Donald’s World
It seems reality’s been hacked.
The dice are loaded. Cards are stacked.
Truth is no longer so exact.
Actuality’s been cracked
and reason pilloried and racked.
Verisimilitude is yacked
and common sense has long been sacked,
along with logic, reason, tact.
So what’s been rumored, gossiped, quacked
is now more true than proven fact!
The prompt word today is fact.
Snapped in La Manzanilla. Now back home. Ahhhhh. Thanks for identifying this flower, LWBUT!
For Cee’s Daily Flower Prompt. See her bright cactus blooms here.
Fruitless
I’m a branch of the family wild and free.
My branches are wide but there’s no fruit on me.
My roots go down deeply. They’re seeking a place
to spread underground while leaving a trace
of what is below by what’s stretched to the skies.
Each leaf is a word that lives and then dries,
pressed onto paper, preserved and collected—
read if I’m lucky, pondered and dissected.
I’ve spawned no additions to the family tree.
Only my words will live after me.
The prompt today is branch.
Unopened
Every situation, every human relationship contains a number of possibilities. No person could guess them all. When we are too hasty in our judgements and our reactions, we cut ourselves off from all of those potential realities.
Your face a closed bud
hiding what might have flowered
had I been your sun.
For dVerse Poets haibun challenge.
Linda in a moment of reflection jdb photo 2018
A few weeks ago, I published a link to Linda Crosfield’s poem about ten ways she would prefer NOT to die. I requested that she write one about ten ways she would prefer to die. Here is her answer to that challenge, along with some photos and ruminations about this year in La Manzanilla:
http://purplemountainpoems.blogspot.mx/2018/03/ruminations-about-my-winter-in-mexico.html
Typical Day
Bark of dog,
Meow of cat.
Mama-san
takes care of that
with pop of can
and clink of dishes.
After solving
all these wishes,
back to bed.
Write my blogs.
Out of bed.
Put on togs.
Make a smoothie.
Read E-mail.
Into town
for writers’ meetings.
Lots of words
and lots of greetings.
Home again
to write some more.
Pepe’s ringing
at my door.
Once a week
a heavenly rub.
Body restored,
soak in the tub.
Pat the cats,
throw balls for Morrie.
Write some more,
the same old story.
Talk to Dux
many a time
throughout the day.
Sometimes with rhyme.
Midnight finds me
in the pool
under stars
and Morrie’s rule.
Throw the ball
for him to fetch.
Exercise, then
reach and stretch
to retrieve the ball
he throws at me.
Then loft it over
bush and tree
to lower garden
for him to find.
This is our nightly
pool grind.
Go in to bed
to write some more.
Get up to check
I’ve locked the door.
Other events
often occur.
Trips to the vet
to trim or cure.
Coffee with friends,
or dinner out.
trips to the shore,
without a doubt.
Lives grow and change
often with time.
So this is just
the paradigm.
The prompt word today is typical.
Martin, who owns the restaurant where we hold our Saturday writers group meetings, has his sons with him in the restaurant 5 days a week, and sometimes on weekends. He is just an amazing father, as you can see in these photos. You must enlarge to see these darling father/son poses.
Bob in “the” sarong, Bali, mid-1990’s jdbphoto
Fine Fabric
The fabric of my batik blouse seems to have grown too thin
as though what keeps the world out suddenly wants in.
A small tear on the shoulder and a long rend on the hem—
At first I wondered what it was that could be causing them.
Its fabric was durable— a fine hand-dyed sarong
spotted in the market and purchased for a song.
Young travelers in Bali, we had watched them being made—
as they traced the delicate patterns, we stood there in the shade.
And then I remembered it was nineteen seventy three
forty-four years ago that I brought it home with me
still smelling from the wax used as a resist for the dye.
The palm trees and the gamelan, the ocean and the sky
are memories wrapped up in that sarong I purchased there.
I used for a wrap–around, a towel for my hair,
a curtain and a picnic blanket, bedspread and a shawl,
a tablecloth and blanket—it served for one and all
as we traveled with our backpacks, on foot and boats and plane
then I took it with me when I went back home again.
Twenty-some years later, with my husband now along
I returned to Bali and brought my old sarong.
We found another like it—one for me and one for Bob.
Whenever clothes were called for, those sarongs did the job.
For years since then, I’ve used them for tablecloth or shawl,
for coverups around the pool, a curtain for the hall.
I had a caftan made of one. Now on another shore,
I wear it nearly every day and this is how it tore.
The woven equipale chair with tiny nails within it
reaches out for fabric every time I go to sit.
It gets my lovely caftan. and another favorite, too.
I know I shouldn’t sit in them, and yet I often do.
These memories are torn from us. It’s no good to resist.
All the parts of those gone days retreating in the mist.
Its fragile fabric wears away in spite of all our care.
It will not last forever. One day it won’t be there.
Later, I will join it through the tears life’s made in me.
All things are made or born to this inevitability.
(Click on first photo below to enlarge all and read captions.)
Fabric is the prompt word today.
