Linger
It is those times
over dinner
when we have lifted a glass
or two–
those times
without husbands, who are home
watching a game
or out with gun and skeet–
those times
with long-ago college schemes
or scandals
remembered–
when, although no longer hungry,
we nonetheless order a dessert
with three forks
as an excuse to linger.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Linger.”
This is my above-ankle tattoo done a month ago. Now almost completely gone, except for a shadow. Relax. It was a henna tat.
Remember the 200 baby turtles we released into the sea a week or two ago? They are long gone, I hope, but I still think of them every day.
Day of the Dead altars give us a perfect way to remember departed loved ones in a non-maudlin manner. This is my husband Bob who passed away 13 years ago. Yes. He loved very cold Coke and crullers, but I couldn’t find a cruller, so this little pastry had to do.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/gone-but-not-forgotten/
https://grieflessons.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/gone-but-not-forgotten/
The Prompt: Overload Alert—“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” — Gertrude Stein. Do you Agree?
There is new news all day long, for every single minute.
By radio and television, we are immersed in it.
Even on the Internet, they repeat and repeat
every warlike action, every athletic feat.
We know before their spouses do when politicians slip,
view every starlet’s nightclub spree via a Youtube clip.
Stock market scams and Ponzi schemes and other news that scares
as big guys pick our pockets in order to line theirs.
Sans Blackwater and Monsanto, we would be better off,
but we’d still be deluged by news of Enron and Madoff!
We consult Wikipedia to see what it might say,
keep up with the Kardashians a dozen times a day.
It’s hard enough to keep abreast of those they might be bedding,
let alone to know the date of their most recent wedding.
Who has gained a pound or two or who’s the most hirsute?
This information makes our lives a Trivial Pursuit.
There are so many details that come at us day and night,
filling up our minds until our craniums feel tight.
We’re stuffed with sound bites, news clips and every TV show
until it is inevitable. Something’s got to blow!
No wonder that we can’t remember names of our best friends
or what we came out shopping for or how that movie ends.
We can’t remember song lyrics or what we meant to do
when we came in here for something. Was it scissors, paint or glue?
I am forgetting everything I always used to know.
Every mental process has just gotten kind of slow.
It’s taking me much longer now to ponder each decision—
a factor that the younger folks consider with derision.
Like-aged friends agree with me, for they all feel the same.
They all have minds stuffed just as full, and we know what to blame.
There’s too much information, and like any stuffed-full larder,
to locate things within them gets progressively harder.
If we could sort our minds out the same way that we pack—
putting unimportant stuff way at the very back
and all the more important things in front and at the top,
we wouldn’t have to search our minds and wouldn’t have to stop
to figure out the names of things or places or of folks,
and then we wouldn’t be the brunt of all their aging jokes;
but it seems that we can’t do this so perhaps the answer is
to just turn off the TV news and gossip of show biz.
The scandals and the killings—all the bad things that astound us—
we’d leave behind to concentrate on happenings around us.
We’d notice more the little things in our immediate world:
the spider in the spider web, the bud that’s tightly furled
and notice when it opens, and the dragonfly that’s on it
and take a picture of it, or perhaps construct a sonnet.
See the children who are hungry and instead of our obsessing
on matters where we’re powerless, instead bestow a blessing
on all those things around us where we have the power to act.
When we see whatever needs doing, to take action and react.
Perhaps then all the horrid facts that rise up in the mind
will settle to the bottom and then all of us will find
the keys we’ve lost, our glasses, and remember why we came
into this room and how to recall every person’s name.
And all the time we save we’ll spend on the important things
and feel the sense of purpose helping others always brings.
The world is too much with us with its bad news of all kinds,
and all this information simply freezes up our minds.
Perhaps with less input, there would be less facts to astound us
and we could concentrate on what’s important close around us.
Wise Thoughts Unsaid and Unremembered
The perfect reply that I hadn’t yet thought of
but figured out later? I have had a lot of;
but the problem is that now they still can’t be gotten,
for though once I had them, I now have forgotten!
It’s true. Great retorts are jewels in the crown,
but truer that one has to write them all down!
And it’s best that you write them down lickety-splickly,
for though they come slowly, they seem to go quickly!
The Prompt: We’ve all had exchanges where we came up with the perfect reply—ten minutes too late. Tell us what it was, being sure to sign off with your grand slam unused zinger!
In the Open
The day is balmy
with segmented clouds.
The African tulip tree
spreads its boughs wide
over the seated ones
as well as the one who stands in front of us,
leading us to ground our feet,
relax our arms with hands palms up
and to go inside ourselves
to watch our breath
and be in the now,
in the state that she calls openness.
To be in the future is not openness, she says,
and to be in the past is not openness.
Only the now is really living.
And it occurs to me
that when I think I want a cup of coffee
and leave my studio to go in search of it,
then, in the kitchen,
can’t remember what I’m there for,
(and the reason why so many
friends my age are doing the same)
is because we are in this state of openness
more frequently
as we get older.
Wanting a cup of coffee is in the future,
and remembering we wanted a cup of coffee
a few minutes ago
is having to remember the past.
Standing here in the kitchen
listening to the baby birds’
loud cheeps
from their nest in the kitchen overhang
is being in the now.
And so it is that all of us, as we age,
are in the deepest stages of meditation
most of the time
and should not worry so much
about Alzheimer’s or dementia,
because we are where Tibetan monks
and ladies leading meditation
would have us be.
Open. Living the now
with increasingly
less memory
for what was
or was to be.
I’ll Leave the Light On
This is a world for the knowing,
and everybody knows
that if we would try just a little bit harder
that we wouldn’t feel so trapped.
yet still we cry baby, cry.
You think he’s gonna carry you home to China?
It’s not like that, darlin’.
It’s more likely that you’re walkin’ blind.
You will be two marionettes
on the Twickenham Ferry.
Where can I go? you ask, trapped,
a woman left lonely in winter.
What you gonna do––let your wedding dress
carry you home to the cold mountains?
Run, baby, run.
Let the black ladder be your museum of flight.
At heart you were always a circus girl, anyway––
that woman on the tier far above desolation row.
When were you happy?
I know you keep me in your heart,
the one who loves you the most.
I am in your mind, In the wind.
The memory of me is better than love.
This is a call–a broken man’s lament.
I hope it will carry you home.
Walk away, Renée. Walk away.
You’ll accompany me.
We can take the long way home.
Today’s prompt was to incorporate 5 song titles into a poem. As usual, I elected to be excessive. How many can song titles can you find in this poem? $10 prize or a free copy of my book to the winner. Woweeeee! You won’t be rich, but just think of the honor.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 