Hesitation
As I recite my Sunday Psalms,
two butterflies alight like balms
upon the leper’s outstretched palms.
Thus nature intervenes and calms
the remainder of my qualms.
I fill the beggar’s hands with alms.
For the dVerse prompt today, Merril inspired us to write about butterflies.
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. ~George Moore
This quote says succinctly what I have been saying to friends lately. I no longer feel the push to travel but would rather stay home and think and write. At first this made me feel old and then I started to realize that it is in the natural order of things to seek and then reflect. It is not just a question of energy, but more a matter of the direction of one’s curiosity. The more I traveled, the more I found that things do not vary that much. Everywhere I’ve gone, the same personalities are sprinkled over the landscape. Only the landscape and the percentages change. Once you’ve found a place where there are the greatest number of people who appreciate you for who you really are, you have found home. Then the task is to go inwards. That is where the real journey exists.
The longest journey
that I have ever gone on
is within myself.
For Haibun Monday the prompt is “Journeying.)
Care-less
Lately I don’t give a thought to what I’m going to wear,
and I’ve let my hair grow down to my derriere.
No longer do the men I meet ever stop to stare,
but it doesn’t bother me. I simply do not care.
The dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt today is “Care.” To see other responses to the prompt, go HERE. Image created with AI.
This is the dress made for me by my sister, Betty Jo, in 1957 for the parade celebrating our town’s founding fifty years before. The theme was “fairytales” and you have probably already guessed that I was Little Bo Peep.
Our dVerse Poets assignment today was: Now write a list poem that begins ‘These I have loved:…’ of the everyday things that are important or precious to you. Be specific, picking out tiny details, and don’t stop until you get to the bottom of the page.Finish with ‘All these have been my loves’. Leave yourself time to refine your draft.
Here is my answer to this prompt:
Pleasure/Pain
These I have loved:
Tastes abandoned, former loves,
outgrown pleasures, bleached white gloves
worn for church or the senior prom,
fresh cherry pies cooked by my mom
from cherries pitted by our juice-stained fingers.
How memory of both labor and reward still lingers.
The cold bite of a walk-in freezer on a sweltering summer’s day.
The smell of sweet clover and itch of hay.
The press of leather constricting toes in my first pair of three-inch heels.
The squeak of rusted bike chains and the crunch of wheels
on gravel roads in our small prairie town,
the pelt of hailstones coming down
deafening on the metal of our brand new ride
with myself and sister sealed, terrorized, inside.
Hurtling across the street to the last school bell’s pealing.
Scabs peeled from skinned knees too slow in their healing.
The squeeze of painful memories of love gone wrong,
resurrected by the lyrics of a song.
Placing flowers on a sister’s grave,
remembering the past gifts that she gave:
that tiny dress that she once made
for me to wear in the parade
Recalling the pleasure and then afterwards, the pain
of the swell of memories the heart no longer can contain.
Grandma’s crazy quilt, of family clothing scraps stitched thin and wide,
left abandoned on the bed wherein my sister died.
Homes left to the lives of others, families left for other lives,
memories like bees swarming to other hives,
memories crumbling in boxes stored on shelves,
these bygone relics of our other selves.
All these have been my loves.
And this is that same dress, 69 years later, brought to me by my niece Cintra when we met in Peoria, AZ a few months ago. She had found it in her mother Betty’s things when she passed away a few years ago. More mingled pleasure and pain.
Love Poem to Poets
Who am I to judge you as you tinker with words…
reveal their bounce and loop de loop
from Heaven to brutal Hell?
May your poetry never end,
but instead stream in strings of metaphors ,
down that track from up to down
from brain to welcoming heart,
driving the truth to every corner of the world.
For the Sunday Whirl, prompt words are: judge tinker bounce loop heaven brutal end stream string track welcome drive
And also, for dVerse Poets, because these prompt words seemed to lead me back to your prompt as well.
Image copied from dVerse Poets prompt
>Frozen<
Ice crystals clung to the naked branches like frozen fireworks,
their shafts capturing sunlight that outlined their million frozen rays.
It was like walking through a crystalline otherworld,
and she avoided brushing branches wih her shoulders,
not wanting to disturb nature’s artistry.
So it was with her memories of him.
The truth of their parting could not be allowed
to brush off their perfect beginning,
now frozen forever in her mind.
for dVerse Poets
I Used to Eat Red
My sister Patti and I, posed by my older sister Betty. Those are “the” cherry trees behind us. The fact that we were wearing dresses suggests we were just home from Sunday school and church, our souls bleached as white as our shoes and socks!
I Used to Eat Red
I used to eat red
from backyard cherry trees,
weave yellow dandelions
into cowgirl ropes
to lariat my Cheyenne uncle.
I once watched dull writhing gold
snatched from a haystack by its tail,
held by a work boot
and stilled by the pitchfork of my dad
who cut me rattles while I didn’t watch.
I felt white muslin bleached into my soul
on Sunday mornings in a hard rear pew,
God in my pinafore pocket
with a picture of Jesus
won from memorizing psalms.
But it was black I heard at midnight from my upstairs window––
the low of cattle from the stock pens
on the other side of town––
the long and lonely whine of diesels on the road
to the furthest countries of my mind.
Where I would walk
burnt sienna pathways
to hear green birds sing a jungle song,
gray gulls call an ocean song,
peacocks cry the moon
until I woke to shade-sliced yellow,
mourning doves still crooning midnight songs of Persia
as I heard morning
whistled from a meadowlark
half a block away.
And then,
my white soul in my shorts pocket,
plunging down the stairs to my backyard,
I used to eat red,
pick dandelions yellow.
This is a reworking of a poem from my book Prairie Moths for dVerse Poets
Christmas Rituals
Why do we go to the trouble to do it?
Cut down the Yule tree and dig out the light strings?
Untangle extension cords ’till they’re all lit.
Set up the nativity: shepherds and kings,
then Mary and Joseph and their holy son.
Arrange all the tinsel and then place the star––
(once the balls are all hung and you’re nearly done)
––on the tree.if anyone can reach that far!
Then turn out the room lights and bask in the glow.
On the couch, the family all in a row,
then turn on the music, and you’ll surely know!
For dVerse Poets, the prompt was to write an “Eleventh Power” poem:I. Eleventh Power is an invented stanzaic form introduced by Christina Jussaume who requests the subject be uplifting. The elements of the Eleventh Power are:
––stanzaic, written in any number of 11 line stanzas.
––syllabic, 11 syllables each, per line.
––rhymed, rhyme scheme: abababccddd or ababababccc.
Oops.. just realized I didn’t do abababab but instead did abab cdcd. Mia culpa!
Pulled by my dogs, I ventured off the gravel road onto the tire tracks that forged a path up the mountain. Lifting the hatch to a metal gate that granted access to the sloping meadows behind the high fence that otherwise would impede our progress, we ventured off the tire tracks onto a path worn only by previous feet. The heavy rains this year had created wildflowers so high that they formed an arch over our heads, belying the fact that the rains, long over, have left the hills so dry, so dense the underbrush, that where I pushed my way the giant hush was changed to soft explosion. The dogs, however, venturing farther into the great banks of flowers, found greener grass that they grazed upon like sheep, impeding my progress as I gave into their needs and let them determine our pace.
for dVerse Poets, we were to write a prosery piece of just 144 words, ithat included the line of poetry from a poem by Yver Winters that I have put in italics.
Below is a video I took during that walk!
HERE is the dVerse prompt and the entire poem by Yver Winters.
jdb photo
Something Old
Love is a narcotic that makes us think we’re wise-—
nature’s slick conspiracy for matching girls and guys.
It hangs around in barrooms, obscured in eyes and talk,
and before you know it, it makes you walk the walk
down rose-petaled aisles on your way to say “I do,”
in something new or borrowed and something old and blue.
Then love becomes a train wreck, beginning with the pastor
and continuing through daily life until the last disaster
when “I do” becomes “I won’t,” and all love’s vows once-spoken
wind up in love’s dump heap—abandoned, crushed and broken.
Blame it all on Cupid, that chubby little liar,
who never warns us that new love is likely to expire.
For dVerse Poets “Something old. . .” Prompt
Darn. I took so long trying to find an illustration for the “Something Old, Something New”. . .’ prompt that the Mr. Linky link lapsed, so here it is. for Open Link Night.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 