Tag Archives: Judy Dykstra-Brown poem

The Beautiful Children of Mexico

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The Beautiful Children of Mexico

IMG_1808 (1)The beautiful children of Mexico
shed music as they come and go
see how they dance and how they flow–
the beautiful children of Mexico?

IMG_2036Long hair held back out of the way,
womanhood fastened there at bay.
They’ll loosen it another day,
but for now they need to play.

See how the big boys stand aloof
in the shadow of the courtyard roof?
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Yet their guard lets down as they sing and dance,
with an occasional sideways glance.
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They lean and banter, jostle and
cavort like puppies as they stand.
IMG_2172But see how the smallest one of all
suddenly seems to stand so tall?

IMG_2201See the talents they all display–
victorious at the end of day.

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So clever, given half a chance,
they show their bravery in dance.
Intelligence in the written word–
a painting of a flower or bird,

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these beautiful masks they’ve put in place
obscure the beauty of each face.

Mothers and fathers, heed me well
as the truth of it I seek to tell.
As they lift their masks, end their parade,
see the beautiful children that you’ve made!

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I’d been asked to read a poem at the children’s performance at the end of camp tomorrow night, but nothing I’ve written seemed appropriate, so I  wrote this poem that I will read at the end of the animal song and mask presentation as they are about to take off their masks and leave the stage for a party and dinner prepared by Agustin, the owner of the restaurant where we held this six day camp. I hope you’ve enjoyed getting a glimpse of a few of the over 600 pictures I took. Too many photo opportunities!!! I guess I’d advise that no one else try to sift through this many pictures to adorn a post.  It has taken me from 4 p.m. until 10 p.m.–with a few diversions..two one hour phonecalls and a few email interruptions!  So, a very late posting, but  appropriate for this prompt: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/well-i-never/

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Re”tire”ment

When I was younger, my mind turned on a dime.
I did what I had to do in very little time.
But now that I am older, things don’t go so fast.
I’m not “spur-of-the-momentish” as I was in the past.

I don’t throw big parties as I did in former days,
for dealing with the details just puts me in a haze.
I can’t do many things at once without getting confused.
Now I simply write my blog while once I danced and boozed!

At first I felt ashamed of how my life is slowing down,
hating that I do not seek the company of town.
But then I noted patterns in nature around me
and saw that this is simply how our lives are meant to be.

Each thing in its season and each thing in its time
is how our lives are ordered—to accept this is sublime.
Why do I need to live my youth and middle age again?
Why not just accept that this is how my life has been

and go on to the next stage without sadness or regret—
going on to see just how much better life can get?
Yes, it is the pits to get arthritic, slow and hazy;
but we are compensated by excuses to be lazy!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Heat is On.” Do you thrive under pressure or crumble at the thought of it? Does your best stuff surface as the deadline approaches or do you need to iterate, day after day to achieve something you’re proud of? Tell us how you work best.

Back Window

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Back Window

I take a break from my last chore
to peer through glass, ceiling to floor.
For though a view I never lack,
my house’s eyes are all in back.
I watch the gardener cut and trim,
the locksmith to the right of him.

One scrubs the algae from the pool—
a craftsman polishing his jewel.
A man on ladder repairs the wall,
the tree-trimmer the highest of all.
See how we tend her outer skin–
they without and we within?

Yolanda sweeps the terrace floor,
then comes inside to sweep some more.
Inside I watch and labor, too,
for there are many tasks to do.
I dust and gather detritus,
smooth out wrinkles, straighten muss.

Three days a week we labor so
until I wonder if I know
which is the owner and which the thing
that luxury and comfort brings?
Dear house, is it you that harbors me,
or am I here to maintain thee?

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          The Boss:
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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.”
Look out your back window or door — describe what you see. 

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My Room

Papers on the desktop, laptops on the bed,
sticky notes for everything I can’t store in my head:
birthdays of my family, phone numbers of friends–
all the things I need to buy, the listing never ends.
Shoes up on my night table because my new dog chews
everything that he can reach; but, especially, shoes!
Two alarm clocks, one for me for when I must get up,
the other for the medicine I must give the pup.
Stacks of books and manuscripts finished and unfinished,
and an empty Kleenex box I know should be replenished.
Flashlights, lanterns, batteries–for when the power goes out.
In the rainy season, it will happen—have no doubt.
Closets crammed from wall-to-wall with sizes twelve to grander,
I’d probably have a lot to wear if I could get a gander
at what’s inside but I’m afraid it won’t be happening soon;
for thoughts of organizing it make me want to swoon!
Many pictures on the wall and bookshelves full of books,
sculptures on the mantel, in crannies and in nooks.
There will be a new addition in about a minute,
for my room is not completed until I am in it!

 

 

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Clean Slate. Explore the room you’re in as if you’re seeing it for the first time. Pretend you know nothing. What do you see? Who is the person who lives there?

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Books

The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
its paper sprinkled with drops-—
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory—
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.

Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.

Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages—
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink—
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.

Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial—
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us.

What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Wikipedia replacing dictionaries,
Google already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?

Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs.
Perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
Perhaps the grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them—as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages—one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.

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Yes, you are right. These are chairs made out of books.

 

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Going Obsolete.” Of all the technologies that have gone extinct in your lifetime, which one do you miss the most?

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Kindness of Strangers.” When was the last time a stranger did something particularly kind, generous, or selfless for you? Tell us what happened!

I was about to tell a story and then had a fleeting memory that I’d already written about this occasion, so I searched backwards in my blog and although I couldn’t find that story, I did find a poetry version of two kindnesses by strangers that changed my entire life.  If you’ve read it before, I apologize, but since I don’t even remember my own poems and stories, perhaps you’ll read this with new eyes as well. It’s a bit long.  Sorry, Ann and Audrey. I’m trying for more brevity lately and I have shortened this by one stanza. Hope you enjoy this or get something from it, be it new for you or a repeat:

Unsolicited Kindness

The stranger on an airplane in the seat right next to me
never said a single word, and so I let her be
until our arrival, when I prepared to stand
and she produced a paperback—put it in my hand.

“I think it’s time for you to read this,” she said, then went away.
I didn’t say a word to her. Didn’t know what to say.
That book, however, changed my life and attitude and choices—
encouraged me to listen close to interior voices.

Buscaglia, Jampolsky and all of Carl Jung’s books
drew my mind away from appearances and looks
and into that finer world of instinct and of mind;
then drew me westward to the sea and others of my kind.

After a writer’s function, a stranger sent to me
“The Process of Intuition,” which I read from A to Z.
I read it twenty times or so, then sent it to a friend.
Then bought up every copy left to give as gifts and lend.

I don’t remember talking to the one who sent it to me,
but if I need a proof of faith, I guess that this will do me.
For if I follow instincts that hint and prod and clue me,
I believe there is some force that draws the next thing through me

I don’t believe in any faith that has a name or church.
I do believe, however, that I’m guided in my search
by something that unites us and sets our pathways right
so long as we listen to our own interior sight

that urges us to follow the right side of our brain
even though those choices are logically inane.
I know that it takes many types of brains to run the world,
but for me it’s intuition that when carefully unfurled

guides me best—towards art and words and unplanned days and oceans
and prompts me make a Bible of what others may call notions.
And so to simplify I’d say it’s vital to have faith in
that voice we’re all a part of that leads us from within.

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back when we were baby birds

feeding each other
cold spaghetti worms
in grass clipping nests
empty summer stretched in front of us

stale plastic wading pools
pressing yellow circles
into grass
that smelled like wet bandaids

during a game of hide-and-seek
dust bunnies behind the chest
full of old prom dresses
in the upstairs hall

mouse droppings
in the basement
pits from sour cherries
scattered on the back steps

scraps of soggy paper
dried into small sculptures
under the weeping willow tree
revealing part of each original message

mommy is . . .
. . . ate my cookie
I hope Sharon . . .
my doll doesn’t . . . your doll . . .

summer just an empty cup
we filled each day
with the long summer rains
of daydreams.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “In the Summertime.” What has been the highlight of your Spring or Summer?

To see my other post today, go HERE.

Today’s WordPress writing prompt: Festivus for the Rest of Us.: You have been named supreme ruler of the universe. Your first order of business is creating and instituting a holiday or festival in your honor. What day of the year is your holiday? What special events will take place? Describe YOU DAY in as great a detail as you can muster: the special foods we’ll consume, the decorations we’ll use…everything.

A Holiday Most Willy-Nilly

My namesake day would be a dilly.
Simply not run-of-the-milly.
For the concert, I’d have  Willie
and resurrect Milli Vanilli.
Kind of music? Rock-a-Billy.
For refreshments, I’d serve Chili.
Though the terrain would be most hilly,
they’d travel over rock-and-rilly
for races of both stud and filly,
and poets, fleet of tongue and quilly,
reading poems both sage and silly.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Choose Your Adventure.” Write a story or post with an open ending and let your readers invent the conclusion.

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Judgement

Borne, then born.
Clothed, fed, shorn.
Housed and cuddled,
Brain filled and muddled,
Schooled, polished, allowed to roam,
To make the world into a home.
Later settled, now sedate.
Content to let my life abate.
Find worlds inside and there abide,
To let what happens be my guide.
To try to live with less precision.
To fear less the world’s derision.
Why so hard to be oneself?
Easier when on the shelf.
Now here I pull my world around me,
Memories and dreams surround me.
My solitude a crystal jar
that lets me ponder from afar
The current of my life, its tide,
To reach without and pull inside
The things that help me try to see
Just where my life has taken me.
I contemplate and sometimes share
The truths that I’ve discovered there.
You come to read, you judge  and  . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Please complete the above poem, choosing a two-syllable last word for the line I’ve left uncompleted and then furnishing a rhyming last line.  If you want to create your own last two lines, just substitute another line entirely for “You come ro read, you judge and  . . . .” and then write a rhyming last line as well.  Have fun!!!

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Between

I like the middle seasons, the rising and falling.
As in a good novel or a good life,
that is where the excitement is.

Summer’s heat and brittle winter
are for avoidance and snuggling in,
protection from the extremes.

For me it is the in-between, when flowers bud
or leaves turn brilliant and fall to cushion the earth
and blanket it from the cold comforter of December.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Seasons change so quickly! Which one do you most look forward to? Which is your least favorite?