Salty like hot dogs (and tears). Sweet like marmalade (and life).
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!
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.
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
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.
“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.
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.
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?
“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.
If I
Can just be still
It’s possible I’ll have
The needed peace/quiet for a
Sweet dream
This is my response to the W3 prompt for this week — to write a Golden Shovel poem. A Golden Shovel requires that the end word of each line form another author’s poem or quote. In my case, this is a very well-known quote from Martin Luther King, Jr, from a speech he gave in August 1963 — his “I Have a Dream” speech.
He repeats those words seven times — I have a dream; I have a dream; I have a dream; I have a dream; I have a dream; I have a dream; I have a dream.
But he begins that segment of the speech with these words, “So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.” I like the word “still” in there.
This is a Cinquain. Each line has a set syllable count: 2-4-6-8-2
The poem really has nothing to do with the quote.
What is the will of God
With which we must align?
I so blithely say,
“Not my will, but thine.”
What is the will of God?
What Father preached was this —
That God’s will is known
Through knowing forgiveness
I have spent a lifetime
Unable to forgive
Things I did decades ago
Now it’s time to live
God has forgiven me —
Move on, my child, you’re free
“I’m going to live there,” he said, jabbing his dirty finger at the picture in the book.
The castle in the picture loomed high above the city.
“Ach, wee laddie, that’s nae place we will ever live,” said his mother.
“Not we. Me!”
His mother looked at his ragged dirty clothes and shook her head sadly.
“Mama,” he said, “someday I’m going to walk right up there and –“
“Nae, wee laddie. Ye cannae!”
“But I will,” he insisted. “I’m going to walk right up to the big gate.”
“Ye ken there’s a gatekeeper? He will nae let ye in,” she said, trying to be gentle with her words, but realistic for her son.
“Ah, but he will Mama! I am sure!” he said, so earnestly that she felt her heart breaking as she looked into his face. “My hands and face will be clean! I will scrub them!”
“Aye, but yer clothes, wee laddie,” she said.
“My clothes will be new. I will work hard for them!”
“Aye, I ken you will, but –“
“Mama, listen. I will walk to the gate with clean hands, clean face, new clothes. The gatekeeper will look at me, and maybe he’ll growl.”
“Aye, he will most definitely growl.”
“‘State yer business,’ he’ll say.”
His mother nodded.
“I’ll smile up at him and say, ‘”‘Sir, my mama is the best cook in the land. She taught me how. I want to work in your kitchen.’ He’ll let me in.”
She hugged him and cried.
This is my response to the Unicorn Challenge: base the writing on the photo, no more than 250 words.
It feels slightly audacious to try to write a brogue I’ve only read. How’d I do?
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 