Sun’s up, Cheer Up!
Although the moon is obstinate, They’re waking up the sun.
It’s time to fold your dreams away, to shake out the day’s fun.
When adventure’s inconspicuous, still you can try to find it.
Time is always ticking but you can’t forget to wind it.
Knit your future to your dreams and life will be your plum.
When life can be so wonderful, why spend it being glum?
Prompt words for today are wake, inconspicuous, knit, obstinate and up.
Afternoon Under Cats.
I’m feeling lethargic, no gumption or drive.
If you saw me now, you would doubt I’m alive.
I’m flat on my back in a bit of a bind,
looking for energy that I can’t find.
So though I need coffee to wash down some Bayer’s,
my cats are on top of me, piled in layers.
Obstinate creatures, they simply won’t move.
They laze around daily with nothing to prove.
And what must be giggles just come out as purrs.
I need me some whips and I need me some spurs
so I can herd cats from their comfy position
that they have adopted as part of their mission
to make sure that I do not deign to stir,
remaining inert under bundles of fur.
Prompts for today are gumption, layer, giggle, obstinate and find.
Collecting Myself
My juvenile aspirations were not like any others––
my idols not my parents or my sisters or my brothers.
I wanted to be different, intrepid and exploring
regions and activities less mainstream and less boring.
I felt my whole identity tied up in what I did,
but my friends had just a glimpse of me–for most of me just hid,
waiting for a time when the world would want to see
all that biggest part of me that was really me.
When it finally happened, I came out bit by bit,
each part coming into view as I discovered it
through doing and by trying, by traveling and proving.
It seems I only sloughed off walls as I kept on moving.
Parts of me found here and there in every varied clime.
I’m still finding parts of me up to the present time.
Daughter, friend and lover, writer, artist, wife––
to discover all of them is what creates a life.
Today’s prompts are intrepid, differ, glimpse, juvenile and identity.
Finches
Each year the nest more delicate, nonetheless they return,
my faithful little finches, watching it by turn
until the eggs all hatch and the nestlings start their squeal,
prompting parent after parent to fly off to find their meal.
In the rafter near the kitchen, they continue serenading,
keeping up their clatter as their folks go promenading,
in search of constant aphids and seeds that are their food,
creating angry nestlings, demanding in their mood.
Of all of nature’s visitors, these finches are the best,
although I’m glad my kitchen is not my place of rest.
Their insistent chirping is not the stuff of dreams.
Their continual conversation begins with the first beams
of morning sun, continuing all the long day through,
like living in an aviary at my private zoo.
Nature all around us reminds us of our place.
It humbles with its beauty and slows our human pace
to take notice of her cycles and her stubborn repetitions,
planning out each life form in particular renditions.
I cannot be but humbled as I cook up my creations,
listening to the chorus of my avian relations.
Prompt words today are return, nest, delicate and humiliate. Also, Granny’s Bird of the Day prompt.
We Have Met the Enemy, and It Is Us
Three years of fear and loathing? The world has turned surreal.
News programs sanctify our fear, our horrors the real deal.
A man once enigmatic tweets himself too clearly.
Those truths that we held evident and came to hold most dearly
were fictions in our history books. Our empire’s like the others––
built upon the backs and bones of those we call our brothers.
Who is guilty of these sins? We all are, one by one
for watching TV movies and not the smoking gun.
Our leaders, all fine actors, draw their princely wages
While madmen fire on schools, it’s children we put in cages.
America, unite as one and see the truth about you.
See what the whole world now sees that causes them to doubt you.
If you hold religion as your reason to support
this man who isn’t really all that he might purport,
what religion really is, please take the time to see:
“What you do to the least of my children, you have done to me.”
Whatever else might profit you, this is the bottom line.
God’s children aren’t all born within the borders you define.
“Give me your tired and weary, your yearning to be free.”
Must we scrape these words off the statue of Liberty?
Open your eyes. We are no longer saviors of all.
Perhaps we never were. We turn our backs and build a wall.
Prompt words today are fear, surreal, sanctify, enigmatic and program.
Unlikely Pairing
One ungainly orphan elephant, wandering and uncertain
of where his journey’s leading him, comes upon a curtain
of mist that rises from the plain, shimmering, evanescent.
The stars now muted overhead, the moon a fuzzy crescent.
He splits the curtain, comes upon a lone and lost impala
split off from the herd during some wild stampeding gala.
They form a duo and plod on, each looking for a herd.
Such an unlikely couple. Impossibly absurd.
And yet they struck a certain chord, each one with the other.
She was the sister that he lacked, and he her missing brother.
One thing led to another. She fit him like a glove,
and before they knew it, the two were fast in love.
When the baby came, it looked a bit like a nyala,
a bit like a rhinoceros––an elephantiala!!
Prompts today are intent, orphan, elephant (good grief) and evanescent. Add this one, too: curtain.
Wanderlust
When I was a little girl, no more than just a snip,
I longed to be up in the air or on a sailing ship.
I lusted for adventure––for travel and for more.
I brooded over my dull life––such a crushing bore.
At five I was a dreamer. A backyard visionary.
I imagined me as gypsy, tourist or missionary.
My fantasies weren’t random. In all of them I traveled.
Year after year more restless and wandering dreams unraveled.
Tarzan was my hero and Superman my crush––
their journeys through the jungle or air currents a rush.
I longed for all their freedom––to fly and move at will.
All of their adventures dreamed from my windowsill.
All night I took such pilgrimages over hills and ridges,
crossing raging rivers over extension bridges.
At sixteen I sneaked out at night in my father’s car
and drove for hours through the night, going just so far
that I could be back home before he arose at five
to snuggle back into my bed in our familial hive.
Then slowly I transitioned into who I longed to be.
I swung down from the branches of my family tree.
Trips to far-off places: Australia and Japan,
Africa, Sri Lanka, Bali and Bataan
all came true. As time passed, I ended the charade
of my stationary life and joined the grand parade.
The world one grand excursion, for many years I quested,
thinking that the life that I was born to could be bested,
until at last I learned the truth that what I journeyed for
was simply to unlock the lock and open up that door
that led me deep into myself to find that private world
that lived inside me all those years, so securely curled
that I only found it by first venturing afar.
Thus do we wander far afield to discover who we are.
Prompt words today are transition, brood, random and snip.
The Other Side of the Story
I think it’s just fair dinkum that you suffer repercussions
from the things you said to me during our last discussions.
I grant that breaking up is something that is hard to do,
but for sheer brutality, I give the prize to you.
I must say it’s unfathomable that you have forgotten
all those infidelities to which you’d never cotton.
I hate to raise old issues that we’d both rather ignore,
but before you pick your suitcase up to storm out of the door,
I feel I must remind you that the suitcase that you’ve packed
does not belong to you but is my favorite, in fact.
And the car you might intend to drive away in in a huff
packed with all “your” furniture and other handy stuff,
is registered to me, in fact, and all that’s packed inside
was paid for by my paycheck, and so it will reside
right here with me as you embark on your lonely shuffle
out into the cold with your belongings in a duffle.
Ta ta my dear malingerer, I hope that you do well
as you descend from easy street down to your private hell.
Prompt words for today are repercussions and dinkum,
and, since Your Daily Word hasn’t published their August prompts yet, I’m going to use the three prompts of theirs that I missed on the 26th, 27th and 28th while I didn’t have internet connection for three days: Raise, ignore and unfathomable.
Nostalgia Reexamined
The sublimity remembered when memory has its turn
often has beginnings in nostalgia’s timely churn.
That teenage bliss that we recall as being overjoyed
if remembered correctly would be being over-boyed.
Our adoration of the past is easier than giving
all the same attention to the life that we are living.
Prompt words today are nostalgia, overjoyed, adoration and sublimity.
Aroma Therapy
There’s a distinctive odor coming from your shoe.
I don’t know what is causing it. I’m sure it isn’t you.
An acquisitive vampire might pay big bucks for it
to augment the fetid odor in his burial pit.
When it comes to hygiene, I have very little tact,
so I have used hyperbole to illustrate the fact
that from the big toe of each foot right over to its pinky,
the fact is not debatable. Your feet are very stinky!
Prompt words today are odor, vampire, illustrate and acquisitive.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 