Tag Archives: The Sunday Whirl

Toyless: Wordle 543

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Toyless

We are refugees from childhood and the gadgets from the past,
for hula hoops are out of date and Play-Doh doesn’t last.
No bean bags soar toward targets. No Pop-Its crack and hiss.
Millions of Wooly Willys will forever miss
their metal filing hairdos and, it’s true, what’s more,
pump-handle tops won’t spin away to whirl across the floor.

Potatoes doomed to peeling and slicing up for fries
miss Mr.Potato Head’s hats and ears and eyes.
Down what timeworn corridors have all our past lives fled?
Where are all the vestiges of playtimes that we led?
How can we track our losses when toy store staffs insist
that the treasures of our past, alas, do not exist?

Davy Crocket Coonskin caps no longer are the rage.
Beanie caps with propellers are not worn at any age.
Peashooters aren’t in evidence. Nor is Silly Putty.
Give a kid a Milking Cow and they’ll think you are nutty. 
No slinkies climb down stair steps. No Hungry Hippos snap.
No Cabbage Patch Kids hang around to share a toddler’s nap.

Our childhood pleasures are passé. We may as well admit it.
All the things that we found fun? New kids just do not get it!

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle, prompts for this week are:
target fled millions live crack last refugee corridor gadgets losses staff track

Turning the Tables

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Turning the Tables

The turtle stuck his neck out to see where he was going,
but might have hidden in his shell if he had means of knowing

that the chef had plans for turtle soup, so caught him at the threshold
and put his hands around his neck so he could gain a flesh hold.

But such plans “gang aft astray.” The turtle put a spin on
and designed a different course from  one that he had been on.

He dragged that gourmet chef along and headed for the sea.
Their noise of battle was the thing that awakened you and me.

We put our vinyl raincoats on and fiddled with the locks,
scooting feet into our shoes, devoid of any socks.

No moonlight eased our journey, for rainclouds obscured all,
and amidst the raindrops, we commenced to slip and fall.

Around us, many turtles were streaming towards the sea,
intent upon their journey. Ignoring you and me.

So we turned back homeward, to sit upon our stoop
imagining those turtles enjoying human soup.

 

Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl are: turtle neck shell hidden
but design no spin fiddle amidst noise vinyl

For Wordle 542 Image by Dusan Veverkolog on Unsplash.

Sue Bee Honey: Wordle 538, Jan 30, 2022

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Sue Bee Honey

Once a year, their trucks would leave trails through our fields of sweet clover and my father returned from the fields with  combs of honey still in their wooden frames, dripping rich streams that blackened the dust of  the sidewalk between the back driveway and the porch, where he propped them up against the porch railing to drain into huge clay bowls.

Sue Bee Honey, rich and golden and speckled with tiny corpses of the bees who made it. Those two purloined combs were the price he exacted for allowing them to put their hives onto our land. I swear I could smell that honey on the wind long before he brought it back to share with the family—our year’s supply that we would filter through screens to remove broken bits of wax and bee bodies and pour into bottles to line a foot-long space on the narrow shelves of the pantry.

I remember breaking off a piece of the broken comb to chew like sugared gum—sweet July memories of summer as well as later memories of the silken feel of that honey trailed onto hot buttered corn muffins in the morning. It solved my winter hunger for sweet and fueled me up for a morning of  books and chalkboards and sharpened pencils on blue-lined rough yellow paper.

 

The prompt words  for  The Sunday Whirl, Wordle 538 are: broken silk dust leaving truck family sign hunger wind books honey and black. Two of the images are by  Alisa Reutova and Mariana Ibanez  on Unsplash.

Now and Then: A Valediction Forbidding Mourning: Wordle 537

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Now and Then

In cracking the present to reveal the past,
it shimmers, triumphant, expansively vast.
I tend to remember the moments most happy—
successful and positive, silly and sappy,
but when I remember it using a filter,
it leans to one side, completely off-kilter.

The same number of memories from days gone by
if remembered at all, are recalled with a sigh.
I reach into my heart and remember again
the more negative moments of days that have been.
Then I quiver with passions, now full of dejection
of the losses and failures  and pains of rejection

It’s the way of the world to give us one day
what in the future it will take away,
but nonetheless, we must live for the present
and accept all it offers—both painful and pleasant.
When we pin all our thoughts on past sadness and fun,
We fasten ourselves to a life that’s undone.

This is my answer to John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”

The Sunday Whir Wordle 537 prompts are: undone cracking triumph expansive reach quiver shimmering filter way reveal sigh moment

The Greatest Story Ever Told: Wordle 536

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The Greatest Story Ever Told

Join us in the circle that chronicles the blend
of our different stories that lead to just one end.
Our ceiling is the clouds and one wall is the west
and the north and south and east combine to form the rest.
Raven speaks our history that’s written on the sands
of the mighty ocean that touches all the lands,
pounding at their edges with insistent fists
 gathering the  surfaces that formerly it kissed.
Pulling all the rock slides roughly with its hands,
grinding all the boulders down to powdered sand.
This is one grand story that none of us should miss .
Have you any story more relevant than this?

For The Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: room cloud any fist raven rock slide speak west story blend circle

Night Visitor: Wordle 535, Jan 9, 2022

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Night Visitor

A shift in light, a shape just glimpsed, a moment fraught with fear.
What spirit floats in front of me and breathes into my ear?
It thrusts into my consciousness, filling all its gaps
with memories that, truth to tell, I’ve recently let lapse.
Its stories fill my night out in whispers soft and low.
It beckons me to follow it, but still I answer “No.”
In fear of where it seeks to lead, I do not heed its sighs.
It might be other than it seems, in another guise.
That truth we find in dreams, alas, carries no guarantee.
Do we see what really is or what we wish to see?

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle, the prompts are: fraught glimpse shape moment lead gap thrust might breath shift sigh low Image by Lux Graves on Unsplash.

Forgottenman  at Serial Monography has acquainted me with another online Wordle of a different type that I have become equally addicted to. You can find an explanation of how to play it HERE . And you can go HERE to sign on play the game. A new one is posted daily. Please note this is an entirely different Wordle not associated with Brenda’s blogging site.

Night Stalking Wordle 534

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Night Stalking

I could not bear the tedium of last night’s fruitless sleep,
so I went out hunting in its forests dark and deep.
I drew light through my crosshairs, then held my breath and viewed
a host of tiny forest sprites, dancing in the nude
in and out of shadows, beckoning and waving,
and so, of course, I followed to quench my idle craving.

They flitted to the treetops and scribbled on the sky,
in clouds of strange graffiti they left as they sailed by.
My heart stretched taut in fear that they’d vanish from my gaze.
I feared that they’d forsake me in the morning’s haze.
I cast vain looks around me, at the shadows, at the sky,
but alas no tiny forest gods continued to sail by.

With no digital reminder of these visitors by night,
I have only words to use to tell you of my sight.
Ethereal and shadowed, they conquered my ennui
by cutting through my dreams and entertaining me.
Thus are our lives enriched as we wander off at night,
collecting all the images we’ll later lose to light.

 

Prompts for this week’s Wordle 534 are: bear host scribbled digital gods cast breath taut crave light crosshairs gaze

About the image: This incredible one-of-a-kind sprite was sculpted of polymer clay by Thomas, an artist I used to do shows with. Its background and mounting were fashioned by my friend Sharon Wheat and me many years ago, after she gave me the sculpture as a very generous gift. Many memories come with this post of both past special times and dream times. Since we put a mirror in the background of our little tableau, it was tricky to get the right image in the background which led to a fun outside photo shoot, trying to get an image with trees and plants in the mirrored background without one of myself and the dogs included, since they both were curious and invaded most of the shots. 

Scotch Plaid: Wordle 533

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Scotch Plaid

A bloke’s
a joke
when clad
in plaid.
Girls don’t tarry
with guys so merry.
They suppose
such garish clothes
best suit a zone
for golf alone—
a sporting life
lived void of wife.

A plaid-swathed guy
might well let fly
a golf ball and
wind up in sand,
his drive a flub
made with a club,
his signal “Fore!”
a senseless roar,
or perhaps see,
there on the tee,
his ball still sitting
devoid of hitting.

A ball unfired
is best retired
to join a club
that is a pub
where scotch on ice
will suffice.
No more balls fired,
golf clubs retired,
that vest of plaid
doesn’t suit a lad
who is, I think,
best suited to drink.

For such a lad, I think it’s best
to drink the scotch and ditch the vest.

Prompt words for Wordle 533 are: signal, drive, plaid, lone, life, joke ice, fire, club, merry, fly and join

The Arts: Wordle 531

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Click on photos to enlarge views.

The Arts

Do stories flutter round your head and brush your ears with wings?
Do words sift down like embers and ignite sparks in things?
Do crystal visions in your eyelids scare away the blues?
Do new rhythms lift your spirits and install taps on your shoes?
Do staffs of music fall like rain to shift your mode of thinking?
Fall like water from the sky until you feel you’re sinking
into overtures of gratitude for what life has been giving:
words  and music, art and dance  that make your life worth living.

 

flutter stories haunt spark lift words wing staff shift water gratitude crystal

 

For  Sunday Whirl Wordle 531

Summer Block Party: The Sunday Whirl Wordle 530

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Summer Block Party

So many trillion burning stars form the signs of night.
Most of them so secret that they are out of sight.

Others are so numerous, they form a sort of haze,
spreading out a Milky Way at which we like to gaze,

lying spread-eagled in the grass, during summer nights,
cockleburrs’ sharp edges and mosquito bites.

The chattering of mothers on our screened front porch,
feline yowls and dog barks, Father’s questing torch,

seeking out the faucet to turn the water off.
A roar of laughter from the men, a smoker’s raucous cough.

All the familiar voices of our little hive—
the neighborhood we live in, cozy and alive.

All the roles we choose to fill united for this night
when the stars have chosen to bless us with their light.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 530  The prompt words are: edge, stars, roar, burn, role, chatter, hive, sign, feline, curse, haze, secret. Image by Andy Holmes on Unsplash.