Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

“African Love Story” for dVerse Poets

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African Love Story

In this day and age
Almost everyone has a tropical love story.

Show of hands–
How many here?

There was a war.  Danger.
And there were disapproving fathers
And careers.
And yes, I know that some
Love stories survive them all.
But ours didn’t.
And he didn’t.

So just for a year and a few months
We were in love in a warm climate.
A torn love story with a sad ending
With me as its only living remnant.

Imagine yourself
In that story
Full of hormones and atmosphere

It is a meditation remembering
Sand and moonlight under the Southern Cross.
Or cocks crowing before you fell asleep
Long rolling nights in a village
Where almost no one spoke your language.

Perhaps you were a prisoner of love
As I was years ago.
Non-protesting, dizzy and dumb for passion.

Would I have stayed for love if I’d known
It was the whole business of love I’d leave behind,
And not just my beloved?

Would you?

 

 

The dVerse prompt is ‘Where Does Love Go?”

A Reunion Imperative for dVerse Poets

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Upon Running into a Former Best Friend

Don’t give me cause to regret our reunion.
Don’t bring back to mind our former disunion.
Don’t lament my career or cuss at my kids—
those actions that once put us into the skids—
dissolving our friendship and our former ties
when I’d had enough of your conniving lies.
Don’t inveigle or bemoan your lack of a pension.
Past times I’ve come through I won’t bother to mention.
And if you’ve a reaction and want to explode,
do me a favor. Take it on the road!!!

For dVerse Poets...an Imperative Poem

Just Me for dVerse Poets

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Just Me
Inside my skin, around my bone,
I am me and me alone.
Wherever I choose to abide,
it is just me tucked here inside.
And if you find you’re in a bind,
you’re welcome to explore my mind
and pass on anything you find.

For the dVerse Poets Quadrille challenge, the prompt is “Bone.” Illustration created with AI. (Best I could do.)

Letter from the People of America for dVerse Poets

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Letter from the People of America

Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dear Elected Representatives:
(A Letter from the People of America)

We ventilate our dwellings of many different kinds,
but may not have the sense to ventilate our minds.
Perhaps we fear we’d stir up something that has died—
some milk of human kindness that’s buried deep inside.

As kids sit scared in cages and countless forests burn,
you think you’re given license to hoard all that you earn,
protecting it from others who have need of it,
flailing around in luxuries of your money pit.

Yachts and cars and mansions should not buy peace of mind
when they leave our planet in a lethal bind.
Our plastic world is flailing. It chokes on its excess.
How can you turn your backs on its extreme duress?

We elect our rulers. They are not born to reign.
In return we must demand that they share our pain
and do not profit by it with cash for legislation
leading to their betterment and our consternation.

Look at where we’re going and look at where we’ve been.
Open up your minds. Let truth and justice in.
During your term of office who’s advanced as far as you have?
It seems the teeming masses did not profit as a few have.

We’re taking back our government, abolishing each clause
that gives you the entitlement to profit from the laws
you enact for self-interest. It’s time that you were outed
and all who vote against our interests were routed.

You defend bad judgement, support your corrupt clown.
Now all who stand behind him must also be brought down.
You overlook the obvious for motives all your own.
You’ve opened up the cage and the dove of peace has flown,

stalked by a bald eagle who feeds on those for whom
it should serve as symbol of something else but doom.
We must bring back our liberty, nobility and pride.
Resuscitate a country that many fear has died.

The truth is there before you, so open up your minds
to see there’s a solution for our present binds.
If you refuse to topple that one on whom you dote,
we’ll topple you one after one–when we go to vote!!

For dVerse Poets we are to write a poem in the form of a letter.

Memories of Bob for dVerse Poets Acrostic Challenge

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Bob Brown sculpture and visitor

Memories of Bob
(Judy Dykstra-Brown Acrostic Poem)

Just as I was about to give in to distress,
up came a memory of you,
diverted by all those dreams
you carried in your head.

Dreams consisting of wood, metal, paper, stone––
your first loves
katapulting themselves into your art.
Sculptures startling in their originality,
taking their viewers into new worlds,
returning, eventually, to
actual life, and me.

Beautiful memories
return daily, now that you are gone.
Over the years, I see you daily, nonetheless,
when I see what you created––
now the only part of you that remains.

 

For dVerse Poets the task is to write an acrostic poem for the name of a famous person, loved one or yourself. I used my own name, Judy Dykstra, which after marriage included my husband’s last name as well, blending us, as does this poem. I hope.

Dakota Dirt for dVerse Poets

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Dakota Dirt

 

Dakota Dirt

My father toiled for fifty years,
facing the worries and the fears—
the gambles that a farmer faced
when all his future he had placed
as seeds beneath Dakota dirt.
Every year, he risked the shirt
right off his back. With faith, he’d bury
his whole future in that prairie.
Sticky gumbo, that fine-grained silt
upon which his whole life was built.
Then, closer to our summer home,
near the river, in sand and loam,
he hoped he could prepare for ours:
our clothes, our college, and first cars.

Then came those years that brought the change
that altered fields and crops and range.
The rain that formerly turned to rust
plows left untended, turned to dust
that, caught up in the wind’s mad thrust
caused many a farmer to go bust
as a whole nation mourned and cussed
black clouds of dirt that broke the trust
that nature would provide for all.
What formerly fed, now brought their fall.

It broke the men who couldn’t wait
for the drought years to abate,
but my father kept his faith in soil.
Found other paying forms of toil
building dams to catch what rain
might later fall on that dry plain.
And though others thought his prospects poor,
he kept his land and bought some more.
He learned to vary furrow line,
believing it would turn out fine.

So when good fortune returned again,
bringing with it snow and rain,
he welcomed and was ready for it.
That April it began to pour, it
filled his dams and nourished what
soil remained. He filled each rut
with clover, alfalfa and wheat.
Allowed the summer sun to beat
and change them into fields of gold—
into grain and feed he sold.

Bought cattle. Planted winter wheat.
Once more secure on his two feet,
expanded and as he had planned,
bought more cattle and more land.
Some said that he had just exploited
those whose land he’d reconnoitered
and purchased after they’d given up,
empty hands transformed to cup.
He was a hero unsung, unknown,
until long after when I was grown.

At the centennial of our town,
I learned a bit of his renown
when others told to me how he
shared nature’s generosity.
He sent three daughters to university,
then shared with his community 
to build a church and give more knowledge
to those young men he sent to college.
Then made loans without fame or thanks
to other farmers denied by banks.

I’d always known how rich my life
was made by all his toil and strife—
the insurance he gave his family
that enabled us all to be free.
But, aside from daughters, wife and mother,
I’d never know of every other
soul he’d helped  to prosperous ends:
neighboring ranchers, sons of friends.
Could my father have known he’d also planned
all these other futures when he bought the land?

This rich Jones County gumbo on the treads of my tire at one of our all-town reunions a few years ago is what sent me to college!

For dVerse Poets “Embodying a Landscape” prompt.

Bird Chorus, No Backup, for dVerse Poets

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Bird Chorus, No Backup

Birds perch on countless branches, each a separate bell
ringing out the cadence of stories they must tell.
Around them, eerie silence, for no other sounds compete.
No sound of children’s laughter. No pattering of feet.
Compared to their iPhones, mere nature can’t compete.

 

The prompt for the dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt is “bird.”  A Quadrille asks for 44 words only…

My Father in Me for dVerse Poets

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My Father in Me

After those first two dreams, you never returned again, Dad. So now, more than 50 years after your death, I am instead looking for you within myself. I find you every time I retell an often-told tale adding embellishments as you did, or in my obsession with other people’s babies and that yearning to hold every one I see. I remember your holding the babies of tourists in Mack’s Cafe or Ferns “so their folks could finish their meals.” You loved the tiny ones most. As you explained it, “I like them mewling and puking in my arms!”

I recall all the abandoned baby animals you brought into our lives: a mole, a magpie, numerous baby rabbits, once a puppy held up in a cattle sales ring and tossed up to you in the third row, tiny yellow kittens and the best of all–Zippy, the tiny raccoon found in its nest after hunters killed its mother.

So it is you I see in me as I remember the wild cat from the redwoods shyly watching, then lured by food, who moved into my jewelry studio and gave birth, leaving us with three tiny blue Burmese kittens. And I count on my fingers eleven different puppies and six kittens  adopted in the past 25 years since moving to Mexico–found in the street, by the lake, dumped in a cardboard box beside my garage.  Is it you, father, delivering these tiny lost ones to me, knowing the you in me that has as much need of them as they have of me?

It was my father
guiding the wild cat to me,
three kittens within.

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

South Dakota 1954. Zippy, our pet raccoon
Boulder Creek, CA 1987, our little kittens from the redwood forest
Mexico, 2002.Annie, my second kitten adopted in Mexico, in her favorite place. She was adopted a year or so after after Talulah, whom I had found in a basket of scarves in a shop in Tonala that she had streaked into a minute before I walked in. The owner, whose daughter was allergic, begged me to adopted her and guess what?
Mexico, 2002, Lulu teaching Annie how to climb the screen door.
After finding homes for five puppies found on the beach after the death of their mother, I found Frida trotting toward us on the busy highway. At first I thought she was a big rat. Cars were speeding by. Of course, she came home with me.
First there was Frida, then Diego.
For the fifteen or more years Frida lived with me, this is where she was most of the time, checking out the neighborhood and occasionally barking at someone who didn’t belong there.
Then Morrie, abandoned by a houseguest, joined the menagerie..
Morrie got the closet door open and attacked 36 rolls of toilet paper!!!
One day I came out to find this tiny kitten standing up to Annie to steal her meal. I opened the garage door to find two more climbing the bougainville vine and another in a box.
Since I’d fed a number of stray cats over the years, it may be that the mother cat brought these kittens to my house hoping I’d feed them as I’d fed her a few times, but the presence of this box makes me think someone dropped them off.
Ollie, runt of the litter of 4.
And so, four more kittens to join my adult cat Annie.
When Frida died, I had a sculpture of her installed on the roof dome.
And Frida’s ashes went into this effigy which we concreted in place on her favorite place on the dome, to watch for as long as I have any say in the matter.
These things are never really planned, but shortly after Frida’s death, I found Zoë on a beach north of La Manzanilla.This was the first time I ever held Zoe.
And strangely enought, Ollie, once runt of the litter and now the largest and only male cat, became Zoë’s Mom.
At home, the older dogs and Zoe are not exactly siblings yet.
Then sadly, Diego passed away and the day after, I was introduced to Coco, rescued from the streets of Guadalajara, and you might not be surprised to discover she joined our family. I was egged on to adopt her by my visiting nephew and his friend.
And the terrible duo was begun!!!
As new real puppies joined the family, I installed a gate to keep less experienced little feet off the dome, but inevitably, guests or Pasiano would leave the gate on the stairs up to the casita whose terrace adjoined the dome.
Neighbors snapped this photo, then called to advise me that Frida had visitors.

For dVerse Poets

Advice to a Poetry Critic

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Advice to a Poetry Critic

Each poet worth her salt adores
well-appointed metaphors,
but when they step up to the mike,
similes they only like.
Before you discuss simile
consult an expert vis a vis
the difference between the two
so you will never have to rue
mislabeling your imagery.
Hyperbole is not allusion,
so don’t add to the confusion.
Synecdoche to oxymoron––
as you choose what to write more on––
get their names right for your reader.
There’s more to poems than rhyme and meter!

For dVerse Poets we were to make use of simile in a poem.
I fudged a bit and gave instructions as to its proper use!

Patterns Hinted at in Dreams, for dVerse Poets

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Patterns Hinted at in Dreams

I walk down stairs into my sleep
with parts of self I need to keep.
I take them there to other places
of worn out lives, departed faces.
What would these dear ones think of me
if they were given powers to see
into this future where they’ve not gone?
While I have wandered over yon,
they have remained there behind—
away from future’s relentless grind.
Frozen there, they do not judge
or carry with them any grudge.

I am stitched  in every mind
as I was when they were left behind.
So in dreams I show them me
as though they might furnish a key
to how I’m doing now that I’ve changed.
Have I grown better as I’ve ranged
away from who I was back then?
On awakening, I take my pen
and see if I can recall reams
of words extending from my dreams.

All those adventures, all the stories
of hidden rooms and moving lorries,
ghost friends who orchestrate, it seems,
advice for me from within dreams—
kinder friends who try to wrest
the parts from me that they’ve found best.
They are my teachers, born in mist
to guide me while I can’t resist.

One alters out unneeded parts.
Another makes room for the starts
of what I could be, given time.
With innuendo, symbols, mime,
they hint at where to sew each hem
so though I barely recall them
when I awaken, still there’s a sense
that my life has grown more dense.
Just scraps of them go with me so
I have an inkling where to go
next in life. Each word I write
is a little beam of light
that reminds me, as I sew the seams,
of  patterns hinted at in dreams.

The dVerse Poets prompt is dream interpretation.

I can’t help but post this earlier blog as well, even though it is not in poetry form:

Dreaming A Path

Dream, Fri. Oct 18, 2013

We were at a booth in a café. It was a huge room with booths on every side and each booth had a clock, or at least I thought they did. I don’t think I ever looked. Our alarm started going off and there was no way to turn it off. It was by me and I tried and tried but couldn’t get it off. I said I was just going to unplug it, but Patti said perhaps it was timed with all the other clocks at tables and then it wouldn’t match. I said couldn’t they just reset it when we left? Someone agreed, but still we didn’t unplug it and it went on and on and on. Very annoying. Our booth came equipped with a little dog. It was tiny and light with long very curly white hair that was in loose corkscrew very long ringlets. It was so adorable and affectionate. I held it most of the time. It had legs like wires that went straight down..very skinny…and it jumped a lot. When the waitress came, we told her about the alarm and she said yes, she’d noticed that it was going off…but she didn’t do anything about it. We told her how cute the little dog was and she said yes…but then it seemed like it was the little dog who had the alarm that was going off. We ordered and afterwards I was wanting a dessert but thought I shouldn’t order one. Patti was to my right and I suddenly realized she was eating a very rich chocolate dessert—a sort of fudge flan or very moist slippery cake that was hot with a hot fudge sauce over it. She offered me a taste. It was a very small rectangle…not very big…but I tasted it and immediately said I’d have one, too. It was incredible. Still, the alarm went off. It was driving me crazy! Then I woke up and realized it was my own bedside alarm. I reached up with my eyes still closed and tried to turn it off, but couldn’t find the control. Finally I picked it up, opened my eyes and found the control. It was 8:10. The alarm had been going off for 10 minutes!!!!

My interpretation:

I found this dream in a folder on my computer. I have no memory at all of having dreamed it, and perhaps that distance makes it easier for me to interpret it. In a few weeks, I turn 67. For the past year, I’ve thought repeatedly about death and the fact that if I’m lucky, I probably have only 30 years left. For some reason, that awareness is very stressful. I feel a need to finish everything I’ve started and never completed. Earlier, that consisted of a lot of sorting, construction of storage spaces and weeding out of the contents of my house. That effort is ongoing. What also happened, however, is that I have an incredible drive to get everything published that has been lying around in file cabinets for many many years as well as a need to write new work and somehow disseminate it. My blog is part of that effort, as are my efforts to get all my books on Amazon and Kindle.

Seeing this dream as if for the first time, I clearly see that theme of time running out coupled by a sense of alarm that I need to do something about it. The little dog shows the attractive quality (adorable and affectionate) of finally dealing with all these loose ends—(note all his corkscrew hairs). Those wiry little legs that kept him always active certainly reflect the urgency I’ve been feeling to write write write.

One aspect of this awareness in my real life for a time consisted of my fear that I will stop breathing. This often gets me up gasping at night to run outside to try to breathe. For some reason I haven’t had any of these panic attacks since I started writing every morning. What I interpreted as a growing fear of death and a dread of ceasing to exist was perhaps a fear of not living and creating while I am alive.

I think the interplay between my sister Patti and me in the dream reflects a number of things. One is a difference in our approaches to life. I think in a way, she is more of a rule-follower and since she was my immediate pattern for most of my earlier life, I think a part of me feels this same need, but this is coupled with an equal and stronger need to create my own path in a direction unique from my two older and very competent sisters and to break a few rules to do so. At a very early age, much as I admired and imitated my sisters, I felt the need to prove myself. To find something to know that they didn’t already know. I found this route when I started venturing out at an early age to find new ground where they had not gone before me. It led me first into the homes of friends and strangers where I saw life being acted out in a manner entirely different from my own home. The road led further—to summer camp where I was a stranger to all and vice versa. I loved being the stranger. In choosing a college, I fell back on the reliability and comfort of attending the same school my sister had attended, but in my Jr. year I took my first big leap—a trip around the world on World Campus Afloat. That early adventure in seeing dozens of new and strange cultures set my life path. I’ve been traveling ever since and have been living in Mexico for the past 13 years.

I believe this dream depicts the sense of urgency I’ve had my entire life to “do” something with experience. My art and writing allow me to turn off the alarm for the hours in which I practice them. That small dessert might symbolize the rewards of doing what I need to do to do so.

P.S. An interesting insight I have had just as I started to post this: (And, interestingly enough, wordpress will not accept my blog entry. Perhaps it is insisting I add this P.S. before it does so.) I just got back to Mexico from a visit to the states wherein I visited my oldest sister Betty who is now in the depths of the world of Alzheimer’s. While I was there, she seemed increasingly distressed by the fact that she can no longer communicate, but one day as we were sitting in the living room portion of her small apartment in a managed care Alzheimer’s wing, she motioned to the middle of the floor and said, “Look a that cute little white thing there—that fluffy little white dog!” This was the first incidence that I know of of her actually hallucinating visually, and for some reason it popped into my mind in relation to the little dog in my dream. All of these images—of our dreams as well as our daily life—remind us to live while we can and to do what is most important to us. In my case as well as my sister’s—to communicate. Too late for her, although she continues to try. Not too late for me.

P.S.S.  By the way, the instant I completed the above P.S., the wordpress page that had continued to not allow me to post this blog entry flashed the message:  What do you want to post?  Text? Picture?  I chose text and and you have just read it.