Photo by Heather Ford on Unsplash, Used with permission.
When it comes to clothes, you know that it’s
hard to find something that fits.
People grow from year to year
in the shoulders or the rear.
Kids grow up, adults grow out
while grandparents shrink, without a doubt.
So this year at our Christmas bash,
forget the gifts. I’m giving cash!
For dVerse Poets, we were asked to write a poem we might include with a Christmas gift.
On the Subject of Cracking Knuckles
Please don’t snap your bones at me.
I cringe, I plug my ears, I plea.
If you must make noise with body parts,
please stick to burping, coughs or farts.
Since popping sounds tend to astound me,
Do not crack knuckles when around me!
I do not like that brittle sound,
so please don’t crack your bones around!
For the dVerse Poets prompt “crack.” For Quadrille Monday.
A Woman Alone
I am airborne in the hammock,
the small dog on my stomach,
but patting the bigger dog
on the ground below us
to assuage his jealousy.
I watch this week’s brand of butterflies
popping like popcorn
above the audacious flowers
of the tabachine bush,
and that confused hummingbird
that has mistaken the Soleri bell for a flower.
My friends and I
serve as constant reminders for each other:
what we walked into the room to do,
what word we meant to end the sentence with,
the name of everybody’s favorite movie star––
the one marooned on the island with a soccer ball?
It is as though loss of memory were infectious.
I eat pizza at midnight
and swim naked in the pool at 2 am.
My cats know my sins
and like me better for them.
My friends
are comforted by my shortcomings,
which legitimize their own.
When I talk to the air,
it is unclear whether I talk to the cats
or to myself.
If it is loud chiding,
it is to myself
and I wonder if the neighbors wonder.
“You idiot!!!” I yell in a loud tone at 8 a.m.
when I drop the glass,
spreading my papaya smoothie
in shards of glass
across a ten-foot expanse of tile floor.
Who might they think I am talking to?
Some new lover?
Most probably not.
Yolanda, my housekeeper and friend of 17 years?
Then for shame.
They must alter their impression of me.
“Out! Out!” I bellow at the bigger dog,
whose enthusiastic nails slice my sandaled feet
as I dish out his feed if I do not demand his absence.
“That harpy,” they must think,
not knowing it is the only decibel
he responds to.
Those of us who live alone
are never really quite alone in Mexico,
where private lives
are so easily shared
in spite of walls.
It is as though
sounds echo more easily
in the high mountain air,
and we become one large family,
putting up with each other’s secrets.
But, no responsibility
for husband or children or roommates,
we sink into the luxury of selfishness.
Sleeping at odd hours,
wearing our pajamas from bedtime
to wake-up
to next bedtime,
calling out to the gardener from behind curtains,
accustoming the housekeeper to our sleepless nights
and long mornings of slumber.
No one to explain the junk drawer to,
or the large accumulation of toilet paper rolls,
for which you have a definite purpose
that you never quite get around to.
The luxury of a nude body
no one else short of the doctor
will ever see.
The back of your head
where snarls can exist
unchallenged
until the next trip to town.
The Petit Ecole cookies
you need not share
with anyone.
The unmade bed uncensored.
The best hammock always your own.
An internet band unshared.
Three huge double closets––all yours.
Only your toothbrush in the glass beside the sink.
Every leftover cup of coffee
sitting on surfaces around the house
one you can sip out of
with no fear of any disease
other than the ones you already harbor.
Alone.
What you always feared.
That fear now behind you.
You were so wrong.
I wrote this for the figurative language prompt but missed the deadline for posting it by 30 minutes, so here it is in all its tardy glory!!!
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!
Uprooted
“Can you get even closer to the tree?” he said—so I went inches from the trunk of the tallest of the trees, crowding the fern that reached tentative tentacles from the tree’s shade into a ray of sun that escaped the fast-collecting clouds. “I’ll protect you,” he had said years ago, when we declared our union. But now, in this time of the approaching storm, I wondered about both tree and one who over the years had been in turn protector and threat. In times of gentle rain, a shield. In times more volatile, that sudden bolt that left bruised places easily hidden. I saw the tree’s scar, devoid of bark, burned at the edges––that place now easily overlooked in the shadows. And I moved away from the tree, walking with new confidence to the car. Uprooted, finally, after so many years.
Italicized line is from Sharon Olds’ poem, “Pine Tree Ode.” For the dVerse Poets Pub prompt–to develop a prose piece of 144 words making use of a line from another poet’s poem about a tree. Go HERE to read what other writers did with this prompt or to participate yourself.
Overpacking
Where is it that a cat belongs? She’ll be the judge of that.
Wherever I am going, I am sure to need a cat.
She’ll help me with my packing and be my memory
so I don’t forget to take her when I set out to sea.
She can’t see how her company could go against my wishes.
A cat goes well with boats and anywhere where there are fishes.
Each morning she repacks herself and each night in the dark
she asks herself once more just when we’ll finally embark.
After a week of packing, my case is finally full.
I shut the lid, secure the lock, pick up the strap and pull.
I’m off to catch the red eye that will fly me off to Rome
to catch the boat that for one week will make do as my home.
I have packed so carefully, checking off my list
that I’m sure there’s nothing that I could have missed.
But I know that Annie, sleeping curled up on her mat,
when she wakes up and finds me gone, will not agree with that.
In spite of her best efforts, alas, she’s left behind.
It seems that human planning isn’t always kind
to cats who have spun fantasies of travel and romance.
Did human plans concur with hers? Poor Annie. Not a chance.
It’s a wonderful coincidence that the dVerse Poets prompt today is “Felines,” since just this morning I found this photo taken three weeks ago as I packed for my Mediterranean cruise with my sister. I meant to publish it back then but forgot and was wondering when it would be appropriate to use it as an illustration. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
Slow Motion
After the fuss and bother, the acquiring and attaining,
somehow life seems better without the extra straining.
Now observing takes the place of doing and of showing.
Tranquility has won out over partying and going,
with “Hold your partner” filling in for former “do-si-doing.”
