An Objective Perspective
Bosses who choose to use invective
might not be half so effective
as those who ask for the perspective
of other folks in their collective,
making decisions more elective.
Here are five word prompts Forgottenman gave me. That Turkey!!! Anyone want to play along?
The words are: invective, effective, elective, perspective and collective. Image by Julien on Unsplash.
Sadje also chose to accept the challenge HERE is her poem.
Click on photos to enlarge views.
The Arts
Do stories flutter round your head and brush your ears with wings?
Do words sift down like embers and ignite sparks in things?
Do crystal visions in your eyelids scare away the blues?
Do new rhythms lift your spirits and install taps on your shoes?
Do staffs of music fall like rain to shift your mode of thinking?
Fall like water from the sky until you feel you’re sinking
into overtures of gratitude for what life has been giving:
words and music, art and dance that make your life worth living.
flutter stories haunt spark lift words wing staff shift water gratitude crystal
For Sunday Whirl Wordle 531
This week, the prompt words were doozies. It might help a bit to explain that the incredibly obscure word “demesne” (which is a piece of land one has sole title to) is pronounced to rhyme with “pain.” I’ll leave it up to you to determine the meaning of “whiffle” and “obfuscate” from the context in which they are used. Not my fault, folks. It was in the prompts!!!!!
First Date Optimism
You exaggerate the matter if you say I’m your demesne.
That untruthful statement is purely most insane.
What started out a whiffle, you’ve made into a gale
by weaving our first date into a fairytale.
But I must take exception to your bending of the truth.
You are not my Boaz and I am not your Ruth.
If you think I’ll marry you after our first date,
As I said in the beginning, I fear you obfuscate!!!
Prompt words for the day are obfuscate, except, whiffle, demesne . Image by Priscilla du Preez on Unsplash.
As usual, click on photos to enlarge.
It is nearly 1 a.m. and the celebration down the mountain in the village of San Juan Cosala has just begun. The saint day of the Virgin of Guadalupe is the biggest celebration of the year in this town. The church is filled with flowers, bottle rockets have been going off all evening, and a band is loudly playing in the town square. This will go on all night and all of tomorrow. The pieces above were all made by me over the years, other than the one on the bottom left side.
Felling the Tree
Today my eyes teared over
as they bulldozed the tree
in the undeveloped lot next door.
It had to be cut.
A house was being built there and
aside from the trash it dropped,
It blocked the view.
Always the one to get his point across,
“I’ll tell you what,”
the contractor said,
“I’ll dig it up and plant it in your yard.”
But I didn’t want the mess of it, either.
I wanted the tree next door
where I could see it
without dealing
with the fluff in my pool,
the pods falling off.
That tree was a resting place for birds
which I said good by to
along with the tree.
Then, while I was at it,
I said good by to my cat
who had drowned in the pool
a week before.
Good by to my husband
who had hoped to see that tree
and the view around it
every day for the rest of his life.
Good by to my mother,
who passed onto me
her love of trees.
Good by
to all loved creatures
recently gone.
The tree was gone in a minute,
along with dry bushes, weeds.
The back hoe scraped the soil over
Coke cans, water bottles,
plastic flowerpots and chips wrappers—
the detritus from houses on each side,
as well as evidence of years of workers
who sat in the shade of the lot for lunch.
For a year or two
of privacy lost, calm shattered,
peace surrendered,
I would get new neighbors,
perhaps a friend.
Clouds of dust billowed
over my newly painted wall.
They’d repaint the wall
and plant new trees,
the builder promised,
as they bulldozed all.
The Rising
The clouds flow up the hills like the mist of falls
rising back up to the level they fell from.
I’m making my way down to the hammock in the gazebo.
It’s night, and I toe my way through the grass barefoot,
hoping for no surprises.
Far below, some hombre on a microphone pontificates lakeside.
He could be a circus barker or a kitchen pot salesman
speaking from a booth at a fiesta a mile below.
He seems to be selling something,
but perhaps instead extols the virtues of a bride and groom
or a fifteen-year-old butterfly
emerging from the cocoon of her quiencieñera.
I am deep in the groin of Mexico, swinging under the stars.
Up the hill in my house, the phone chrrrrs insistently
as I retreat from all public noises above and below.
My opening heart floats up as I sink deeper under blankets
to watch the clouds rise through moonlight.
I imagine my mother, my husband,
my father, my sister, my friend
and other loves both long and recently departed,
floating in mist above the busy world,
distracted, cushioned by their amazement
at finally rising above voices, gunshots, hospital beds,
screeching brakes, trees, mountains, universes, and their own shells.
How long are they aware of us, the hoi poloi below?
How soon fixed fully on their own rising?
Winter Doldrums
Crimson is reserved for autumn, December is spartan and white.
Frosty and slippery and frigid. Paled by the icy air’s bite.
Folks could be certified crazy for taking a walk on a day
when thermometers hit below freezing. You can freeze off your butt in that way.
Give me a balmy June morning or a sweltering hot afternoon
with a sunshade to keep me from baking and sinking away in a swoon.
It’s certainly better than winter with snowshoes and mufflers and chains.
If I’m going to have weather, I’d rather contend with spring rains.
Snow has the gross disadvantage of freezing off parts of your nose.
It means going out almost fully obscured with every part wrapped up in clothes.
I can put up with sneezing in springtime and all of the parching of summer.
Leaves falling in autumn don’t irk me, but winter is always a bummer!!!!
Prompts today are crimson, certify, frosty, spartan and reserve.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 