Tag Archives: Blast from the Blog

“Wooden Heart” For Blast from the Blog, October 23.

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The wooden heart described in the poem, along with a copper heart pin I made for him.

Wooden Heart (Originally published on October 23, 2014)

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Wooden Heart

He handed it to me without ceremony—a small leather bag, awl-punched and stitched together by hand. Its flap was held together by a clasp made from a two fishing line sinkers and a piece of woven wax linen. I unwound the wax linen and found inside a tiny wooden heart with his initials on one side, mine on the other. A small hole in the heart had a braided cord of wax linen strung through that was attached to the bag so that the heart could not be lost. He had woven more waxed linen into a neck cord. I was 39 years old when he gave me that incredible thing I never thought I would receive: his heart—as much of it as he could give.

It was the first handmade gift I’d ever received from a man. Inside, over the years, I have put a lock of his hair and a tiny tiny animal of indeterminate species hand-cut out of wood by his youngest son and presented to me. Twenty-eight years later, this bag is all that is left of what was once my union with the man and his eight children from three different women. When he died, we returned him to the inevitable earth and all of the children returned forever to their real mothers.

The bag lies in a box with other relics of our past together: a silver heart brooch, another carved of wood with wings attached and, strangely enough, a miniature computerized hand piano. Years after his death, it struck a chord on its own, just lying on the shelf beside my favorite picture of him. One last dying gasp from the tiny gadget I’d put in his Christmas stocking but then grown tired of hearing him play and so had hidden away, only to enter our bedroom one night to find him playing it under the covers like a guilty pleasure hidden from the adults, although he was already in his sixties.

For our first Christmas, he gave me a large sculpture that was also a musical instrument—three hand-raised copper gongs in the shape of breasts suspended over a wooden keyboard played by rawhide mallets, the gongs suspended from the long horizontal neck of a copper wind instrument with two necks and two mouthpieces, so two notes could be blown at once. When he died, it was the sculpture chosen by his youngest daughter, and I let her take it. Now, the remnants I have of him are only the leftovers that remained after eight children had chosen. I was moving to another country and could not hold onto everything he’d given.

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Sculpture by Bob Brown,1986.  4′ X 5.5′, wood, hand forged copper, marble and hemp.

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Miniature hand piano, 4″ X 2″

I moved away from most of those things we had collected over the years, but somewhere hidden away in the thousand objects in my studio is the small leather bag and the tiny hand piano, now forever mute, his father’s pocket watch, his biking medals and the other assorted pieces of his life that will one day wind up in a secondhand store in Mexico. All of our gifts finally melding with the parts of all those billions of other lives that strike their brief chord before blending, inevitably, back into the cacophony of the universe.

The Prompt: What’s the best present you’ve ever received that was handmade by the giver, not store-bought? Tell us what made it so special.

 

 

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18 thoughts on “Wooden Heart”

  3. kellyshaw2001's avatarkellyshaw2001
    Damn! I’m only coming back here when I’m ready to sob! How do these things happen? Yet they do, and somehow, some way, some ability of the heart makes it okay…makes it beautiful. Kelly

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  5. Pingback: Daily Prompt: By Hand | tnkerr-Writing Prompts and Practice (Edit)
  6. Pingback: Handmade Friendship | My Own Champion (Edit)
  9. Pingback: Cacophony | lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown (Edit)
  10. N's avatarN
    This is so beatutiful… the gift the thought the post all so beautiful!!!
    Ans so delicately writtem …”his heart—as much of it as he could give” lovely!

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  13. SAM VOELKER's avatarSAM VOELKER
    I just this morning happened on this, and it shows that deep love you two had, that is everlasting. Such a beautiful tribute, touching, and I do hope that you still look at that little bag and hold it, and feel the love that went into it. I have a special place with my memories as well, and they mean so much to me. So beautiful, it is time for you to re-post this with an update. I too treasure such items that would mean nothing to another person and I wonder if some day they will end up on a yard sale table for fifteen cents, a book, a painting, a piece of jewelry or fine wood box I made for her, something I picked up in another country when I had to be away from her on a trip, nothing really valuable except for the love that went into it. There was one valuable item that I gave her from China, and she gave to a person when she was dying. This person did not value it, and I asked if I could have it back, causing family problems, but I wanted it to be where it was appreciated, not for money, but for love.

    From your writings, I see Bob Brown as a person with a strong inner persona; one who had difficulty outwardly showing his love, maybe due to his past failures, and this has bothered you, but it was there and the greatest gift that he had for you is still attached at the end of your name. Maybe in a ghostly way he sent me and others to remind you this, but I feel that you really do not need that nudge, it will be with you for the rest of your life, and this is your life lesson for today.

    I wrote more, but just erased it because I told myself, “she already knows what I am writing, who am I, someone she never met, to remind her”~!

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessonsPost author
      Sam, thanks for reminding me of this piece written so many years ago. Just recently, I cleaned out my studio and found both the little piano and the little leather purse necklace. It was in a bag I had meant to make into a retablo. I had forgotten, however, that I had written this piece about it. I just hit my 6,666th post and like things tossed into a junk drawer, poems and essays can get lost. I’m glad to have this one back again! Yes, I’ll post it again at the appropriate time. Thanks to you.

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Waiting for the Rest of Her Life for “Blast from the Blog,” Oct 18, 2016

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img_7765 photo and collage by jdb

Waiting for the Rest of Her Life

She has faith in the future that her life will fit.
She sits at home patiently, planning on it.
But as she sits waiting for the rest of her life,
the fear it won’t happen cuts like a knife.
As day after day goes by in a whirr,
she’s starting to realize it might not occur.

Her little white dog lies curled up beside her,
but stroking his coat won’t relieve what’s inside her.
She’s yearning for something­–she’s not quite sure what.
Inside her, the want of it roils in her gut,
then digs itself deeper into her soul.
It’s like playing a game where she can’t find the goal.

In every city, far up, looking down,
there are folks in tall buildings, surveying the town—
every alley and walkway for as far as they can
eyes staring out as they survey and pan
the small world below them that must have an answer
to this life that’s consuming them like a slow cancer.

I want to tell them that love can’t find you.
You must lean yourself over and pick up a shoe.
Put it on, then the other one. Walk out the door.
Waiting’s not what life was intended for.
We were pushed into life at the time of our birth,
and life goes on pushing all over the earth.

So all of you people with all of your faces
behind all these windows in all of these places,
Give up your pining and wishing and hoping.
No happiness lies in all of this coping.
Go find your soulmate, no matter the weather,
and then you can spend your life waiting together.

Blast from the Blog for Oct 13

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Morning Protein

Each morning when I waken, I take a little pill;
but though it is to boost my health, today it made me ill.
Before I went to slumber, I poured a glass of Coke
so it would be there in the night if I began to choke.
I know it isn’t usual, but it works for me.
Somehow it works to clear my throat and leaves the passage free.

So when I took my pill this morning, feeling sort of hazy,
I didn’t go for water, but instead I was just lazy.
I lifted up the Coke cup, filled almost to the brim,
and only had a little sip before up to the rim
something solid floated that shouldn’t have been there.
I felt something that tickled––like very coarse stiff hair.

Later, I was glad I hadn’t taken bigger sips,
for as it was, just part of it made it past my lips.
I hurried to the bathroom and spit and spit and spit,
then emptied out the cup and didn’t look at it
as a big dead cockroach went swirling down the drain.
Will I drink without looking? No. Never again.

Blast from the Blog, Oct 13, 2016

for Blast from the Blog, Oct 8

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For “Blast from the Blog,” Here is a post from this date (Oct 8) in 2018.

Meters and Rhyme

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Meters and Rhyme

I really cannot fathom a routine that involves running.
The meters that I deal with are in rhyming and in punning.
My decision to work out in feet that do not meet the track
stems from going with my talents, not pursuing what I lack.

For me, excessive exercise is simply not the norm.
I don’t have the deportment nor the interest nor the form.
To blog and not to jog is a decision that’s well-founded.
Apparent by my figure, which is plump and amply rounded.

Putting one foot before the other can be done with fingers, too,
for when  I’m forced to run, I find I’m likely to turn blue!
When it comes to exercises that we’re called to face,
every finish line need not be got to by a race.

 

The prompt words today are plump, routine, fathom and apparent. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/rdp-monday-plump/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/08/fowc-with-fandango-routine/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/fathom/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/06/daily-addictions-2018-week-40/apparent

16 thoughts on “Meters and Rhyme”

“The Sporting Life” Blast from the Blog for Oct 3

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This is what I was up to on Oct. 3, 2017

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The Sporting Life

I’ve never had much interest in sports played with a ball.
Of games with pucks or shuttlecocks, I have no need at all.
Gym workouts, laps and chin-ups do nothing for me.
I simply have no talent for touching chin to knee.
The body part I work out with is of a different kind.
I like the sort of games requiring exercise of mind.
Dominoes or Mastermind, Bridge or Chess or Scrabble
are aspects of the sporting life discounted by the rabble.
Yet if you want to hold my interest, team sport is absurd.
Just woo me with a domino, a die, a card, a word.
Lay your mind upon the table, dear, I’ll trump it with an ace.
The contact I like in a sport is merely face-to-face.

Blast from the Blog for Oct 3

Blast from the Blog, Sep 8 2016 “Inelegant Obsession”

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This control board of the plane I flew from Prince Edward Island to Nova Scotia on is slightly less daunting than the dashboard of the Jeep Cherokee they pawned off on me as a replacement for the simple economy car I requested. The flight took one half hour. Renting the car (even though I’d filled out all the paperwork on the internet) and figuring out how to operate the monstrosity they gave me took two hours!!!

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The beast!!! I still haven’t figured out how to turn on the radio and tremble at the thought of mistakenly turning on the four wheel drive

 

Inelegant Obsession

I’d love to be elegant while I’m obsessing,
but if I told you how, I’d only be guessing.
The man at the counter said yoga’s the answer
to two hour waits, and smart cars and cancer.

I told him that yoga’s more easily done
in my pool or on mats spread out in the sun––
Not two hours before midnight when you’re feeling sad
’cause the car you pre-rented is not to be had

and instead you’re confronted with a Jeep Cherokee
with all bells and whistles included for free!
Yet each feature they’ve added is cryptic and puzzling.
Screen like a space ship and gasoline-guzzling.

I can’t find the lighter to plug in my Nuvi.
The radio screen is showing a movie,
but I can’t find a plug to plug in my phone
and I’m out in this parking lot, stressed and alone.

After one hour of standing and waiting to rent it
and one more in the parking lot, how I repent it!
I go on the road in the inky black dark
with no place to stop and no place to park.

My GPS empty of power and knowledge,
to find the right route would take training in college.
No route numbers have I, I can’t see the map.
My phone out of power sits limp on my lap.

The screen gives me options for stations galore,
but no arrow to choose them, just one button more
for feature after feature that I cannot use.
I wish I had knowledge.  I wish I had booze!!!

When I try to turn on the overhead light,
the moonroof zips open and try as I might,
I can’t get it closed but just open it more,
so the wind whips my hair with a terrible roar.

I’ve always loved traveling wild and free,
but it now seems travel’s evolved beyond me.
Where is my confidence and my elan?
That air of achievement, that air of “I can?”

When I get to the motel two hours in arrears,
when the clerk asks how are you, I explode in tears.
I tell him my story, like a silly old fool––
but he doesn’t snicker and he isn’t cruel.

“See that?” he said, waving a hand at my phone.
He shook his gray head and gave a small moan.
“Don’t know how to use one–not me nor my wife.
It seems like technology’s plaguing our life.”

He dished out a Kleenex and almost at once,
I found I was feeling much less of a dunce.
I may be a fool and an old one at that,
but it’s so reassuring to share that coned hat!

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https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/elegant/

Blast from the Blog, Sept 3, 2018

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Dead Possum

A rude surprise,
it lay like breakfast rejected
on the patio outside the dogs’ sleeping room.

The dogs were restless this morning,
barking for their kibble,
unwilling to follow the rules
that decreed paws known all too well
as lethal weapons needed to be contained,
the dogs in their open cages before I’d venture out to feed.
But some wildness recently sated
drove them to assault the door
and refuse repeated demands to
go to their beds.
They staged their impatient war dance,
telling with growls and claws
the tale of the hunt—
That won battle.

I lock them in their cages
and, order restored, I dish their meals
and free them to their feed.
I walk behind them to secure the sliding glass door,
gather dust pan and broom, plastic pail.
Their quarry too large to fit, let alone be lofted
by a dust pan, I grasp the tail and lower the possum
like a colossal tea bag for a dipping,
into the wash bucket,
walk the long path down to the lower wall,
heft it over into deep underbrush
of the vacant lot next door.

I own that land.
It has been the burial place
of sixteen generations of those possums
too slow for escape,
with teeth and claws insufficient for defense––
every one a battle won
by the dogs
and each one equally mourned––
their wild ferocity not enough
to best even dogs seemingly grown docile
until these night battles
gone unnoticed in my dreams
are brought to view in light of day.

The possum’s fur wet and matted but only slightly torn,
every time I hopefully delude myself
that perhaps it’s playing witness to its name
and only playing possum.
Optimistically, I don heavy gloves and winter coat,
ready for the struggle as I try to save
what an adult part of me knows
no longer is in need of saving.

Each corpse ironically made heavier by loss of life,
that dead weight of it
is echoed in a central part of me
as I try to lift with reverence
this newest evidence
that most of life
and all of death
is out of our control.

A sad one this day…

Blast from the Blog 2020..Retribution

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Retribution

I swallow screams for dinner,
hold my tongue the whole meal through.
I’m told I’ll have to eat my words
if I let slip a few.
I’m choking back the clever things
that I want to tell,
but all my smart rejoinders
simply will not jell.

“Better seen than heard,” they say,
and yet they do not see me.
If I’m not allowed to speak,
how will I ever be me?
When I grow up, I’ll talk and talk.
Never will I be quiet.
If someone tries to shut me up,
I simply will not buy it.

By then my folks will be real old.
To shush me? They won’t dare.
If they do, I’ll shush them back,
and put them in a chair.
I’ll make them face the corner
and tell them to be quiet.
And if they say to eat my words?
I’ll say I’m on a diet!!!

Complicated by Nature For Blast from the Blog, Aug 14, 2020

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Complicated by Nature

I find my mind keeps spinning until my brain grows weary
ever since I foolishly googled “chaos theory.”

While fatalists declare the world caught up in its rut,
the chaos theorists have theories I cannot rebut

wherein each thing duplicated differs from the last
because of other factors than the mold from which they’re cast.

And suddenly I have excuses for each thing I do.
Why my cake has fallen, and why my bras turned blue

the last time that I washed them the detergent was the same,
and yet something perhaps had changed–chaos theory is to blame!!!

Each snowflake varies from last, each flower is unique.
It seems that our creator demands a bit of tweak

in everything created. Chaos affects  everything.
I guess that Mother Nature wants to keep it interesting!!!

For “Blast from the Blog” Some Little Bug Inside Me–a Reblog of a post from June 30 in 2018

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Some Little Bug Inside Me