Author: Sally

Life

The Usual

Sally5 Comments

Karen used to come to our table to take our order.

“How about you?” she would say when it was my turn. “The usual?”

The usual, for me, was a turkey reuben with sweet potato fries. It was something I always enjoyed and one less decision that I needed to make when I was at the restaurant with my father.

We ate at the Doubleday every Thursday night during the last few years of my father’s life. It’s like the bar Cheers from the old television show. Good pub food. Everybody knows your name.

Karen was our waitress. The night that my father died, some of my children went to the Doubleday to tell Karen. She was practically part of the family. She knew that what my father needed even more than the burger he often ordered was a hug when he arrived and when he left. And she delivered, with a kiss on the cheek.

The Doubleday is still my favorite restaurant in town. Karen is still the waitress who usually serves us. However, I don’t order the turkey reuben often. Now I have the luxury of looking at the menu or choosing from the specials.

This is my submission to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. The word was “usual.” I read it and knew exactly what to write about.

I’m struggling to write these days though. Can you tell?

poetry

Gas Gauge

Sally10 Comments

Hey, look! You’re full
I’m holding my arm up high
You put that gas in and I pull
Up to the “F” — up to the sky

Okay — I’m not there anymore
You drove a bit, the gas level is down
But hey! That’s what I’m for!
So you don’t hit empty driving ’round!

’tis such a simple task that I perform
Positioning myself in such a way
From “F” to “E” – yes, I inform
How many miles you can go today

This is my response to this week’s SoCS challenge: use full/empty in a post.

The idea was very stream-of-consciousness, but I confess, I didn’t write the post without any edits. Rhyming poems take an edit or two.

This is also my response to this week’s W3 post which challenged us to write a poem with a subject that “must be an unimportant, non-emotive object that carries no nostalgia, metaphorical uplift, or symbolic gravitas. It simply is.” I’d say the gas gauge on my car fits the bill.

Life · poetry

Framing a Moment

Sally7 Comments

Look. Take a snapshot and frame a moment:
[The deer too near the road frozen in fear]
[Tourist on black tarmac, the bestowment
Of a lei, Hawaii’s first souvenir]

A magnifying glass serves as a frame
That convex lens enlarging [blades of grass]
If dry, the grass might swiftly burst in [flame]
[The magnifier aims sun rays en masse]

I can make [a frame with fingers and thumbs]
And raise them high, see [bits of sky and cloud]
[Wispy white] turns [thunder gray] as [storm comes]
See [lightning flash], hear thunder crash too loud

The best of poems (I think you’ll agree)
Capture something intangible and small
A dumb thing overlooked you wouldn’t see
Unless there was a frame that brooked it all

Be mindful. Stop whatever else you’re doing and notice. Allow yourself to be seized by this…

~~ Frederick Buechner, The Remarkable Ordinary

This is my response to this week’s W3 Challenge. The Poet of the Week instructed us to write a poem that utilises internal rhyme where possible and keep the length between 8 and 16 lines.

poetry

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

Sally8 Comments

Is there comfort in a lump,
Or something that is lumpy?
Lumpy screams out IMPERFECTION
Or something that is dumpy

Lumpy gravy is the worst
I think most would agree
But lumps in mashed potatoes
With smooth gravy? HARMONY!

This week’s W3 challenge is to write about a food or drink that brings you comfort.

  • Form: Any
  • Length: Up to 24 lines
  • Include: The word “comfort”

Last night I went out to dinner with a friend. One of the sides that came with my dinner was mashed potatoes with gravy. The potatoes were lumpy — and I loved it.

poetry

Fog

Sally19 Comments

The fog on little cat feet creeps
Hunting, hunting for some prey
The bustling world, not busy, sleeps
The fog pea-soups as it nears day

Unaware of imminent danger
Deer are swallowed up quite whole
Then it gets even stranger
As fog moves up and down the knoll

A flock of turkeys — gobbled down!
Now I see a wayward pup
Disappear — I’m looking ’round
Sun battles fog to come up!

Tall trees battle, disappear
Birds of every shape and size
So many things that were just here
Meet fog-filled fearsome demise

In my heart alarm is growing
Could I possibly be next?
I think it best that I get going
If I’m swallowed, I’ll send a text.

This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge where we are asked to write a poem of any form, no more than 240 words, that weaves a mystery—delightful or frightening—into its lines. Further, we are asked to have landscape and/or weather be a character in our poem

I happen to love the foggy mornings we’ve been having here. The fog is beautiful and mysterious.

Also, the first non-kid poem that I remember memorizing was Carl Sandburg’s poem, Fog, which begins “The fog comes on little cat feet” — hence the first line.

poetry

To a Coffee Mug

Sally14 Comments

You hold so much filled to the brim
Morning hope, solace, peace
Unfortunately these days are grim
You hold so much filled to the brim
In you I find grim’s antonym
One soothing sip brings release
You hold so much filled to the brim
Morning hope, solace, peace

This week’s W3 challenge is to write a Triolet about something ordinary.

What’s a Triolet? It’s an 8-line poem where lines repeat in a beautiful rhythm:

  • Lines 1, 4, and 7 are the same, and lines 2 and 8 are also repeated.
  • The rhyme scheme looks like this: ABaAabAB (uppercase = repeated lines).

I start every day reading and drinking a cup of coffee. It sets my day right.

Blather · Life

Before HIPAA

Sally3 Comments

I’ll admit — it’s a semi-irrational fear that I have of getting a fishhook stuck through my skin.

It may date back to the days when my father’s office was just off the Emergency Room. HIPAA hadn’t been born yet. I would cut through the Emergency Room to get to his office.

Which was a trailer.

Yes, it’s what you picture — the kind of structure that fills trailer parks.

When I got into the trailer, his office was on the left, opposite his secretary’s desk. Sometimes she was transcribing his dictated notes and would let me listen to his voice on the transcription machine as he said things like, “The patient was a white female, age 47, who presented with…”

Clearly another HIPAA violation. But HIPAA wasn’t a thing then. And I wasn’t paying attention to the words as much as his voice.

True story: These days I recognize people by their voices. More than once I would have walked right past my high school boyfriend had he not greeted me by name.

The other day, another person that I knew years ago walked past me and said, “Hey, Sal!”

The words got my attention, but the voice identified the speaker. I immediately knew him.

I mean, seriously, most men over the age of 70 look remarkably similar to me: gray hair or balding, scruffy beard, blue jeans, etc. Add a baseball cap and I’m sunk — until I hear their voice.

But I digress. I guess that’s how it is with stream-of-consciousness writing.

So, as a kid, I would cut through the Emergency Room on a daily basis. My pattern was to swim at the gym after school and walk to the hospital for my ride home. I would wait for my father to finish his day and we would walk together to his vehicle which was ALWAYS parked in the farthest spot available.

“It’s good exercise,” he would say as I complained about walking to the car.

One time, I saw one of my classmates in the ER. He had stabbed a pitchfork through his foot. Actually, through his work boot, and his foot, and out the other side. He was crying and cursing, obviously not having a good day.

I remember his name — but I won’t say it here. HIPAA and all that, you know.

The fishhook thing must date from those days. I think I saw someone in the ER with a fishhook in their cheek.

My father said, “They’ll just push it through and cut the barb.”

He made it sound easy.

But then, he didn’t have a fishhook in his cheek.

I remember my father explaining to me how the manure pitchfork through the foot presented a particular problem because of the risk of infection. Should they just pull it out? Cut the tip and pull it out? I think that’s what they did.

It doesn’t matter. The prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday wasn’t pitchfork. It was hook.

I can’t decide if I like stream-of-consciousness writing or not. It feels like a bunch of blather.

What do you think?

poetry

Instructions on Not Giving Up

Sally8 Comments

I close my eyes to the darkness
It’s easier that way to not see
The suffocating night
With its lack of light
Where even shadows can’t be
It’s a deafening deaf abyss

Open your eyes; find the light

Sticking my head in the sand
I can neither see nor hear
Nor taste nor smell
Nor live my life
’tis its own hell
Sans peace, sans strife
This existence of living in fear —
I must be willing to stand

Open your eyes; find the light

I rise and lift my head high
I open my eyes to the dark
A slim shaft of light
A glimmer, yet bright
Catches my eye like a spark —
Engagement is how I defy

Open your eyes; find the light

This is my submission to this week’s W3 challenge.

Kerfe challenged us to write a bop poem titled “Instructions on Not Giving Up.“

A bop poem has three stanzas and a refrain that repeats after each stanza. It tells a story or explores a problem, a bit like a mini-drama.

  1. First stanza – 6 lines
    Present a problem or situation.
  2. Refrain
    A single line that repeats after each stanza. Think of it as the poem’s chorus.
  3. Second stanza – 8 lines
    Expand on or explore the problem in more depth.
  4. Refrain
    Repeat the same line.
  5. Third stanza – 6 lines
    Show a solution or a failed attempt to solve the problem.
  6. Refrain
    Repeat it one last time.

The other night I listened to an artist describing her process. She said that painting has taught her to look for the light. I need to remember to do that.

Homeschool · poetry · prayer

At the Beginning

Sally20 Comments

At the beginning
Of my journey into conservative Christianity
I heard this sermon:

“If Christians were rounded up and put on trial, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

And I thought, Of course there would be. I know my Bible. I pray. I have memorized countless verses.

But then, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, when Christians were condemning homosexuals and saying this disease was proof of God’s judgment on their immoral lifestyle, my brother, a Presbyterian minister, honored people with AIDS and their caregivers by having a dinner for them at his church. I thought about that action for years. Now there’s a conviction.

In the middle
Of my thirty years of homeschooling
I heard a homeschool convention speaker say:

“Ninety percent of homeschoolers vote in national elections when they are old enough to vote. That fact alone should have politicians shaking in their boots.”

And I thought, That’s a pretty remarkable fact. That’s a lot of power. Dear God, may they use it wisely.

But then, I watched my own homeschool convention heroes fall one by one. Joshua Harris renounced his faith. Cheryl Lindsey was excommunicated. Doug Phillips had an affair. They all are, after all, very human. And that voting power is a little scary.

And now,
I watch “Christians”
Wielding a sword and showing no love.

Dear God, I pray, convict me of compassion. May there be evidence of that in my life. Not power. Not judgment. Just kindness.

This is my submission to SoCS where the challenge was to write a stream-of-consciousness post using the words, “at the beginning.“

It’s also a response to the W3 Challenge this week in which the poet of the week challenged us to use one or both of the following images and write Prosimetrum or Versiprose: both forms combine alternating passages of prose and verse.