Tag Archives: #FOWC

An Ex-Pat’s Credo

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.  The Poem “An Ex-Pat’s Credo” follows the photos.

An Ex-Pat’s Credo

Some may think my generation’s recent mass migration 
to be a “giving up” on life—a certain violation.
That rubric that we stay engaged to ease our children’s lives—
to witness births of babies (then their twos, threes, fours and fives)
may not be the paradigm we choose when we are older.
Some of us want changes, and some of us are bolder.

We want to spend remaining years discovering and delving.
Do you think it’s selfish to continue with our “selving?”
Families are wonderful and we love them well,
but parents can’t be always living by the bell.
Once a child is  raised and off on their next adventure,
their parents have not signed any articles of indenture. 

They, too, can now be off to see what else their life may hold,
and though that path’s not right for all, before they’re very old
they might desire a warmer place or country that is new,
but  what they choose to leave behind is certainly not you.
They’ll carry you in hearts and minds, and they’ll still hold you dear.
They’ll Skype you and they’ll Facebook. They’ll visit every year.

They’ll be there for graduations, celebrations and each birth.
They’ll share your family’s traumas, their successes and their  mirth. 
But they won’t be waiting at home for you to call,
for the children to find time for them between school and football
and proms and camp and movies and parties with their friends,
for they well remember that the schedule never ends!

See this as rehearsal for the day your kids will go 
off to other places to learn and change and grow.
You’ll wish them well and though you’re sad, will send them to their fate.
and then perhaps decide there’s more than kids to educate.
You’ll then be free to concentrate on new states of existence—
free we hope as we’ve been from their loud insistence

that you spend the whole rest of your life putting them first
no matter what your own dreams are, no matter how you thirst
to see what there is left in life, perhaps, like us, to travel
not through a wish to leave behind, not seeking to unravel,
but rather like two busy bees intent upon their hive,
demonstrating by their acts that they are still alive!

The prompt words today are migration, violation, rubric (an established rule, tradition, or custom) and concentrate.  Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/rdp-tuesday-migration/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/25/fowc-with-fandango-violation/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/rubric/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/daily-addictions-2018-week-38/concentrate

Office Courtship

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Office Courtship

He found her shy and taciturn and not a little quaint.
She found him impetuous and lacking in restraint.
That personal space she guarded he invaded every day.
Her solo act he tried to crash, yet still she ran away.

He brought her flowers and chocolates. He courted her with rigor,
and yet the space between them seemed only to get bigger.
He had run out of wooing room. His prospects were too dim.
He felt that he had gone too far out that proverbial limb.

His thoughts that he could win her were just a wishful whim.
And so at last, he must give up. The lass was just too prim.
He did not seek her company. He did not text or call.
He gave a mere polite “Hello,” when they met in the hall.

Her flower vase sat empty. No chocolates in her dish.
It seemed that he had given her, finally, her wish.
She checked her phone charge. It was fine.
She waited for his pleas to dine

or see a film or to go dancing.
More and more, friends found her glancing
down the hallway, and they guessed
what she looked for, so they pressed

her for an answer as they queried
about why she always tarried
in the coffee room when she
usually brought her tea

in a thermos from her house.
Why she wore that low-cut blouse,
why she seemed a bit distracted
and when he passed, she overacted.

They all knew that overall
she’d gone too far to build a wall.
They told her if she wanted him,
she had to make that wall a scrim

and turn her light on from inside—

to throw her solo act aside
and show him who she really was.
It became the office buzz

then, how the one who’d been the quarry
set her cap to woo and marry
one she’d formerly eschewed—
thinking him too brash and rude.

And this is how she turned the tide.
She bought a card and wrote inside,
“Faint heart never won fair maid,”
bought flowers and chocolate and paid

a string quartet to serenade him
and by doing so, she made him
once more resume all his wooing,
add his billing to her cooing.

And thus goes office romance.
Fellows given half a chance
will resume what they once started
and if they are not weak-hearted

wind up with the prize they sought,
forgetting that the one who fought
the romance and sought to repeal it
was the one to finally seal it!

 

The photo I used to illustrate this poem is of my nephew Jeff and his wife Julie.  They are the parents of Ryan, my nephew who recently visited. The prompt words today are quaint, personal, taciturn and solo, and here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/rdp-monday-quaint/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/24/fowc-with-fandango-personal/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/taciturn/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/daily-addictions-2018-week-38/solo

Reality Check

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Reality Check

I’m  withdrawing from the argument. I have no more opinions.
I abstain from giving voice to what I think to my few minions.
Thoughts fly swift and easy lately on the internet.
They are so filled with hate. How much more rancorous could they get?
Our fearful hateful leader might hem and haw and hem,
but the problem with such enemies is, they turn us into them!

My grass is fresh and verdant. Fresh flowers bloom every day.
I’ll watch them from my hammock and put politics away.
From the troubles of the world, I need a short vacation.
My back yard is so lovely, and nature an education
to stop and rest and notice all the pleasures of this life.
We need to take in all of it, not just the pain and strife.

I contemplate the garden, suspended in my nest.
Morrie jumps up to join me—an uninvited guest.
Suspended in my private world, I find no rancor there.
Just mariposas fluttering, suspended in the air
above the tabachine blossoms—a sort of meditation
better for my blood pressure than any medication.

I fall asleep and doze for hours. Awakening from my nap,
I try to rise and gently spill the small dog from my lap.
It’s feeding time for animals. I go to find the cats.
They swarm around my ankles, both for sustenance and pats.
It’s when I find the hummingbird they’ve left me like a treasure
that I’m reminded that all nature is a blend of pain and pleasure.

 

The prompt words today were abstain, verdant and swift. Here are the links:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/15/fowc-with-fandango-abstain/
https://wo/rdofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/15/verdant/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/swift

Stemming the Rage

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Street Mural on wood viewed in Guanajuato

 

Stemming the Rage

To seed grace and stability in these tempestuous times,
try not to retaliate in your tweets and rhymes.
Simply state the truth as you continue to perceive it.
If you do not stir angst you’re less likely to receive it.
Choose not to participate when small minds rant and bray.
Just find a saner audience you’re likelier to sway.
This isn’t always easy. Ghandi led the way,
and he moved the British at the end of day.

Whether Trump or Kim Jong-un, Hitler or Pol Pot 
could be swayed by passive resistance? Perhaps, or perhaps not.
But surely there are other souls—even ones of note
who might be nudged to change their minds and even change their vote.
If you can curb your anger and respond with facts and sanity,
perhaps you’ll find a route to chip away at their inanity.
Please take with a grain of salt this lesson that I preach.
Actually, I must admit, it’s me I’m trying to teach.

 

Word prompts for today were: grace, stability, tempestuous and retaliate. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/rdp-monday-grace/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/10/fowc-with-fandango-stability/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/tempestuous/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/retaliate

A New World’s Morning

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Click on any photo to enlarge all and view as slide series.

 

Ubiquitous networks of  highways crisscross the face of Mother Earth–lines that age her fresh face. Pockmarks of potholes question their durability, whereas Earth lives on, in one form or another.

Dams crack and spill their water freshly across lake beds parched for centuries.
Bones of dinosaurs peek out from eroded banks of clay. Plants spread from potholes in gouged pavement. Somewhere in the arctic ice, the past lies thawing, ready to be reborn.

Who knows but that the
nightfall of mankind may be
a new world’s morning?

 

I don’t know what I did this week.  I seem to have collected prompts from a different week for each prompt site.  Perhaps I’ve been at it too long and should retire. The prompt words  I somehow collected were highway, durable, ubiquitous and morning. The form is for dVerse Poets haibun challenge.

Darn! I now find even the comments and Mr. Linky for dVerse are closed, even though they say they are open all week.  I guess this just isn’t my day, or I am as cracked as the pavement above…..Here are the “wrong” links I used:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/01/fowc-with-fandango-highway/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/daily-addictions-2018-week-34/durable
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/ubiquitous/
https://dversepoets.com/2018/09/03/haibun-monday-good-morning/

 

Manifesto for the Midterms

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Manifesto for the Midterms

Mere pontificating will not win my trust.
Words with no fair justice fade away to dust.
If greed and ambition are part of what you teach,
move on to another. I’m far beyond your reach.
But if you seek a balance and fairness for posterity,
rightness for the earth and a sharing of prosperity.
If you do not seek to govern by appealing to false fear,
then climb up on your bandbox.  I’ll give your words an ear.

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/05/fowc-with-fandango-balance/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/pontificate/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/daily-addictions-2018-week-35/ambition

The Groom has Second Thoughts

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The Groom has Second Thoughts

You say he is articulate whereas I say he’s wordy.
You think he’s intellectual, whereas I fear he’s nerdy.
Is dusk the genesis of dark or is the day just over?
I think it’s time to mow the lawn while you’re rolling in clover.
An optimist and pessimist should doubtless not be marrying.
What you see as casual I simply see as tarrying.
Time after time, we face each other o’er this widening schism.
For what to you seems happily real to me seems euphemism.

 

 

Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/rdp87-articulate/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/26/fowc-with-fandango-euphemism/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/genesis/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/daily-addictions-2018-week-34/ dusk

Coping

15 Replies

 

 

 

Coping

When I’m in the mood for moping,
with no energy for coping,
reticent to kowtow to
boss or parent or guru,
when I’m feeling less than zealous,
down-at-soul, depressed or jealous,
concerned with what I seem to lack,
I go and lie upon my back
in bed or hammock or in pool
in water steaming, tepid, cool.


The point is getting horizontal
on a surface that is fontal,
foam or tightly woven and hung
in a garden, loosely slung.
And there I dream or inspect trees
for butterflies or birds or bees.
I watch their habits, or I dream
joining that unconscious stream
that says the world is not my biz.
Only what is closest is.

And I pull inward to a world
where all the universe lies furled.
Then, enlivened, I get up
to write or play with dogs or sup,
rejoining that space and clime
I’m meant to live in for a time.
I do what I have power to
to civilize this human zoo.
“Think globally,” they used to say.
“Act locally.” Still true today.

 

The prompts:
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/Cope
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/rdp80-reticent/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/19/fowc-with-fandango-kowtow/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/zealous/

For Fandango’s one-word challenge: Handle

1 Reply

This is ForgottenMan subbing for Judy while she and her nephew Ryan are traveling in Mexico. She asked if I’d like to reblog some of her old posts in response to the various daily challenges here. I decided to only look at her posts from 2013-14, her first two years of blogging here.

Today’s FOWC prompt is  “Handle”. HERE is a poem Judy wrote back in September, 2014, as a response to the prompt “Handle with care”.

Breaking Her Diet

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IMG_0683

Breaking Her Diet

I measure her cat food with care from the vat,
but she has such an aptitude, my little cat
for flushing out lizards and others like that.
With delicate paw thrusts, she gives them a bat
’til they barely know where it is that they’re at,
then unleashes her claws for a more severe pat.

Be it lizard or bird or scorpion or rat,
she defeats it as though it were merely a gnat
and lays it out nicely on my front door mat:
one scorpion sting less or a feather for my hat,
then returns to the stool where she formerly sat,
licking her chops, and that’s why she’s so fat!!!

 

The prompts were cat, aptitude and delicate.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/rdp-72-cat/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/11/fowc-with-fandango-aptitude/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/delicate