Tag Archives: Poetry

The Leaf Never Falls . . .

. . . very far from the tree.

My sister sent me this message and poem that my mom wrote for her egads–over 50 years ago!

Hi there–
I was looking in a box of letters & memorabilia (including my Salutatorian speech from high school, of all things) that Mother gave me years ago, and I found this poem she wrote for me on my birthday one year. It’s so great I have to share it.

A POEM

I’ve used my best china,
Which I’ll wash–I bet.
I made you a cake
Which you already “et”

I’ve washed your clothes
And made your bed,
But please let this all
Not go to your head

Today is your birthday
But tomorrow is not,
So you’ll do your own jobs
You little–darling girl.

P.S.
In regards to your room,
I had meant to do more,
But I took one look
And made for the door.

She was so clever; I wonder if I appreciated it then?

xxoo Patti

Ghosts

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Ghosts

It floated off to the side,
disappearing when I turned to face it head-on.
It hadn’t his features, really,
but I felt his presence a dozen times after—
something floating just off the corner of reality.

Then, weeks later, in the bedroom—a bat.
It flickered against the white curtain and then disappeared.
Moments later, there it was again.
I jerked my head quickly around, flipped the curtain out,
examined its other side.
Moments later, there it was again.
Then a circle floated across to join it.
A hair floated down from above and stuck, center-vision.

A few hours later, the fireworks started—
flashing corollas of light just to the right of me,
like subtle flashbulbs going off.

This was when I decided I needed to see a specialist.
Yes, a retinal detachment, he agreed,
but not yet perforated.
Now, my movements curtailed,
I await that new cloudy ghost
that will be a harbinger
of surgery.

Every tope, every cobblestone
brings a new flash of light—
a signal to still myself.
No jumping. No Zumba.
No jogging. No lifting.

I wait, inactive, watching floaters
move to the center of my vision
and off to the side again.
I practice various levels of exertion,
waiting for the flash that signals rest.

I wait for words to float
across my vision,
to rend my inactivity
and prompt me
to pin them to the page––
to stitch them together
into a clearer sight
of what is there, invisible,
inside me, waiting for the tear
to let it out.
They are the ghosts
of the future
and I am the one
who seeks to gather them,
to mend the tear
and anchor
these slippery ghosts.

As we sat in the waiting room waiting (of course) for my eyes to fully dilate so the dr could do his tests, Gloria asked what the red dot was on my blouse. I hadn’t noticed it, but the nurse said, “Oh we put that on her to show she’d been dilated!” Two hours later, I was still waiting for the dot to turn green so I’d know my eyes had returned to normal!!!!

Red Dot Syndrome

Artist’s rendering of my retinal disfunction.

Gloria, contemplating my fate.

Retina specialist humor.

An undashing pirate wench

My reward!!! Gloria got to share.

Foreign Tongues (Day 29 of NaPoWriMo)

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Our prompt today is to write a poem that includes at least 5 words in a foreign language.

Foreign Tongues

When I was a child, I thought as a child.
In short, I didn’t think.
My faulty reasonings were piled
like dishes in a sink.

I was different, didn’t sync
with the rest of my childhood herd.
(Even at five, I was on the brink
of being a little nerd.)

While other children responded to
“What do you want to be?”
with “Cowboy! Teacher!” (right on cue),
these answers weren’t me.

When it came to having career talks,
I fear I was a purist.
My answer was less orthodox.
My aim? To be a tourist!!

I thought tourists then to be
a sort of gypsy pack.
Jobless, they were wild and free,
their luggage on their back.

Or in their cars, packed front and back,
traveling evermore––
a footloose, wandering, feckless pack
unsettled to the core.

I saw them passing on the road
just one block south of where
my family hunched in their abode
year after passing year.

I had to wait for 19 years
to earn my traveling shoes––
to assuage my parents’ groundless fears,
abate their travel blues.

I took off on a sailing ship
to visit foreign lands.
When foreign words evaded lip,
I merely used my hands!

Back home, the English seemed to me
common––sorta dowdy.
Instead of “Moshi, moshi”
I had to murmur, “Howdy.”

As soon as school was over,
I hopped upon a plane.
I’d pass my life a rover.
Inertia was inane!

I packed up my regalia
with neither tear nor sob
to head out to Australia
for my first teaching job.

I thought that English I would teach.
It was our common tongue.
Enunciation would I teach.
Oh Lord, I was so young!

My first day there, I heard the word
“Did-ja-‘ave-a guh-die-mite?”
I found it all to be absurd.
They were joking. Right?

“Don’t come the raw prahn on my, mite”
was next to meet my ear.
What foreign language did they cite?
It puzzled me, I fear.

I rode, I walked, I sailed the seas
and ended up in Bali.
Said my “Terimakasih’s”
And then, “Selamat Pagi.”

My move to Africa was one
that some folks found quixotic,
but “amasaganalu”
was a word I found exotic.

After two years, I went home.
Wyoming was the next
place that I agreed to roam,
though I was sorely vexed.

For though the words were all the same
I’d learned at my mom’s knee––
(I’m sure that I was all to blame)
they all seemed Greek to me!

California was where I hung
my hat for many-a-year.
There Español was half the tongue
that fell upon my ear.

I liked its cadence, liked its ring.
The words ran fluid and
their foreignness was just my thing
in this bilingual land.

So Mexico is where I’m bound.
I’ve reasons numbering cien.
The main one is, I like the sound
of “Que la via bien.”

Beholding Beauty (Day 27 of NaPoWriMo)

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The prompt was to think of a proverb or axiom, to Google it and write a poem inspired by
what you read about that phrase. I chose, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Beholding Beauty

You are more beautiful than you think you are,
but we don’t tell you because
it is such a pleasure to see you unaware of it,
doing everyday things in such graceful ways.

You are the Burmese cat, stepping high
over the small sculptures
on the wall where he is fed,
his tail curving into a delicate hook.

You are vibrating leaves on the hibiscus tree
adding the contrast of green
to the one exquisite yellow bloom
with its fuchsia sunset middle.

You are a child whose violet eyes
open wider to each wonder––innocent,
never knowing yourself to be more beautiful
than what you observe.

You are music, harmonious, played
on the spur-of-the-moment with no rehearsal,
fingerpaints on the wall in an incredibly wild pattern
that could not have been planned.

You are the gourmet meal
made of leftovers from the fridge,
the wonderful costume gathered
from hangers at the thrift store.

You have a beauty
you were not born to––
one that is an amalgam
of every choice you make in life.

Beauty is in the eye
of the beholder, many say,
but it is impossible to imagine
a beholder who couldn’t see it in you.

Circadian Verse Non-pareil (NaPoWriMo Day 20—10 to go!)

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Prompt: Today we were challenged to write a poem that uses at least five of the following words. In my own rodomontadian fashion, I decided to use all of them. I italicized the words as they were used in the poem so you can check up on me!

Word List: owl generator abscond upwind squander clove miraculous dunderhead cyclops willowy mercurial seaweed gutter non-pareil artillery salt curl ego rodomontade elusive twice ghost cheese cowbird truffle svelte quahog bilious

Circadian Verse Non-pareil

Enough, I say! It’s bad enough when poetry stoops to puns
or limericks, but now we’re asked to write of guns????
NaPoWriMo!
Just say, “No!”
I, myself, would journey over dale and hillery
to avoid the usage of artillery!
There is enough of it in every news report
with vivid details: magnum, caliber or loudness of report.

It am so sick of it!!!
Guns don’t fit
in poetry and that is why
I choose to write about fine dining under a cowbird sky
on truffles svelte and mercurial with just a ghost of cheese
upon my plate—a dish that’s sure to please.
No salt, no clove, no quahog purloined from its oceanic lair
should be added to this perfect dish. What dunderhead would dare?

Overhead, an owl drops like a comet to abscond
with some small creature scooped up from the pond.
He flies away, upwind, then curls his flight to fly back over
and in one miraculous swoop, his talons comb the clover
in search of prey that is elusive
and wisely, seconds later, is reclusive.

Twice more, we see our willowy feathered friend descend
while our teeth keep chewing and our elbows bend
to stuff yet one more morsel into bodies slightly bilious,
turning a deaf ear to talk now supercilious.
Our whole gluttonous, cyclopean brood
(one eye on the owl, the other on our food)
is loath one morsel of this groaning board to squander
on predator now circling over us, then over yonder.
His wings held straight—no bend or flutter,
he soars down low and eyes the gutter.

The seaweed now he surveys—that generator
of frogs and tadpoles and perhaps a gator.
But, finding nothing this hungry day,
he dips one wing and flies away.

And so must I desert my task circadian,
Lest ego turns me rodomontadian.

Dining Alone at the Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar (Day 18 of NaPoWriMo)

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The Prompt today was to write a poem that begins and ends with the same word.

“Dining Alone at the Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar”

Smoldering.

Señor Garcia is smoking today.
Below him,
Maria Phoenix lies on satin sheets
on the wall of Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar.

It is a small palapa restaurant––soft orange front with
hot pink trim–– that I’ve driven by hundreds of times before;
and every time, I’ve wanted to come in, but haven’t.
Now today, suddenly,
I don’t want to go home
and so my car turns in across the carretera.

I am the lone customer.
The cook and waiter
spring to action.
Totopos for him to bring,
a fire for her to light.
This is a fish restaurant
and I am a non-fish
eater, choosing between
quesadillas and beans
or a hamburger and fries.
Needless to say, I’m not here for the food.

I am here for the view and the limits
imposed by eating alone in an otherwise empty
restaurant/bar. I have a poem to write
and need the discipline imposed by a place
where there’s nothing else to do.
My only distraction is the view,
which forms the subject of my poem
and so is anything but a distraction.

The smoke from a dozen fires
rises into the air from the entire eastern slope
of Mount Garcia across the lake.
Whether by accident or by the hand of farmers
lighting fires to clear last year’s stubble from the fields,
the effect is that this extinct volcano
has somehow come to life,
springing leaks.

Fanned by a recent wind, the smoke grows denser, rises higher.
Below the slopes, a patchwork quilt of strawberry and raspberry
fields, covered with plastic sheets,
spawn fruit for the tables of El Norte.

Maria, that other smoldering beauty, lies suspended all around me––
long canvas banners reflecting her screen loves and her roles.
She looks over one shoulder, wears a rebozo or a mariachi’s sombrero.
Cantinflas, that beloved clown, shares her wall but is never in a shot with her.
They are opposites: the sexual symbol and the comic. One raises tension
and the other seeks to dispel it.

I am in between, a mere observer, I know.
In every case it’s likely that the fire has been lit by means unnatural,
but nonetheless, it ignites my imagination.
I am surrounded by it.
“Blue Bayou” plays on the sound system.
Sleepy eyes.
My eyes sting from the smoke
that has filtered toward me
from eight miles or so across the lake.
The tears in my eyes are from the smoke,
not from memories of the departed one
I used to come with to these fish restaurants.

They are not the place for gringos.
Word is out about the sanitation
or where the fish comes from
or who might be encountered here.
A few restaurants down, there was a cartel killing
just about a year ago––perhaps more, perhaps less.
At any rate, Americanos and Canadians are rarely found here.

Today, no one else is found here.
“There’s no exception to the rule”
plays on the sound system.
“Everybody plays the fool.”
Feeling a stranger in the place where I live
is a feeling pleasurable to me––
an emotion I do not feel foolish for pursuing.

The waiter, as though I’m a repeat customer,
brings an entire bucket of ice
and fills my glass each time he passes.
They have my brand of rum.

I have always known this place could be my place.
The pleasure of knowing it to be so warms me
as much as the second jigger of rum.
Shall he pour it for me? Do I want it all?
Just half, I tell him, and fill the glass with Coke.
I like it weaker, so I can spread it out.
Like the fire.

Smoldering.

Confessions of a Retired Superheroine (Day 14, NaPoWriMo) (really dumb, I know, but at least I did the prompt!)

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This is the prompt: “I challenge you to write a persona poem — that is, a poem in the voice of a particular person who isn’t you. But I’d like you to choose a very particular kind of person. How about a poem in the voice of a superhero (or a supervillain)?”

Confessions of a Retired Superheroine

What’s happening tomorrow?
the same thing that happens every Friday
since I was forced into retirement last year.
I’m going to go make my collections.

It will be my first day
off the diet
I’ve been on for a week––
and my leathers aren’t at all as close-fitting
as they were before,
so I deserve a small reward.

I’ve washed my hair—
Well, no surprise. I do every day.
A bit OCD on that activity,
but today I washed all of it.
Every inch.
Ears, too.

I can’t remember when I first thought
of the lucrative business
I’ve been opurrrrrrrating since my retirement;
but I do remember that tomorrow is the day
I go from door-to-door doing collections.

I usually dress in leathers,
which I look pretty good in for a mature sex-kitten.
No, not a biker chick.
I am more of a femme fatale
with a haunting and mesmerizing voice.
Everyone says it sends chills down their back–
a sort of backyard Les Mis.

My parking garage is six blocks away,
so I take a shortcut: leaping over walls,
soft-toeing it along the top edge of fences.

Sometimes I crouch in the bushes,
waiting for strangers to pass.
As I do, I sharpen my fingernails—
a weapon no one can take away from me.
Anyway, what good would a gun be
for a woman with no opposable thumbs?
Hey. Don’t feel sorry for me, okay?
I’m Puurrrrrfectly happy with my lot in life.
I’m puurrrrfect without them.

Sushi? Yes.
A trip to the beach? No.
Not unless there is raw fish involved
that I don’t have to catch myself!

I’m a night person.
I sleep for most of the day
and go out every night.

I am sexy, fit and nimble.
I fill out my leathers in all the right places.
I can jump to the ground from a rooftop,
land on my feet and be off before you see
any more of me than a shadow.
I am a thief by birth and inclination, and I
I pre”fur” my daily fare to be purrrrrrloined.

I can take swift revenge and kill mercilessly,
or curl up and enjoy
a long petting session,
as docile as you please.

Actually, I don’t know why I’m giving you this sales pitch.
I usually ignore people,
so when I actually notice them,
they are honored.

The diet? Well, low-protein, low carb and low fat.
That leaves nothing but grass, right?
And the problem with that is that everyone thinks you are sick
and so tries to trick you into a dose of this or that.
The cod liver oil isn’t bad,
but I’ve never developed a taste for Pepto Bismol.
My neighbor sneaked some into my cream a few months ago
and I gagged so hard I coughed up a hare-ball.
Just the nose and whiskers, actually, but it created a sensation, nonetheless.
I was at a party and no one was yet drunk enough
to take it in their stride.

Anyway, I’ve gotten distracted.
I’m just going to smooth my hair a bit
and then go to bed and get rested up
for tomorrow’s collections.

What kind of brilliant female was I to create a job for myself like this?

“Cat Woman Pest Disposal––You trap them, we collect them.”

I actually get paid for going from door to door,
collecting a course here and a course there.
No of course, no matter how hungry I am after my week’s fast,
I will not reward myself in my client’s presence.
I always wait until I get to my catmobile to have my first nibble.
After all, even a retired superheroine has to watch her image.

If Nothing but Truth Were Possible (Day 12 of NaPoWriMo)

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“Write a poem consisting entirely of things you’d like to say, but never would, to a parent,
lover, sibling, child, teacher, roommate, best friend, mayor, president, corporate CEO, etc.”

If Nothing but Truth Were Possible

Your child is not as charming as you think he is.
Perhaps if you just said, “No!” to him now and then?

I’m allergic to dogs. Could you get your St. Bernard off my lap, please,
and lock him out of the room where we’re sitting?

As much as I enjoyed the first hundred of your family photos,
could we perhaps move on to conversation of a less familial theme?

My husband has seen enough of your cleavage for one evening. Could you cage them?

Your poem’s triteness is only equaled by its misspellings.

I can see why you would want to be a swinger. Someone as gross as you are
should not expect his wife to shoulder all the responsibility.

Walmart art does not really count as a collection.

Whether your rocks are cubic zirconium or diamonds, they are still ugly!!!

Why would you bring $100,000 worth of diamonds to Mexico
and expect them not to be stolen?

When people back away from you, there’s a good chance
they don’t want you to advance on them again.

A good way to check for bad breath is to lick your wrist.

Have you ever wondered why only beautiful women want you to ask them to dance?

If you expect things in Mexico to be just like they were in the U.S., please remember
that there is a country just north of the border that is the U.S.!! Why don’t you go there?

No I am not ill. I’ve just spent two years starving myself and spent a fortune
on appetite suppressants. Couldn’t you just tell me I look fabulous?

Be honest now. Would you ever have thought to eat raw fish if it weren’t all the rage?

Your life depends on telling the truth. Do you you really, truly enjoy opera?

Just what is it you find enchanting about Paris? Oh, right. It must be the friendly people!

Tanks or Tankas? Day 11 of NaPoWriMo–and with 11 1/2 hours to spare!

Saving Daylight

1 Reply

I live in Mexico. We just changed over to DST today—a few weeks after the U.S. did. As though DST isn’t complicated enough, countries get to arbitrarily decide when to switch to it. Obviously, this poem was written during the fall switchover, not the spring. I’ve never been able to remember which is switching on, which switching off. At any rate, this is not my daily NaPoWriMo poem as it wasn’t written today.

Saving Daylight

After altering the course of rivers,
moving or removing coastlines,
forests, ozone-protection,
minerals and fossil fuel,
we look for what next to change
and notice time.

(Perhaps time, a manmade concept anyway,
can be less-devastatingly tampered with?)

There are those who know
better than God or nature
when light is needed
and they have set the world right.

We are saving daylight
all over the world,
taking it from the morning’s wallet
and transferring it
to a back pocket.

Led like blind lambs,
we change our clocks,
lost in dark mornings
so games of golf or tennis
can be played well past
the natural end of day.

Gardeners and house builders
climb the hills to work
lighting their ways with flashlights,
in search of that lost morning hour of light.

Like sheep made clumsy, stumbling over stiles,
schoolchildren’s toes
feel for cobblestones in the dark
between street lamps
spaced a block apart.

as, like investors too anxious
to save up for a rainy day,
a world in the dark
makes forced deposits every morning,
withdraws them, interest free, each evening.
Her animals and birds and tribes
lost to schemes
carefully planned.

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lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Reflections on Life through poetry, essays and photos

Tag Archives: Poetry

The Leaf Never Falls . . .

Ghosts

Foreign Tongues (Day 29 of NaPoWriMo)

Beholding Beauty (Day 27 of NaPoWriMo)

Circadian Verse Non-pareil (NaPoWriMo Day 20—10 to go!)

Dining Alone at the Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar (Day 18 of NaPoWriMo)

Confessions of a Retired Superheroine (Day 14, NaPoWriMo) (really dumb, I know, but at least I did the prompt!)

If Nothing but Truth Were Possible (Day 12 of NaPoWriMo)

Tanks or Tankas? Day 11 of NaPoWriMo–and with 11 1/2 hours to spare!

Saving Daylight

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