Life · poetry

Because I Lack Chutzpah

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Prompt: List ten things you would say to ten different people in your life, if you had the chutzpah.

  1. Please stop coming by the house.
  2. Please come by the house and help me sort through all this.
  3. Call your doctor.
  4. Do your job.
  5. Should you be eating that?
  6. Stop being such a bitch.
  7. Do you remember that time twenty years ago when I came to you for help and you shut the door on me?
  8. As a Christian, how do you feel about warehousing people? What would Jesus do?
  9. Could I tell you my side of the story?
  10. I love you.

This is a response to one of the prompts in this week’s Writer’s Workshop.

Ten things I would say. Ten people. No chutzpah.

Here’s a poem with the names of those 10 people hidden inside in no particular order.

A hadj
I’m dreaming of a hadje
Anywhere
Let me look
Arles looks nice
(Van Gogh and all that)
Or a farm
Where I could grab udder teats
And milk a cow by hand
Buy ripe fruit and vegetables
Harvested that day
Or visit the Cape
And hope terrapins emerge
From brackish waters
Travel to South America
See pika
(thy love for small animals satisfied)
Flee
Annotate
Breathe deeply
Visit an adobe house
Wear a robe
Kahuna visit
Honestly, though,
The best ever
Is home
Always home

Life · Travel

Munchkins

Sally3 Comments

I went to Dunkin this morning to get coffee. I’m traveling with my brother and needed my morning joe.

The young man who helped me was sweet. I’ll bet he was still in high school, trying to make a little money before he heads off to college.

So, I ordered my coffees — two of them. One for me, one for my brother.

The young man said something to me which I didn’t understand. I shook my head and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t catch that.”

He repeated his words.

I repeated what I heard back to him — “… rice?”

He laughed, and then spoke more slowly. “Hot. Or. Iced.”

“Ah!” I said. “Definitely hot.”

I paid him and put some money in the tip bucket.

I appreciate kids working. I remember how hard it was for me in my first public-facing job. I was 16 years old when I first worked at the Baseball Hall of Fame. We saw all sorts of people there.

I had also ordered a few Munchkins as a treat for my brother. When my young friend went over to put them in the bag, I listed off what varieties I wanted.

He handed the bag to me and sheepishly said, “I gave you an extra one.”

Was he appreciative of the tip?

Had he miscounted and couldn’t take the extra one out?

Or, did we have a connection in our brief interaction?

I’m going with the last theory. He was a sweet kid.

This is my response to this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: sweet.

Every word of this really happened less than an hour ago.

poetry

Exploring Roots

Sally3 Comments

An ancester named Zidsel is in my tree
’twas a new name to me
Looking through the smoke of generations past
(No — no one asked)
I am curious about my roots
And look for attributes
Genetically passed down my tree
So that I understand me

Who am I? Why am I the way I am?
It’s an anagram
I try to rearrange letters to see
Nature? Nurture? What’s the key?

Zidsel married Peder to whom she bore
Four children, maybe more
My great-grandfather Andreas was her son
He left Denmark — US life begun

I think, though, I would learn the most
Walking Zidsel’s Jutland coast
Seeing where she was born and died
Visiting the church where she was a bride
Finding old homes in the town of Varde
Imagining Zidsel in the yard
Nearly two centuries have gone by
Still, I’d like to give it a try

One of this week’s Writer’s Prompts from the Writer’s Workshop was to write a post based on the word smoke.

This poem is what grew out of that.

Well, that, and some poking around on Ancestry.

poetry

Beach Souvenir

Sally2 Comments

My mica flakes sparkle
In contrast to my blackness
I think that’s why you noticed me
In the water
At the provincial park
In Nova Scotia

You picked me up
And caressed my smoothness
Water is so patient
At smoothing away edges

Well, water and jostling
Jostling against other rocks
The daily tides make us all a little smoother
All a little less edgy

But at my very core
I always sparkle

This is my attempt at a Dinggedicht: a poem that enters so deeply into a thing that the thing seems to speak for itself through image, texture, movement, and sensation alone. That’s the W3 Challenge this week.

Life · Writing

a List

Sally2 Comments
  1. I won the award for best speller in 4th grade, beating out Jack Harvey (aka Merritt Harvey). Does that inspire me to do better? No, I’ve learned that there are people for whom spelling comes naturally or for whom it is an obsession — and I am neither.
  2. The messiest room in my house, which I will change to the messiest SPACE in my LIFE is my desk. At work and at home, my desk is messy beyond messy — and yet it is MY space which I covet and love.
  3. The contrast between these things — of being a good speller and having an incredibly mess desk — is that I am slowly figuring out what is REALLY important.
  4. What inspires me to do better — daily reading, daily contemplating, daily trying to look beyond me to the world.

This is my response to a bunch of prompts, namely

poetry

Shucking Peas

Sally11 Comments

Pods
In hand
Peas removed
Bowl slowly fills
Mom’s garden harvest
In her lap as she works
Orange-red sunset outside
Head falls forward [snore] then snaps up
“I’m not sleeping — just resting my eyes!”
Pods in hand, peas removed, bowl slowly fills

The W3 challenge this week was to write a Dectina Refrain in honor of Mother’s Day and be sure to include the word “mother” (or a variation of it).

The Dectina Refrain is a 10-line, unrhymed, syllabic poem with a precise structure:

  • Line 1: 1 syllable
  • Line 2: 2 syllables
  • Line 3: 3 syllables
  • Line 4: 4 syllables
  • Line 5: 5 syllables
  • Line 6: 6 syllables
  • Line 7: 7 syllables
  • Line 8: 8 syllables
  • Line 9: 9 syllables
  • Line 10 (Refrain): Combine the exact text of lines 1–4, in order, as a single closing line
poetry

Three Threads

Sally3 Comments

The Pentecostal spring of the first Christian church contrasts sharply with the icy rigidity of our Christianity today … This community of faith and community of life in the first love was marked by the risen Christ … Everything depends on seeing the mystery of the risen Christ as unconditional love.

~~ Eberhard Arnold, Innerland: A Guide into the Heart of the Gospel

The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence. If we are serious about innovation, must we not conclude that we need something new to replace our perpetual “war to end war”?

~~Wendell Berry, Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

It seems to me that the Bible says that true conversion (turning, change, rebirth) comes at the point when a person realizes that the God who was once considered to be a powerful enemy, who was to be avoided or bargained with is, in reality, a friend who is to be trusted. Just when we expect to get clobbered for our guilt, we get clobbered by grace. We realize that, in our frantic search for peace and happiness, we have looked in the wrong places and have overlooked the God who has always been looking for us. God does not have to destroy us in order to deliver us.

~~ William Willimon, The Gospel for the Person Who Has Everything

I begin each day with reading from multiple books. It’s just a thing I do. I love when three different authors from different backgrounds, different books, speak on the same topic.

Eberhard Arnold was German pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and co-founder of the Bruderhof, born in 1883 and in 1935. I read a piece by Arnold this morning in a book called Bread and Wine: Reading for Lent and Easter. The book is published by Plough, a publishing house that Arnold helped to found.

Wendell Berry is a novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist and farmer. I first learned about him when I went to Hutchmoot in 2011. (Clink on the link if you’re asking what’s a Hutchmoot.) Recently I was going through books in the attic and found a book of agricultural essays. As I was reading it, I found that some days one or two paragraphs gave me enough food for thought that I had to stop. That made it a slow read, but not a slog. It was fascinating and relevant, even though it had been written fifty years ago. I told one of my sons that I was reading Wendell Berry and he lent me the book where I read this essay.

William Willimon is a former Methodist bishop whose books I am reading this year. I pick an author each year and focus on him. Willimon is this year’s AOY (Author of the Year).

I love when thoughts come together from different places, so I wrote a poem about it.

One
Over
The other –
Three threads braided
Each one different
And yet are similar
Love, non-violence, and grace
Actually “clobbered by grace”
(Is clobbering a violent act?)
One over the other — three threads braided

(I need to write a Dectina Refrain this week for W3, so I thought I would test out the form here.)

fiction · poetry

The Age of Open Doors

Sally13 Comments

I reached the age of open doors
It was the time to choose
After years of thoughtful mentors
Whose advice should I use?

Door one revealed a scene sublime
Flowery, peaceful, green
The sun had just begun its climb
O’er this idyllic scene

Enticing sunrise pink and blue
The dawn of a brand new day
I stopped myself from stepping through
And looked the other way

A smell came from the second door
Putrid, foul, rank
I looked and saw things I abhor
My heart within me shrank

I knew at once where I must go —
Stepped past the lintel post
And entered not where flowers grow
But where I was needed most.

This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge where Poet of the Week Yvette M. Calleiro prompts us to create a poem that explores a fictional world—utopian or dystopian, your choice. This world must be wholly imagined and not reflect the current reality we live in. Let your imagination run freely.

  • Use 20 lines or fewer.
  • Write about a fictional utopian or dystopian world.
  • Do not portray the current state of our world in your poem.
A to Z Blogging Challenge · Life

Z is for Zig-Zag

Sally4 Comments

There once was a life full of twists
Opportunities taken (some missed)
Zig-zagging around
Fulfillment was found
[can you finish my limerick for me?]

Those darn zig-zaggy roads of Ethiopia
Arial view of the switchbacks in Ethiopia
Another view of the Ethiopian roads

I was startled awake in the midst of a dream last night.

In my dream, I was at an event, a concert of some sort. I was distracted by some severely handicapped people there — not in a bad way, just wondering where they would sit and how the music would affect them. I was seated near the front so I had close-up view of the performers. I watched them usher three of the handicapped people down to the front and seat them — one at a grand piano, one at a keyboard, and the third at a drum set. A handler placed the man’s hands on the keys of the piano and he began to play. It was beautiful, until he lost his place on the keys. The keyboardist began playing. The drummer began playing. The pianist was growing more and more discordant as he banged his hands on the keys; he had lost his way. I couldn’t tell what triggered it, I feel like it was the pianist listening to the others, because suddenly the music of the three musicians blended into something beautiful.

Then I woke up.

I had been thinking about this post — my zig-zaggy road post– but couldn’t come up with a focus. I think the dream helped me.

Sometimes we lose our way, and life becomes discordant. The switchbacks on the roads cause us to lose our sense of direction.

But then we arrive somewhere — it may be the destination we started off for, or it may be someplace totally different.

Regardless, life is beautiful if we look for the beauty.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · family

Y is for Young

Sally13 Comments

There once was a couple quite young
Who together their fortunes they flung
Handsome husband, lovely wife
They had a great life
[can you finish my limerick for me?]

1953
My dad and mom –2008?

I did not imagine that I would get emotional writing this post about my parents. I went back and found a post I had written in 2011, They were young, and started to tear up.

My mom had dementia. I started this blog while I was trying to unravel that knot. The name of the blog is based on something she had done — put marmalade on my dad’s hot dog for lunch. She went through a whole marmalade phase, putting marmalade on everything.

Gosh, I’m so emotional looking at those photos, remembering.

She died in 2015. He died in 2019. There’s a huge lump in my throat.