Author: Sally

fiction

Waiting

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Waiting.

How many word games can I play while waiting?

Got Wordle in 4. Typical.

Connections: yellow, purple, blue, green. No mistakes.

Crossword Mini: 56 seconds. Under a minute, but, dang, not much under a minute.

Dordle. Quordle. Septordle.

Sheesh. My back hurts from hunching over this phone.

I’m tired of these games — in more ways than one.

I walk over and check the monitors. Again. Nothing is arriving at 10:45 AM. Why did he give me that time?

It’s 11:15 now. The next arrival is noon. A few folks have trickled in to wait.

Stupid games. Stupid waste of time.

I should just leave. I should go for a walk. I should call him.

No. Way.

I am NOT going to call.

“Be there at 10:45,” he had said. It’s 11:22 now.

Scroll. Scroll. Scroll.

I’ve looked at everything on my phone 27 times.

The ball is in his court. I did my part. I’m here. He needs to show up.

Or call.

Good golly — why doesn’t he call?

It’s 11:28.

I look. A few more people have trickled in.

A guy gets out a guitar and starts strumming.

Another guy pulls bongo drums from his bag. I kid you not. Bongo drums. He starts playing.

A girl pulls out a whistle and starts playing.

Wait — I know that song.

A fiddle starts.

In he walks. Singing to me, “Will you marry me, lassie, at the Kirk o’ Birnie Bouzle?”

I start to cry.

“Sorry, I’m late,” he said.

Okay, okay — I know it wouldn’t be a guitar, but a bouzouki. And it wouldn’t be bongos but a bodhrán. A tin whistle — yes.

Honestly, I didn’t know where I was going with the story. Those really are word games that I play on my phone. I started writing about them — and the boredom of waiting.

Then about 223 words in, that song popped into my head. I kid you not.

Edit. Edit. Edit. Here’s what you get: 250 words of a marriage proposal that almost didn’t happen.

My response to the Unicorn Challenge — no more than 250 words based on the photo.

Here’s The Corries’ version of the song:

poetry

(not really) a Cento

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i have never traveled

So much depends
Upon
The fog
a ribbon of moonlight
the dew on the morning grass
the snow carefully everywhere descending

somewhere, gladly beyond
a smaller gift — not the worn truth
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
the world offers itself to your imagination

Line 1 and Line 8 — e.e. cummings — together these two lines make one complete line “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”

Lines 2 and 3 from a William Carlos Williams’ poem that nobody understands but is forced on high school students across the USA.

Line 4 Carl Sandburg — first line of the first poem I remember intentionally memorizing

Line 5 Alfred Noyes — not a full line, but from The Highwayman, the first poem I voluntarily memorized just because I liked it and was smitten by the tragedy of the story. Anne of Green Gables also memorized it, but I didn’t even know AoGG existed at the time.

Line 6 Billy Collins — not a full line, but from Litany — just a poem I love

Line 7 e.e. cummings again

Line 9 also Billy Collins — not a full line, but from The Lanyard — a poem one of my sons sent me for Mother’s Day one year.

Line 10 e.e. cummings — I LOVE e.e. cummings

Line 11 Mary Oliver — not a full line from Wild Geese — a poem one of my sons read at my father’s funeral

A weak attempt at the W3 prompt this week: Write a Cento on the them of Love.

A cento is a poem formed of lines from poems written by others. I didn’t use whole lines most of the time.

Uncategorized

4th of July Thoughts on America

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One of the places I work has a wall of photographs of significant people who have been a part of that place. One of the photos is a man named Samuel Nelson.

In the mid-1800s, from teeny-tiny Cooperstown, Samuel Nelson rose to the Supreme Court of the United States. He served from 1845 to 1872 on that court and sided with the majority on arguably the worst decision that court ever made, Dred Scott, in which they ruled “that Americans of African descent, whether free or slave, were not American citizens and could not sue in federal court. The Court also ruled that Congress lacked power to ban slavery in the U.S. territories. Finally, the Court declared that the rights of slaveowners were constitutionally protected by the Fifth Amendment because slaves were categorized as property.” (from The Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years) The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens of the United States.

When my children were younger, we listened to a Brite Music CD (actually, I think our first version was on cassette) called “Take Your Hat Off When the Flag Goes By” by Janeen Brady. They learned the foundations of our government through the songs. One song is just the preamble to our Constitution — and I’ll bet that most of my older kids could still sing it. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men (and women) are created equal.”

The song (from Take Your Hat Off) that I’m thinking about these days is called “Checks and Balances.“

“The government works like a great gigantic triangle.
No one holds all the power; that’s made quite clear.
There are three branches of power in the great big triangle.
That’s why a dictator never could make it here.
Checks and balances, checks and balances, checks and balances.”

Probably ten or twelve years ago, I read Ron Chernow’s biography of George Washington: Washington: A Life. One of the things that stood out to me from that book was the way George Washington, as the first president, surrounded himself with people of varying opinions. It made our government stronger to have these strongs minds batting ideas back and forth as they came up with the principles that have guided us for two centuries.

This week’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity should alarm any American of any party. It yields waaaaaaay too much power to the president. Checks and balances are lost. Do we need another amendment to the constitution to overturn it?

Then, of course, we have a man who has said he would be dictator on his first day in office. Oh, you may think he’s trying to be funny and you may actually believe it’s just about closing the border — but look at how he dealt with people IN HIS OWN PARTY who weren’t cowtowing to him. Can I mention Liz Cheney here?

The denigrating name-calling ostracizing nastiness reeks of narcissism and despotism.

I say all this as a Republican. I am conservative. But Donald Trump scares me a lot.

We are in deep trouble.

Writing

When Brooms (and writers) Need Help

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Finish My Limerick

There once was a girl with a broom
Who was told to sweep up a room
But the broom was such junk
That her sweeping job stunk
…

Ok — the last line is up to you!

This is my (incredibly weak) response to the Unicorn Challenge. The Unicorn Challenge is simple: write no more that 250 words and base it on the photo. Look at that — my unfinished limerick is only 27 words. If you wanted, your last line could be 223 words. Wow!

family

Chickens

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Egg. The answer is egg.

I was 8 or 9, maybe even 10, when I went off to 4-H camp. There I took an embryology class.

I remember walking into the dim classroom in the old building at the camp. An incubator on a table held several dozen eggs. A few had the cracks started where the chick was starting to peck its way out.

When I stop and think about it now, eggs are a pretty marvelous invention. The hen and the rooster do their thing and a fertilized egg is laid. In that egg is everything a chick needs to grow for the next 3 weeks. The egg just has to be kept warm. Mammals are so much more taxing on their mothers, right?

Anyway, I was at 4-H camp where day after day we watched the miracle of chicks hatching. They would emerge kind of wet and sticky, but their little feathers would quickly fluff out. They would run around their little enclosure peeping and looking very cute.

At the end of the week, the 4-H leaders asked if anyone wanted to take chicks home. We had an unused chicken coop on the property, so I called my dad on the big green rotary dial phone in the camp office and asked if I could bring home some chickens.

He thought I said “a” chicken, so he said I could.

When I arrived home with 19 little chicks, he was quite surprised — but he got to work on the chicken coop, cleaning it out and fixing the fenced-in run behind it.

It turned out they were Polish chickens, black with a white topknot of feathers. It also turned out that of those 19 chicks, 13 were roosters.

Me — with a chicken on my head and a cast on my arm. Typical.

I hauled water up to the chicken coop every day, and scattered chicken feed in their pen. I learned what a pecking order is in real life, not middle school. The six hens started to lay and I collected the eggs.

One Sunday afternoon, my parents took me to town to watch a movie at one movie theater in town. This was a rare treat, and I didn’t stop to question why.

However, when I got home the roosters were gone. Well, kind of gone. Let’s just say that they became chicken soups over that winter.

I experienced the full circle of life with those chickens.

My father then took up the hobby and raised chickens for many years.

But the egg — at 4-H camp — definitely came first.

This is in response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: Chicken or Egg

poetry · swimming

Where I learned to swim

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Those twenty
Yards – chlorinated plenty –
Were my haven after school.
Cool

Wet refuge
After the social deluge
Of people pressure and the strife —
Life!

Yes, water
Is life-giving. The hotter
The peer interaction hash
[splash]

The increase
In joy! To dive in, release
All the heavy weary stress –
Yes!

Go swimming!
When your day has been brimming
With all life’s too-muchness – get
Wet.

This is my response to the W3 prompt this week which is to compose an ekphrastic poem inspired by any image of a body of water (ocean, waterfall, lake, etc.). The Poet of the Week (Sarah David) also wanted us to include the image that served as inspiration.

The photo is from the pool where I learned to swim. The pool itself is long gone, converted into office space. When I walk past that building, I try to remember what is was like inside, but it’s a struggle. I can’t picture the pool.

Then, I found that photo in an old yearbook at a used bookstore. The picture is at least 15 years older than I am, but the memories that flooded over me when I saw it — well, let’s just say I HAD to buy that yearbook for a ridiculous price for that one picture. That pool was such a happy place for me.

The poem is an Irish form called Deibide Baise Fri Toin. It’s made up of quatrains with an aabb rhyme scheme. Syllable count 3-7-7-1. Lines one and two rhyme on a two-syllable word; lines three and four rhyme on a monosyllabic word.

fiction

Therapy

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“Tell me what you see,” Dr. Moon said quietly.

She studied the photograph. “I don’t understand,” she finally said.

“What don’t you understand?” he asked.

“Any of it,” she replied. “I don’t understand the words. I don’t even know what language it is. Italian, maybe? But vente is just a coffee size at Starbucks.”

She studied the photo some more. Dr. Moon waited patiently.

“I don’t understand the picture itself. Why all the shuttered windows? Why are they closed? Why is that one open?”

More quiet.

“And the doors are closed. And the lines don’t line up. And there’s like a tan castle painted on the wall over here.” She pointed at the left side of the photo. “Everything about this picture bothers me,” she said, and handed it back to the doctor.

“Everything?” Dr. Moon asked.

“Everything,” she said emphatically.

Dr. Moon handed the photo back to her. “Look for something that you do like here. There must be one thing.”

“Well,” she said frowning, “I might like the open window. If there was a plant in it, I mean. A spider plant with lots of shoots.” Silence. “But there isn’t, so I don’t.”

“Look again,” he said gently.

“It makes me want to cry,” she said. “I don’t like that. I don’t understand.”

“This was where your grandparents hid before they fled France in 1942,” he said.

She studied the photo again.

“Can I keep this?” she asked.

This is my response to the Unicorn Challenge.

Don’t ask where the story came from. I honestly don’t know.

I DO know that a Starbucks venti is spelled with an “i” and the language on the sign is French. I am just as bothered as she is about the photo though.

There really should be a spider plant in that window. It should be an open window with a gentle breeze causing the shoots and leaves of the spider plant to sway a little. Yes, a spider plant would make everything better.

Writing

Water

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When I first saw the Stream of Consciousness prompt for today — water — I immediately thought about a quote that I had jotted in my journal a few days ago.

“Let us bless the humility of water
Always willing to take the shape
Of whatever otherness holds it.”
John O’Donohue

He also blessed

“The buoyancy of water,
Stronger than the deadening,
Downward drag of gravity”

I’ve always been a water person. Being in or near water is a happy place for me.

When I don’t feel well, I take a bath. One of the times I was in labor, I sat in jacuzzi to relax and almost didn’t make it out in time. Aches and pains seem to diminish in the shower.

I love to swim — for the exercise, the mental health, the solitude, the refreshingness of it.

I love to sit in the presence of water and hear the gentle lap of lake waves or the bigger crashes and rhythm of ocean surf.

I love to stand on a bridge and watch the water rush, flow, trickle — whatever that day brings — underneath. I love to drop a stick or a leaf or a flower in on one side, then watch it emerge on the other. Sometimes the object gets caught in an eddy and swirls in circles for a bit before moving on or under or off to the side.

Water supports me and yet offers resistance when I exercise in it.

If I could sing the praises of water, I would, but it would be a poor song in comparison to the song water sings itself. Murmurs, gurgles, steady streams, rain drops on windows or the roof.

Even the smell of rain is a wonder.

poetry

Fireflies

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At the first blink of a firefly in the backyard, we run outside. One blip is followed by two, then six. Soon the whole yard is a-twinkle with stringless winged fairy lights that we try to catch because surely a jarful would light up a whole room.

Such a plain beetle
Wings folded, frankly boring
Then magic begins

This is my response to the W3 prompt this week which is to write a haibun, use onomatopoeia three times, use the theme of “The Beauty of Night.”

A haibun is a new form for me. It combines prose and haiku. I’m not 100% sure I did it right.

Onomatopoeia — blink, blip, twinkle — I hope they count.

The Beauty of Night — bioluminescence is amazing and beautiful, right?

fiction

Lost

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“Found him!” cried Marco.

The search party had widened and widened their area, but no one expected him to be this far afield, or at the bottom of those overgrown stairs.

The old man studied Marco’s face. “You look so familiar,” he said.

“I’m your grandson,” Marco replied. “Marco. Jenny’s son.”

The old man just stared and shook his head. “How did I get here?” he finally asked.

Marco laughed. It was a friendly laugh, intended to put the old man at ease. “We were hoping you would tell us,” he said.

“Jenny,” the old man repeated, rolling the name around in his mind and occasionally repeating it. “Son, I don’t remember knowing any Jennys.”

“Jenny — your daughter, my mum!” he said. Then he added, “You always insisted on calling her Jennifer, remember?”

“Ah, Jennifer! Yes! She should be getting home from school any minute now,” he said, smiling.

He looking up the old tree-lined steps. “That’s a long set of steps. I don’t remember coming down them.”

Marco steadied the old man, slipping his arm under the man’s left arm and gripping his forearm. “Let’s find a place to sit for a minute,” he said, peering around the lower garden for a bench. “We’ll figure this out.”

“You look familiar,” said the old man.

“I’m Marco. Your grandson,” the younger replied.

“Grandson? I’m a grandfather?”

“I’m Jennifer’s son,” Marco replied.

“Jennifer should be getting home from school pretty soon,” the old man said. “How did I get here?”

This is my (late) submission for the Unicorn Challenge. The challenge is pretty simple — no more than 250 words, and use the photo as a prompt.