Tag Archives: spur

Member of the Pack

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Member of the Pack

It’s a pretense that I’m lonely, for as I look back
I do not miss existing in the raffish pack.
I do not miss the barrooms or parties tightly wedged
between the other partiers—those memories I’ve dredged
from a corner of my mind where they are a reminder
that once my world was fuller if not exactly kinder.

We were all examining the people we could be.
Trying on our different selves to see what we could see
in the mirror of our cohorts’ eyes and how they treated us,
riding in the joy car ’til we jumped down from the bus
to thumb a ride to try to find a different part to live in—
a part where all the rest of us wouldn’t have to give in.

All the various sides of us have their own times and spaces
that are all a part of how life puts us through our paces.
And now in maturity, I hope that we’ve all found
that comfortable part of us for which we all were bound.
And that’s why I’m not lonely as I wander back
in memory to when I was a member of the pack!

 

 

Prompts today are pretense, lonely, reminder, raffish and pack.

Drop-ins Not Advised

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https://vinnews.com/2019/07/12/new-york-hey-brooklyn-wanna-live-longer-move-to-borough-park-a-new-report-says/

Drop-ins Not Advised

“Don’t be a stranger” said the pair
when I met them at an affair.
Nobody knew this introduction
would give rise to such a ruction.
When I strolled into their borough,
inquiries were swift and thorough.
Was I peddling pot or meth?
How did I say shibboleth?
I passed the pat-down, said the word,
then joined the swirling passing herd.
Clearly, it is not a lark
to try to enter Borough Park!

Prompt words today are Shibboleth, thorough, nobody, ruction and introduction.

Two of the prompt words today were a bit tricky, giving rise to this strange little poem.
If you, don’t know what “Shibboleth” means (as I didn’t)  HERE is a link to its explanation.
Borough Park is a largely Orthodox Jewish section of New York City and a ruction is a disturbance, quarrel, or row.

 

 

Catnap

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Catnap

I’m in the tidepool of repose, floating on my dream—
Hushed and very far away from exhaustion’s scream.
The telephone’s not ringing, I have nowhere to go
except to float in currents of my dreaming’s flow.
All my finicky habits stream out ahead of me
and vanish in the currents, to leave me calm and free.
My head falls to the chair back, waking me from my nap,
but as if to calm me, the cat jumps in my lap.
I fall in with his plans for me, do not avoid his scheming,
but as I gently stroke him, I fall back to my dreaming.

 

Prompt words today are tidepool, repose, telephone, finicky and exhaustion.

Pre-Trip Snafu

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After a packing frenzy, I finally fell asleep at 3 this morning, then got up at 5 to get ready for my ride  to the airport in Guadalajara to catch a flight to Houston and then to Minneapolis for a family reunion. I started writing this at 8 a.m. in Guadalajara. It is now 2:28 in the afternoon and I am in Houston waiting for my next flight.  I’ve spent an hour and a half  in the Guadalajara Airport waiting room, one hour waiting in the plane for a mechanical error to be fixed, two hours in the air, another hour and a half walking through passport control, customs, baggage claim, baggage recheck (I hope) and another few miles walking from the end of one concourse to the end of the other.

I hope my two hours of sleep last night  accounts for the fact that I absolutely cannot remember rechecking my 50 lb. checked bag after picking it up from the carousel here in Houston. I do remember lifting it off the carousel. I just can’t remember wheeling it though customs and rechecking it to Minneapolis! And I am not going to backtrack another 5 miles, so I may wind up in Minnesota with only my carry-on. The good news will be if this confusion is due to lack of sleep and not the onset of dementia.  This poem, however, relates the story of the beginning of my journey this morning as I sat in the waiting room at the departure gate for my flight from Guadalajara.

 

Pre-Trip Snafu

I have a special movie I’ve been saving to see.
It’s loaded on my laptop here, balanced on my knee
but I cannot watch it due to an oversight,
even though I have two hours left before my flight.

So I’m sitting in the airport feeling sort of lost.
I need to buy some earphones, no matter what the cost.
I knew I’d forget something even though I checked and checked,
but this egregious oversight I neglected to detect.

I penned a careful overview of what I knew I’d packed,
unpacked my bags and looked again to double-check each fact.
My boisterous friends requested that before I go
we celebrate my birthday, but I had to say no.

I was too busy packing , unpacking and repacking––
checking off the items to see what I was lacking.
Phone, computer, curling iron, hair dryer and comb.
I couldn’t think of anything that I was leaving home.

Of course it was inevitable something would go wrong,
and the realization was sure to come along
after I passed all the shops and five miles down the aisle,
weary of lines and walking. Ready to rest awhile.

No magazines to pass the time. My phone is out of juice.
No earphones to enjoy my flick. I guess I’ve cooked my goose.
Too late to remedy my lack, too far into my botch,
but real life’s all around me. I guess that I’ll just watch!

 

Prompt words are off, overview, boisterous, egregious and lost.

Gleaning

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Gleaning

His precipitous departure and subsequent defection
belied earlier avowals of his most sincere affection.
As usual, his action in doing so was heartless—
his cruel revelation of his apathy most artless.

The opposite of nuance, he was blatant to the bone
as he crassly left her weeping to hit the road alone.
Doing her a favor, for he left the door ajar
for another suitor who had loved her from afar

from the time that they were children, but who had never spoken
who now seized this opportunity by handing her a token
that all of his affection he hoped he might expose:
a declaration of his love— single long-stemmed rose.

Carefully, he’d trimmed each  thorn, then ringed the single stem
with his mother’s engagement ring—a brilliant diamond gem. 
And so her recent heartbreak of being the one left
gave way to an elation so she felt much less bereft.

For unbeknownst to him, she had always felt the same,
although she had not shown it, for she feared the shame
of unrequited love if she had revealed how she felt,
but when she saw his token, her heart began to melt. 

And so they were soon married and the day their son was born,
her former love crested the hill, tattered and forlorn
to try to win the love back that he’d cast away so breezily,
only to find abandoned love was not won back so easily.

We learn from all life’s errors, both our own and those of others,
so I want to share this wisdom with my sisters and my brothers.
The moral of the story is be careful what you toss,
for a more farsighted lover may glean profit from your loss.


Prompt words today are nuance, subsequent, revealing, precipitous and heartless.

Glean: to gather leftover grain or other produce after a harvest.

 

Just Desserts

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Just Desserts

Was my brother ornery or was he merely dumb?
Once he told me rubber bands were a new sort of gum
that didn’t blow good bubbles, but at least you could rechew it,
saving you the money of having to renew it.

Given any option, he was bound to choose the crazy one,
and if the choice involved some work, sure to choose the lazy one.
He always had ideas about how to do work faster,
and without exception, they resulted in disaster.

Like the time he used Dad’s blowtorch to trim all of our trees,
not taking into full account the briskness of the breeze
and set the house on fire, slightly singing the outside,
and when the firetrucks arrived, he asked them for a ride!

Once when men came to fix the roof, I heard the kitty mewing
and knew at once there was a chance that more mischief was brewing.
Whatever put it in his head to waterproof the cat
by dipping it from tail to neck in the tarring vat?

He’d do things like putting red ants inside my skirt,
and when my folks weren’t watching, he’d spit on my dessert,
then eat the rest himself when I asked to leave the table.
He found ways to torment me whenever he was able.

Entertainment such as this was what amused my brother,
giving ulcers to my dad and white hairs to my mother.
But growing up with brother turned out fortunate for me,
for he gave a clear pattern of what I shouldn’t be.

And now that I have kids myself to tend and love and cook for,
I have a sure advantage, for I know just what to look for.
I see things with my brother’s eye and remove such temptations
that might lead to misdirections in their moral educations.

And as for my brother’s childhood deportment flaws,
just desserts were finally served. I know this because
fate dished out the punishment for his childhood errors
by giving him two sons that I hear are holy terrors!

Prompt words today are waterproof, idea, head, ornery and option.

Believing the Best

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Believing the Best

Whoever visited my yard through the fence’s breach
and climbed up in my fruit tree to commandeer a peach—
did you need to hack the ivy twined around the post
and also steal the single rose that I loved the most?
Did you need to do the worst, then leave without a clue
of who had done the damage you felt inclined to do?

I only hope this selfishness will not become a trend,
and so this single message is the one I wish to send.
I hope the peach you ate was sweet and the rose you took
was for a special one you loved, who pressed it in a book.
I hope you took the ivy to twine into a crown
to place around a spill of hair that she had taken down

to fall around her shoulders—and that is why you chose
to not only sate your hunger, but to also take the rose.
And then, these thefts completed, you pilfered one thing more
when you spied the ivy vine and you thoughtfully tore
just a little bit of it for your true love’s hair.
This one act excused all and made your pilferage most rare.

 

Prompts for the day are breach, hack, trend, twine and clue.

Beach Rendezvous

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Beach Rendezvous

Your andante whistle matches your advance—measured and slow, as though you know where you are going, but are in no hurry to get there. You’ve grown weird and amphibious—spending equal time in water and on land, a surfboard your new mount, your cowboy hat metamorphosed into a billed cap worn backwards.

You have achieved some notoriety due to that prowess in water that you never found on dry land. You, who crashed cars into traffic cones and bicycles into fences, weave effortlessly from wave to wave, then ride their crests. You nosh on kale and granola, leaving McDonald’s in the past. Who would ever guess that this cowboy farmer would start surfing from scratch at the age of thirty, thereby achieving a fame he’d never earned in the rodeo?

You scratch your forehead, freeing a long blond lock from its imprisonment, pull off your cap and take a playful swap at my shoulder as we draw close enough to share a hug, a kiss.  Classmates our whole lives from elementary school through college, we have somehow slipped into different generations—you the proverbial beach boy surfer, me the middle-aged mommy herding kids away from sand crabs and beached stingrays, you gliding between them on water, already a fixture in this cool beach town–your whole life composed of what for me is an occasional weekend visit lugging picnic basket, beach towels, blanket, umbrella and three children aged four to ten.

“Daddy!” the kids scream, running toward us streaming seawater from their heels. One by one, you grab them under their arms, spinning them in wild circles, then, with the smallest one on your shoulders and grasping the hands of the others on either side, you make off for the water to reacquaint them with their aquatic side. The picture I took that day shows four kids playing in the water. I had given birth to three of them. You gave birth to the fourth.

Prompt words today are andante,amphibious, scratch, achieving, nosh and weird.

Bad Ending, Sweet Beginning

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Bad Ending, Sweet Beginning

In the graveyard of my memory, an adventure stirs.
First it circles like a cat, then settles down and purrs.
The message that it imparts via magical vibrations
reminds me of adventure and of youthful excitations.

No rigmarole of gossip. No conspicuous inflection.
No past welling up sickeningly like some dormant infection.
Fear fades into shadow and romance swirls into view.
And I suddenly remember what attracted me to you.

 

 

 

Prompts for today are rigmarole, conspicuous, adventure, impart and graveyard. Second image from Unsplash.

All That Glitters

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All That Glitters

Be mindful of your wishes lest fate should smite thee down.
What you think might bring a smile sometimes brings a frown.

Nowhere is it written happiness can be bought.
Too often excess riches are a trap wherein we’re caught.

Sometimes pristine palaces can turn into a cage
for those who sell contentment for a daily wage.

If fairy stories are the tales on which your hopes you gauge,
remember that their characters are prisoners of the page.

Those in ivory towers far above the earth
may not smell the flowers or recognize their dearth.

It’s one thing to be hungry, ill-provided for and flustered,
but once you have enough and your daily needs are mustered,

if you want to win the game of life, be sure to share the ball.
Just relax. Enjoy your life. You do not need it all.

Prompt words today are mindful, smite, pristine, fluster and nowhere.
Image by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash, used with permission.