Mirror Image, for the W3 prompt, Jan 23, 2025

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Mirror Image

Who is the person
reflected in my mirror
over the past 77 years?

First me
then my mother
then my grandmother.

A reflection first of youth,
then lines
deepening into cracks.

It took me a minute to write the poem but two plus hours of sorting through 160,000 photos in my photo file to find photos to use with it. I never did find the actual photo I wanted to use. So goes life. It is true that a few years ago I started to see my mother instead of me when I looked in the mirror. Recently, it is my grandmother’s deeper wrinkles I see.

      • W3 poetry prompt

        For this week’s W3 prompt, Tia offers us the following guidelines:

        • Theme: The bittersweet, painful, or unsettling aspects of the past and its hold on the present;
          • Optional Challenge: Use imagery of shadows, cracks, or reflections to add depth to the theme;
        • Form: A “square” (e.g., 2×2, 3×3, 4×4, or any other pattern you choose);
          • “Rows” represent stanzas;
          • “Columns” represent the number of lines in each stanza;
            • For example: 3×3 = 3 stanzas of 3 lines each; and 4×4 = 4 stanzas of 4 lines each.

Angel Wing Jasmine for FOTD

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This was in the front yard of a beach house visited.
And this was the back yard! Ahhh.

Click on photos to enlarge.

 

For Cee’s FOTD

“How Much is Enough?” for the Writer’s Digest Wed. Poetry Prompt

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How Much is Enough?
(Appraising the Situation)

Enough’s too much when it comes to fish
or any other smelly dish.
Too much for castor oil in spoons
or relatives on honeymoons.
Amoebas?  Any one’s too much,
and a date who wants you to go Dutch
clearly tells you he’s not “it.”
One mosquito, when you’re bit,
is not “enough,” but “one too many.”
when your preference is “not any!”

Kids with colds and snoopy neighbors,
tiresome chores and heavy labors,
bitter pills and jerked-off scabs,
rainy days with no free cabs,
diarrhea, scabies, gout?
Too much! Too much, without a doubt!
“Enough’s enough” is repetitious,
obvious and almost vicious.

So don’t go spouting it at me.
I hate cliches from A to Z.
I won’t have any said to me.
If you use them, you’re dead to me!
“It is sufficient” I will accept.
“I’ll have no more”  is most adept.
But don’t go muttering platitudes
at folks like me with attitudes,
or I promise we’ll be getting rough
enough to prompt, “Enough’s enough!”

 

For Writer’s Digest Poetry prompt: Appraisal  Image by Tonmoy on Unsplash.

We Saw a Shark!!!!

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We were sorta wary of perhaps encountering a shark after a shark incident 20 kilometers south of La Manzanilla a year ago. Luckily, we didn’t encounter one in the water but then the second to last day, this one washed ashore!!!

 

Diving for Beach Sardines

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This is the first time I’ve been back to La Manzanilla in a year and the activity was amazing with thousands of sardines jumping up into the air around us and frigate birds and pelicans swooping down to try to catch them. This video shows frigate birds diving to scoop up sardines from the beach.

 

Looking Down at the Beach.

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The first fish looks sculpted from sand but was actually a real dead fish that had been beached, coated by sand and somewhat ossified. All first 5 photos taken in a 24 hour period on the beach in front of our beach rental in La Manzanilla. As for the apple, 2 mornings before,  I had written a poem about an apple on my blog, and searched for a photo in my photo file. Finally found one and posted it,  then came out  to the beach and discovered this apple lodged under the bottom of my beach chair. I needed a photo. Nature provided!

For Lens Artists Challenge; Taken from Above.

Damiana, for FOTD Jan 22, 2025

4 Replies

For Cee’s FOTD

Halyconia for FOTD Jan 21, 2025

5 Replies

For Cee’s FOTD

Dandelion for FOTD

3 Replies

This heartiest of flowers formed many memories in my childhood, from holding it under your chin to see if it reflected or not (Was it to see if you were telling the truth? Can’t remember) to making flower chains with them, to blowing their white fluff away to scatter in all directions with the result that it was later necessary to  pick hundreds of new dandelions out of the lawn!  They were the one flower that was ever-present during the spring, summer and fall.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day

Casa Gaviotas, My Home Away from Home

19 Replies

Allenda asked me to take a photo of Casa Gaviotas, where we are staying for a week. For years, I rented this lovely little house right on the beach in La Manzanilla, Mexico for two or three months a year. I always rented the bottom floor of the house and over the years got to be friends with a number of people who rented the upper level. This year my friend Brad rented the upper, I rented the lower for just one week and friends Kristine Trejo and Isidro Xilonzochitl came with us. We have been having a great time.  Here is the house.The palapa  with  hammocks  is  the front porch of  the  house.

Daniel used to be my neighbor but now it is a boat rental agency and coffee shop. Miss Daniel who was a town institution for many many years.