth, they have no wherewithal to get where they must go?
We’re all willing to chip in. We hope they don’t go slow!
They are extremely irritating, though they do not know it.
It’s not easy dealing with a friend who is a poet!!!
In Mexico, this is called an arete flower. In the States we called it a bleeding heart.
For Cee’s FOTD
Fancy Words
Don’t we adore fancy words? Don’t we love to use them?
Still, it is annoying when some choose to abuse them.
When “geddouddahere” would do to tell pests when to go,
they use “begone!” to banish them in words more rococo.
Their need to parlay simple words, I fear I find most gruesome.
A tasty meal’s not good enough. They see repasts most toothsome.
While we argue, they asservate, assiduously stating
things that all of the rest of us are fine with just debating.
They see themselves as bon vivants, most clever and most charming,
They complicate the simplest words at rates we find disarming.
A lady we call beautiful, gorgeous, lovely, cool,
they find pulchritudinous. Where did they go to school?
“Piquant” they use religiously, though most of us denounce it.
Yes, we agree it’s pretty, but we just can’t pronounce it.
Slow music is andante, dark closets are aphotic.
As they rave on, each alloquy tends to get hypnotic.
What the rest of us get rid of, they alleviate.
They do not use contractions. They don’t abbreviate.
They’re intent on gamboling while we’re just being silly.
They see the landscape undulating. We just find it hilly.
Forsooth, they have no wherewithal to get where they must go?
We’re all willing to chip in. We hope they don’t go slow!
They are extremely irritating, though they do not know it.
It’s not easy dealing with a friend who is a poet!!!
For My Vivid Blog: Words
Must confess that I wrote this poem 7 years ago, but it seemed appropriate, so….
Click on Photos to Enlarge
Elephants
Fifty-six years of elephants in my life. The first photo—Tsavo Game Preserve in Kenya, Second—riding a timbering elephant in Sri Lanka. First it tried to pull down this tree. Next it went lumbering down the bank of the river to cool down in the water. An exciting ride. Third—a crocheted mama and her baby created by a woman in my village in San Juan Cosala, Jalisco, Mexico. My life has tamed down a bit since those first two photos.
Just three months late, For CMMC: Word with E and A
And for My Vivid Blog
For FOTD
The Bread Train
When you hop aboard the bread train, there’s no negotiation.
Folks aboard the bread train become a congregation.
It’s a happy wagon, a life-fulfilling ride.
Everything comes easy when you are inside.
Don’t bother about lowlifes who wait along the tracks.
You can’t be responsible for everybody’s backs.
This trip through life is better if you have some dough.
These folks who have an easy ride everywhere they go?
That there may be enough for all is what they do not know.
They want no interference with the status quo.
If folks don’t have what they do, it’s just because they’re lazy.
Those who think the bread train crowd will feed them are just crazy!
Every riff-raff wannabe can’t have what he wants.
If he can’t afford the bread train, let him eat croissants!!
For dVerse Poets: Train
Go HERE to read more train poems!
Undocumented spouses of American citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship, according to officials briefed on the plan.
Jailbird
It was a bit before midnight the night before Xmas Eve in 1975. I was just home from a party at my sister’s house, where my mother was staying, still in my long party dress with an apron over it because I was preparing the meal for Xmas Eve, when they would all be coming to my house for and afternoon meal. I’d just opened the fridge to put the cranberries in to jell when there was a LOUD pounding on the door. Startled, I called out, “Who is it?” I couldn’t imagine, but they sounded in a good bit of distress.
“Police, Ma’am. Open up!” Of course I thought it must be a joke.
“Okay, really, who is it? Buffy?” Sure it must be friends make a drop-by after they left the bar, I used the first name that came to mind of someone who might think it was funny to rouse me out of bed on what now, by the clock, was already Xmas Eve.”
“Open up. We have a warrant for your arrest!!!” This didn’t sound like the voice of any friend of mine. I opened the drapes and peered out, and sure enough, there was a police car parked in the street in front of my apartment, its lights shining brightly and its cherry top rotating and sending a circle of red through the neighborhood. I could see the drapes of apartments on the floors above opening as well in our L shaped apartment complex. I opened the door, and there were two uniformed policemen, handcuffs extended, ready to haul me off to jail… for what?
It was my second year of teaching English in Cheyenne, Wyoming. So far as I knew, I was free of any felonies short of perhaps driving home after a few drinks at the Corner Bar with my fellow teachers, but if guilty of that, I had never been caught. What in the world could be happening?
What was I being arrested for?
“Outstanding speeding ticket, Ma’am.” They allowed me to get my coat, one of them following me into the bedroom as I collected it, then they directed me out to the car. As we approached the police car, one opened the back door and the other one demanded that I put my hands behind my back to be cuffed.
“You’re going to handcuff me? You must be kidding me! I have an outstanding speeding ticket that I forgot to pay because the day I was supposed to pay it, I accompanied the high school pom pom girls to Casper for a cross country meet as their sponsor!!! You are going to not only drag me in on Xmas Eve, but you’re going to handcuff me?
They exchanged looks, and I think I detected a bit of embarrassment on their part. The handcuffs were put away and I sat in the screened back seat with my hands, at least, free.
When we arrived at the jail, I was booked and told I could make one phone call. I called my principal, thinking after all the reason I had neglected to pay my fine was in the pursuit of school business. “Jim, can you come bail me out of jail? I’ve been arrested.” He laughed. “Judy, go to bed. It’s too late for one of your jokes. We’ll see you tomorrow!” And he hung up!!!! Could I make another call? No, I was limited to one. Again, I made my plea. I was a local schoolteacher. Not paying the speeding ticket was an oversight. I was chaperoning at a school activity! Probably half of the police officers on the force had gone to my school! Finally, they granted me one more phone call. I called my sister, and because my mother by habit carried a lot of cash, luckily they had the bail money on hand.
As I awaited my savior, “Where should we put her?” One of the arresting officers asked.
“Put her in the drunk tank. She’s no better than any of the rest of them!” the desk sergeant directed.
And so it was that I joined all of the rest of the undesirables in the county jail. As I passed down the corridor to the drunk tank, I passed the cell of a local man being held for murder and a number of other detainees who looked a bit surprised at seeing a local schoolteacher in a floor length party dress being hauled off to the drunk tank. I later discovered that the judge of traffic court, disgusted at all the unpaid fines, had directed that every person with an outstanding fine to pay should be rounded up as a lesson in what happened to those neglectful of their civic duty to pay their debt to society!!!!
My sister arrived in about 1/2 hour with my bail money and gave me a ride home, chuckling all the way. The next day when my family arrived at my house, when I opened my Xmas stocking, there was a plastic set of handcuffs in its very bottom. Evidently my enterprising brother-in-law had somehow located a set in some venue open on Xmas Eve. My mother’s gift to me that year was to pay my bail money.It was, all in all, one of my most memorable Christmases. True story.
For 
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 