Tag Archives: Judy Dykstra-Brown poem

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Mountaineer

I am a mountain waiting to be climbed,
its slopes slippery and rough
with fortifications.
Each poem is the face I am inviting you to scale,
not taking the clearly defined path
that prose would provide,
but a harder course with handholds and footholds
that will not give way if you
use your mind to select a wise course.

If I did not trust you so, I would give you a secure railing
like one provided in showers and bathtubs
for the elderly;
but I know, if you have made it this far,
that you have the stamina to make it on your own.

Every mind is both a mountain waiting to be climbed
and a climber sometimes bent on climbing,
at other times, content
to stand at the mountain’s base,
waiting for the scree to come to him.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “I Am a Rock.”— Is it easy for you to ask for help when you need it, or do you prefer to rely only on yourself? Why?

Bob Tale

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The Prompt: A Dog Named Bob–You have 20 minutes to write a post that includes the words mailbox, bluejay, and ink. And one more detail… the story must include a dog named Bob. Confession, I took 40!

Bob Tale

My brother’s coon dog name of Bob was lying by the sink.
He was a pretty good old dog, but man, he had a stink!
I opened up the kitchen door and said he had to leave;
but when he tried to lick my hand, I met him with my sleeve.

“Out boy, now!” I yelled at him and pushed him towards outside.
Smelly dogs are something that I can’t abide.
I’d told my brother that I’d keep him for awhile
’till he found another owner, for dogs just weren’t my style.

I was almost done with breakfast, licking syrup from my plate
while waiting for a letter, but the mail was late.
I could watch the mailbox from the comfort of my chair.
I’d been waiting for an hour, but still it wasn’t there.

A bluejay sat up in a tree looking at the scene.
I hoped the mailman didn’t know that bluejays could be mean.
That letter from my true love I’d been yearning for,
standing at the window, pacing on my floor.

When I heard the mailman’s engine and ran out to my stoop,
that bluejay came right at me, with one big threatening swoop.
The mailman dropped my letter and ran on up the road–
fleet of foot in spite of his rather weighty load.

I stood up and tried to run to my letter box,
that bluejay  pecking at me from my collar to my socks.
I  grabbed my letter from the road and ran back towards the house,
putting my love letter in a pocket of my blouse.

But that bluejay was a devil, he stayed right up with me,
stabbing at my earlobes, pecking at my knee.
Then he spied the letter and before I could react,
he held it fast within his beak. My letter had been hacked!

I thought that I had lost it–and all hopes of romance.
I went from hopeful thoughts of love to feeling I’d no chance
of ever falling fast in love with someone I had met
on a social network on the internet.

He’d said he’d write a letter giving his address
and if I didn’t answer, I’d have no redress.
He’d close up his account and bother me no more.
And that is why day after day, I’d waited at my door.

I saw that bluejay flying low, my letter in his beak.
I put my head down in my hands, but then I heard a squeak.
I glanced up fast to see that jay sitting on the fence
not knowing  Bob crept up behind, he offered no defense.

Bob seized him fast around the neck before he’d time to think,
and the bluejay got a message that wasn’t written in ink!
He dropped the letter and made off to other Bob-less lands
while Bob came up and placed my letter gently in my hands.

And that is how I came to have a family of six
and how I came to treasure all Bob’s nuzzles and his licks.
And how Bob, too, came to have a chance to be a dad
with the lovely Irish Setter that my true love had.

Now our families are mixed and living happily–
all so in love that I’m in risk of writing sappily.
With no fear, the mailman brings us letters every day.
And you can bet for sure that we’ve seen no more of that jay!


https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/a-dog-named-bob/

Happily

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Happily

Nothing in this world can exist happily ever after.
A house is built of lows and highs: foundation before rafter.
Up and down’s the truth of it, the brilliant and the dark.
No week is composed totally of Sunday in the park.

Existence is a pendulum that sweeps across our lives.
Worker bees die every day in service to their hives.
Good seems finely balanced by a constant lurking evil.
Roses have their aphids.  Cotton has its weevil.

There is so much that’s wonderful in the world we live in,
but no one wins at every game. Sometimes we have to give in,
playing with the cards we’re given–flush or straight or fold–
sometimes in the heat of luck, sometimes out in the cold.

Ups and downs create the whole of our amazing world,
its surface formed by contrast of the knitted and the purled.
Sometimes we’re given what is sweet, at other times the bile
as we choose moment by moment to live happily for a while.

The Prompt:“And they lived happily ever after.” Think about this line for a few minutes. Are you living happily ever after? If not, what will it take for you to get there? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/happily-ever-after/

Please read Anglo Swiss’s post before mine.  You may find it in the Reader or HERE.

A Leader Reader

Politics distress me. They send me to my bed.
I prefer the nightmares that I conjure in my head.
For to get over nightmares, it is a piece of cake.
I simply give up sleeping and remain wide awake.

But the world situations that most bother me
do not disappear when I turn off the damn TV.
They just go on mouldering when they’re not in my view
while all our fearless leaders just do and do and do.

I think that the solution might just be to tell them, “Stop!!!”
Every nation on the earth trying to be cop
for all the other nations seems somehow not to work,
for sometimes the one supervising is the biggest jerk!

Though I don’t know the answer, perhaps the Swiss are right.
Perhaps yearly elections would do less to incite
pork-barrel legislation when each man has a vote
the needs of common men might replace needs of men of note.

The only problem we might face, doing so much voting
is that it just might interfere with our TV remoting.
It might be necessary to replace “reality” shows
with just plain reality–where everybody knows

each bill that’s passed and all the facts of governing our nation,
so we would grow up wiser each succeeding generation.
Voting done on cellphones or Android application
might bring out the vote at last, much to the consternation

of politicians dependent on propaganda’s lies,
hoping that the real facts never come before our eyes.
All this campaign financing a phantom of the past
while we’re presented with the truth–finally, at last!!!

(I cite poetic license, folks, as my excuse for this poem. I realize this is a simplistic solution to the world’s problems.  Our government in the U.S. is perhaps too large and too complicated for the Swiss system of governing, so it is  best this world is not governed by such as I!!!)

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: Dear Leader–If your government (local or national) accomplishes one thing this year, what would you like that to be?

Cinnamon Woes

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Cinnamon Woes

When for my yearly physical I went to see my doc,
two cinnamon pills daily were prescribed to me ad hoc.
I had a premonition this solution wouldn’t work,
for prescribing condiments seemed nothing but a quirk.

With no other suggestions, she had me in a bind.
High cholesterol’s no joke.  I knew I had to mind.
I put it off ’til evening for it seemed to me so odd
to buy the stuff in capsules to put into my bod.

I took one before bedtime and it caught up in my throat.
The gelatin slowly dissolved.  The spice began to bloat.
I had cinnamon reflux. Then I had cinnamon burps.
I swallowed and I swallowed and took water in four slurps.

I coughed three times and tasted cinnamon each time.
I savored not its flavor.  Its taste was not sublime.
That throat lump then descended.  The pain was near my heart.
Then suddenly that cinnamon was expelled in a fart.

The jar of cinnamon capsules is huge and fully filled.
Tomorrow morn at breakfast, again I should be pilled.
But though I’m not the type to go against the status quo,
from now on I’ll take cinnamon with sugar, rolled in dough.

Honestly!

Though I always tell it if I can,
of the brutal truth, I’m not a fan.
(It’s the brutal part that bothers me,
and not the actual honesty.)
In fact, let’s institute a pact
to exercise the utmost tact.
When telling others just what “is,”
be gentle, be they Sir or Ms;
for though it’s not right to be truthless,
there’s no excuse for being ruthless.

The Prompt: Truth or Dare—Is it possible to be too honest, or is honesty always the best policy?

Bug Obit

3 Replies

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Bug Obit

Just a slug
come undug,
this greenery thug
stuffed his mug,
then gave a tug
and ate the rug.
Climbed up a jug.
Ooops! No plug.
Glug-a-lug.

Second Chance

I wish that I’d been wilder and freer in my day.
Had imaginative friends to join me in my play.
I wanted to stage circuses and playact vivid scenes,
but schemes like this were always far beyond my means.
There wasn’t enough zaniness in anyone I knew
to dream my dreams or want to do what I yearned to do.

We’d play school or hospital or house when we were smaller,
but this imagination palled as we grew taller.
I wish there had been classes in writing and in art
to allow  that side of me to flourish from the start.
Instead, I had to search for whatever it might be,
never finding anyone who seemed at all like me.

What was it I was lacking? Where was the rest of me?
I didn’t have a clue about what I was meant to be.
Half of my life I think that I was trying to fit in
to places and activities where I’d never win–
achieving just enough to make my life appear successful,
yet still I felt unsatisfied–unfulfilled and stressful.

Since I was nobody’s mom, nobody’s loving wife,
at thirty-one I ran away to find another life.
I quit my job and sold my house and caught a westbound train.
Perhaps I’d find in water what was lacking on the plain.
So I went to California and took a writing class.
Then another and another, until it came to pass

that I finally found the playmates lost to me in youth.
They were irreverent, creative, clever and uncouth.
Here, at last, I finally felt like I had found it all.
Words were the playthings that we tossed among us like a ball.
My own life now surrounded me–securely, like a bowl.
Here I felt a part of things–a section of the whole.

Later, I discovered I was an artist, too,
All my life, I hadn’t known.  Hadn’t had a clue.
It took someone just guessing and pushing me that way.
Then I had two mediums for saying what I say.
Art filled out the rest of me ’til I was full at last.
It took almost forty years to find how I was cast.

And then all of those playmates lost to me as a child
began to pull me out with them–out into the wild
to paint myself and write myself anew each dawning day–
discovering those hiding parts in what I sculpt and say.
Every day, like hide-and-seek, I find another part–
all those portions of me I’ve been seeking from the start.

I know that second childhood is a derisive term,
but I have found in fact it is the apple, not the worm.
It is the food I feed upon, the fruit I’ve always sought.
It is simply what I am instead of what I’m not.
It’s filled with messy, juicy things like paint and flux and glue.
Explosive things like nouns and all those verbs like “am” and “do.”

What I missed in childhood, I found when I was thirty,
and it was simply glorious: naughty, messy, dirty.
I rolled around in words and paint with others of my ilk–
these artful things more nourishing than bread or mother’s milk.
At forty, fifty, sixty, I’ve become what I can be–
found what I lacked in childhood: friends that are like me!

The Prompt: is there anything you wish had been different about your childhood? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/childhood-revisited-2/

Holy Spaces

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Holy Spaces

They are the social centers of a small town–
our excuse to get together
for as long as is comfortable
for both of us.

We trade hellos or more,
all on our way to someplace else, eventually.
No one has to worry about anyone
leaving too soon or staying too late.

Bars, churches and post offices–
places to meet those
you’ve known for a lifetime.
Each a holy place in its own right.

Note: This is very hurried–more later!  On the road again.

Late Check-Out

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Late Check-out

The camera battery left in its charger in a motel in St. Louis,
my batik sarong left gracing a hostel bed in Jakarta,
my only pair of shoes in Timor.
A pair of Levis in Singapore,
my diary in Tanjung Pinang,
my swimsuit in Sri Lanka.

I am lost all over the world,
and this is why, five minutes after
my sister has gone down to check out of the St. Paul hotel,
I am rechecking the beds and desk tops of our room.

My bag packed and zipped at the door,
my purse and computer case propped next to it,
I sift through soggy towels in the tub,
open the closet door once more
to rattle empty hangers,
check each plug socket on each wall.

The Prompt: Baggage Check–We all have past histories. When was the last time something from your past influenced a decision you made in the present?

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/baggage-check/