Tag Archives: #RDP

Sum of Us for RDP, June 20, 2025

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Sum of Us

Sensible habits and sensible shoes,
sensible houses in sensible hues—
An ideology shared by the most.
Normal descendants of which you can boast.
Develop your life by typical measures.
Don’t be bedeviled by uncommon pleasures.
Hop onto the bandwagon. Change is a sin.
Why ever be more than what you have been?

Living for tradition and keen on the past,
you’ll remain in the mold from which you were cast.
There’s nothing wrong with the status quo
so long as you’re demonstrating that you know
it’s also okay to go off on your own
and turn into the new person that you have grown.
Unique and different isn’t a sin.
It’s simply the you that you are still in.

The world has evolved by some species changing,
shuffling and growing, moving, rearranging,
and peace in the world is contingent on seeing
all of the ways of thinking and being.
So long as they’re peaceful and let you be you,
give them a chance. Afford them their due.
Don’t censure others for who they’ve become.
Add up the equation and accept the sum.

For RDP Friday, the prompt is ‘Equation.”

Under the Snow Moon, for RDP June 14, 2025

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Under the Snow Moon

Moon of Snow, Moon of Sand.
Under a bleached white moon I stand.
Starless night, all alone.
Cold as ice. Cold as bone.

There you spin, far above.
Prompting wonder, prompting love.
Why is your light a different sort
Causing fierce creatures to cavort?

In the forest, eyes shine bright,
intent to tear, intent to bite,
but here at continent’s far rim,
with moon as bright, our passions dim.

Here the sand crabs burrow deep.
poem predators to stir their sleep.
Light of moon and light of sun
are the same. Their light is one.

Your light reflects some foreign day.
I look once more, then turn away.
I take its memory to keep,
turn out the lights and go to sleep.

 

For RDP the prompt is “predator.”

“Tianguis” for RDP, June 4, 2025

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(The prompt word really is wedged into the poem down below.)


Tianguis*

When I strolled down to the market to buy a piece of fish,
I had no other shopping list. I had no further wish.
Except for some cilantro to stuff into its cavity,
I suffered from no other acquisitional depravity.

But on my way to aisles that simply dealt in fishes,
I stumbled upon vendors selling other tempting dishes.
I bought some chanterelles and then some green tomatoes,
some Michoacan peaches and fingerling potatoes.

I could not resist a table covered with such things
as necklaces and bracelets and pretty silver rings.
I tried on clogs and three-inch heels, then bought their matching purses.
I purchased four used mysteries and then a book of verses.

Baby diapers by the dozen, though I have no kids.
A set of second-hand cookery minus all their lids.
Thank God I found a shopping cart for sale just half way through
or how I would have managed, I have not the slightest clue.

I mounded up my bounty, then turned down the next aisle,
my eyes seeking out treasures, mile after mile.
So by the time I found the fish, my cart was out of room
unless I hung my salmon from the handle of the broom

that stuck way out in front of me like a chivalric lance
wedged in between my brand new Spanx and bras and underpants.
I bought two whole red salmon and suspended them out front,
then turned my shopping cart around to puff and pant and grunt

wheeling it uphill this time now that I had decided
that it was time to take my bounty to where I resided.
An hour later, out of breath, I’d slowed my former pace,
a small parade of alley cats preceding me in space.

Eying my bag of salmon, they leapt onto my cart.
I shooed them off my underwear. I fended off each dart.
I avoided their advances. I matched their yowls and hisses,
grabbed up the broom and battled those felines for my fishes.

While with the other hand I dialed animal control,
I fear my cart got out of hand and it commenced to roll
down the hill that I’d just climbed, shedding pans and Spanx
while cats made off with both my fish, not bothering with thanks.

The rest of all my bounty was lost in its descent.
I do not have a single clue where all my treasures went.
The broom, a silver ring and a new hat upon my head
were all I made it home with. The rest was forfeited.

The cart has a new owner who fills it full of cans.
My Spanx no doubt are holding in other chubby fans.
Those cats are lying somewhere, dozing and replete
from all that lovely salmon that I did not get to eat.

And I have learned my lesson. The next time I need fish
or any other foodstuffs to complete another dish,
I’ll simply dial the grocery store to have it all delivered.
When it comes to the tianguis, I’m freshly lily-livered!

*A tianguis is an open-air market or bazaar selling new and used goods as well as fresh produce, meat and fish that is traditionally held on certain market days in a town or city neighborhood in Mexico and Central America.

The RDP prompt is “wedge.”

Second Round, Two Saves for RDP

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1956, Johnssen’s Dam

Since the prompt for RDP is “Second,” I wrote the word into my search bar for my blog and this was the earliest  hit that came up. I guess it was because it somehow detected that it was about the second time something happened in my life. At any rate, it was written over ten years ago about two events I had since totally forgotten about,  so I decided I’d give it a second chance at publication. At the time I wrote it, I’d been at the beach for 7 weeks and early in that period, I’d spilled a Coke over my Mac computer, and in spite of attempts to rescue it, it had been declared unsaveable by a local tech guy. I was trying to write on a different computer which obviously I didn’t understand how to use, thus the notes below:

Two Saves

Okay, this is a reblog of a blog from January, 2015. The day’s WordPress Daily Prompt was Daring Do – Tell us about the time you rescued someone else (person or animal) from a dangerous situation. What happened? How did you prevail?)

This was my response:

The prompt today, which I cannot copy here because I don’t know how to do it on the pc I have been using for the first time, or trying to, over these past two days since I murdered my (sob) Mac Air laptop, has something to do with some time when you have saved someone.  After thinking long and hard, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to use the document software on the pc and then realizing I had no way to transfer it to my blog, anyway, I just decided that some power in either me or the universe (which is really the same thing) has decided that it is time for me to back away from technology for a time. If you don’t believe this, take into account that after both my Mac and my Kindle stopped working, then my phone did so also.  Thinking it was probably that I needed to buy more time, I resolved to do so only to find that its charger has absolutely vanished from my life.  I’ve turned the house upside down and it is nowhere.  Ah well, I’ll concentrate on photography, thought I, then realized I had no place to put the photographs.  After stumbling around for about 4 hours, I almost by mistake got them downloaded to this (devil) Acer pc, which promptly told me none had been downloaded.  A few hours later, I stumbled upon them but have no idea how to get them onto my blog…and, deciding to just give up on writing or talking to anyone I know outside of my immediate proximity, I took camera in hand…only to discover that my camera, also, is absolutely unoperational.  I think I wrote about this last night and sent it to a friend to post for me, but it was never received, so I won’t bore you with the details, other than that my camera has become a little turtle, constantly extending its head and neck only to withdraw them again, forever, until the battery wears out. Slip in a new battery and the same happens. I put it out of its misery, removed the battery and stuck it in a bag of rice, where it is keeping company with my Mac. Countless people tell me this is a remedy for waterlogged nonhuman entitites. I don’t know what is wrong with the camera, but that big bag of rice was sitting there handy, so why not? Anyway, this is why I am incommunicado and not posting .  Instead, I made a salad and chicken soup for a dinner I’m giving for departing friends tonight and got in the hammock with a good book, dozing a bit just in time for a friend to come by, jar me awake and ask if I was sleeping, then depart (her, not me) for a walk up the beach. So, what does this have to do with saving anyone?  Nothing.  Just a chance to unload on someone other than Forgottenman, who has been bearing the brunt of my frustration.  I do, however, have an answer to the question.

I have, in fact, saved two babies from drowning.  One was at a housewarming party given by my boyfriend’s son in California in 1984.  We’d all been given the tour, including the garden and hot tub, which was up on a raised patio out of view of the house.  One of the couples had a two-year-old child and I noticed he was not with his mother. Looking in the other room, I saw he wasn’t with his father, either, and I suddenly had a strong feeling that something was wrong. I ran out of the house and into the garden just in time to see him at the top of the stairs leading to the hot tub.  He walked over to the side, fell in and sank like a stone.  I ran up the stairs, jumped in the hot tub and fished him from the bottom before he ever bobbed to the surface.  I remember the entire thing in slow motion and have a very clear memory of the fact that it seemed as though his body had no tendency to float at all, but would have remained at the bottom of the deep hot tub.  The parents reaction was shock.  I can’t remember if they left the party or if they really realized how serious it was.  I know they didn’t thank me, which is of no importance other than a measure of either their inability to face the fact that their child had been within seconds of drowning or simply their shock and the fact they were thinking only of their child.

Strangely enough, this had happened before, at a stock pond just outside of the little South Dakota town where I grew up. (I have found a photo of me swimming with friends in that pond, taken a few years before the described even,  that I included above.) Everyone went swimming there, as there was no pool in town.  When I was still in jr. high, I’d just arrived when I saw a very tiny girl—really just a baby—fall into the dam (which is what we called a pond) and sink straight down under the very heavy moss that grew on the top of the water.  Her mother had her back turned, talking to a friend, and no one else noticed.  I jumped in and fished her out, returning her to her mother, who quickly collected her other children and left.  Again, no word of thanks.  It is not that it was required, and I mention it here only because it happened twice and, having not thought about this for so many years, I am wondering if it wasn’t embarrassment and guilt on the part of the parents that made them both react so matter-of-factly.

For RDP the prompt is second.

Puddle-Jumping for RDP, May 22, 2025

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Puddle-Jumping

Raindrops fall and splat and skitter,
bringing sheen and gloss and glitter.
In my dreams I hear them falling,
try to wake to heed their calling.
When exactly do I know
it’s time to leave my bed and go
outside to splash in rain-filled gutters,
ignoring Grandpa’s warning mutters
that I’ll catch a cold today
if I go outside to play?

He says it’s raining cats and dogs,
but all I find outside are frogs,
proving his idiom a lie
as nothing’s falling from the sky
but rain and blossoms from the tree
that stretches its limbs over me.
I make my way, laborious,
through mud and goo most glorious,
then reach the ditch and wash feet off
in the rushing water trough.

I see Grandpa watching me,
warm and dry and splatter-free.
But then he’s gone, no doubt to see
what’s playing now on the TV.
But, just as it begins to pour,
there’s Grandpa coming out the door!
Barefooted, he jumps in my puddle,
gives my shoulders a warm cuddle,
then repeats the old refrain
that this day is “Right as rain!”

For RDP the prompt is Gloss

Wrecking My Ping

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Image (This is the actual result of my speed test after I turned off the VPN.)

Wrecking My Ping

“I don’t know what to make of ping,”
he told me, simply answering
my question of the difference
and, in truth, my inference
that he would know the answer and
as usual would take a hand
in clarifying one time more
what a speed test measures for
and what they had to do with “ping”
and downloading and uploading
and whether one point twenty three
was enough download for me
and whether zero point six seven
would get me into upload heaven
and what this ping stuff had to do
with starts and stops that ruined my view
of films that I had hoped to stream
that only made me want to scream
because they came in fits and starts,
ruining all my favorite parts!

Are they adequate, I asked?
His scorn was only partly masked
as he admitted they weren’t at all.
“And ping?” I asked him this last thing.
and he was quick in answering,
“I don’t know what to make of ping,”

Ping Fact (Addendum)

These numbers are the actual,
although they aren’t the factual
upload feeds
nor download speeds,
for I forgot to disconnect
the VPN and so I wrecked
results of loading speed and ping,
but I was apt in my rhyming
which only goes to show a poet
is not a techie, so now you knowet!

 

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt, the word is Wreck

Mother’s Pocket, For RDP “Oasis”, Mar 30, 2025

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Mother’s Pocket

“Not your average peddler,” my mom was heard to say,
as she paid him for the prism that she promptly tucked away—
her pocket an oasis where my hand would go to play
when other things went wrong or on a sunless, rainy day.

In her pocket I found magic things—smooth stones that were magnetic.
Pulling them apart calmed hands otherwise frenetic.
Cherry-flavored Lifesavers and pretzels clothed in salt.
If they vanished from her pocket, it never seemed a fault.

Words written on grains of rice, hankies trimmed in lace
that I liked to hold against my lips and arms and face.
Tiny detached doll heads to put upon one’s fingers.
The memory of their spirited dialogues still lingers.

But that magic prism was the best of all her treasure.
Once I drew it from her pocket, I kept it for my pleasure.
Still it sits upon my shelf where it invites my gaze,
still transmitting mother’s light on sunless rainy days.

For RDP the prompt is Oasis

Goblins for RDP Saturday Prompt: Tiptoe, Mar 29, 2025

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Goblins

They steal into town to pillage and croon,
Invading on tiptoe, every third moon.
With fiery red hair and warts on their noses,
they cut all the tulips and pee on the roses.
Venting belches that reek of porter and scallions,
they chase all the ladies in randy battalions
and press scaly lips on unwilling misses
who scamper away to wipe off their kisses.
But still the next morning, their sickly taste lingers
on unlucky lips and unfortunate fingers
of girls who’ve attempted to purge these advances
that with lecherous hobgoblins pass for romances.
So all ye young maidens take heed of this warning.
Put off your wanderings until the morning!

For RDP Saturday Prompt: Tiptoe

Remembering Bob, for RDP

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Remembering Bob

“Wooden Heart”

He handed it to me without ceremony—a small leather bag, awl-punched and stitched together by hand. Its flap was held together by a clasp made from a two fishing line sinkers and a piece of woven wax linen. I unwound the wax linen and found inside a tiny wooden heart with his initials on one side, mine on the other. A small hole in the heart had a braided cord of wax linen strung through that was attached to the bag so that the heart could not be lost. He had woven more waxed linen into a neck cord. I was 39 years old when he gave me that incredible thing I never thought I would receive: his heart—as much of it as he could give.

It was the first handmade gift I’d ever received from a man. Inside, over the years, I have put a lock of his hair and a tiny tiny animal of indeterminate species hand-cut out of wood by his youngest son and presented to me. And, after his death, a small copper heart pin I had made and given to him two years after we married. Twenty-eight years later, this bag is all that is left of what was once my union with the man and his eight children from three different women. When he died, we returned him to the inevitable earth and all of the children returned forever to their real mothers.

The bag lies in a box with other relics of our past together: a silver heart brooch, another carved of wood with wings attached and, strangely enough, a miniature computerized hand piano. Years after his death, it struck a chord on its own, just lying on the shelf beside my favorite picture of him. One last dying gasp from the tiny gadget I’d put in his Christmas stocking but then grown tired of hearing him play and so had hidden away, only to enter our bedroom one night to find him playing it under the covers like a guilty pleasure hidden from the adults, although he was already in his sixties.

For our first Christmas, he gave me a large sculpture he had made that was also a musical instrument—three hand-raised copper gongs in the shape of breasts suspended over a wooden keyboard played by rawhide mallets, the gongs suspended from the long horizontal neck of a copper wind instrument with two necks and two mouthpieces, so two notes could be blown at once. When he died, it was the sculpture chosen by his youngest daughter, and I let her take it. Now, the remnants I have of him are only the leftovers that remained after eight children had chosen. I was moving to another country and could not hold onto everything he’d given.

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Sculpture by Bob Brown,1986.  4′ X 5.5′, wood, hand forged copper, marble and hemp.

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Miniature hand piano, 4″ X 2″

I moved away from most of those things we had collected over the years, but somewhere hidden away in the thousand objects in my studio is the small leather bag and the tiny hand piano, now forever mute, his father’s pocket watch, his biking medals and the other assorted pieces of his life that will one day wind up in a secondhand store in Mexico. All of our gifts finally melding with the parts of all those billions of other lives that strike their brief chord before blending, inevitably, back into the cacophony of the universe.

 

The prompt for RDP is “Bob.”

Rum Dumb for RDP, Feb 19, 2025

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Rum Dumb

Beer is tacky. Wine’s a joke.
My preference is Rum and Coke.
Squeeze a lime in. Take a sip
to cool your throat and wet your lip.
My favorite form of inebriation
is always Cuba Libre-ation.

The RDP prompt is Tacky. Can’t resist that one. Went back 11 years and found this ditty I wrote that just happened to contain the prompt word. I didn’t remember writing it, so perhaps you don’t remember reading it.  Does anyone???