Wednesday, March 31, 2010


The late afternoon sun was flooding through my kitchen windows and I just sat and watched it stroll across the floor.
I can get lost in a moment like this,so quiet and pretty. I remember buying that dragonfly in a delightful shop in Galena,and those charms hanging off of it have been collected throughout the years.
I spent the day shopping with my mom. It was a good day.
I walked through the garden this morning and looked at all the work to be done. And I don't have the time ...but it always manages to get done. I try very hard to live in the moment...it's really all I have..it's really all that's real. This moment.
As I write this I am aware of the gentle breeze coming through the opened window and when I rose this morning I saw the pink sunrise coming over my neighbors house. A cup of coffee in hand while doing my daily inspection of the yard revealed a bunny hiding in the dried stalks of coneflowers...and the Robins....how I love robins and their songs.
Today it is going to be 70 outside! I will be babysitting. Now how do I let go of this.
I want to be in the garden ....
Think of moment...think of the present.....be
be where you are...be present.....and all will be well
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Monday, March 29, 2010




Stopped at a light on Lake Shore Drive I glanced over to the lake
and spotted this tagged light box.. TEMPER...scrawled across
Have you ever ponderd the dangerous places these taggers hit.
So much anger and emptiness out there
begging to be noticed
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Sunday, March 28, 2010

Magpie Tales #7

Magpie tales hosts a weekly photo writing prompt

A short or poem will do



This week's photo:

                 
                                                                Bright trumpets of yellow
                                                                heralding spring...
                                                                I wished instead
                                                                He'd given a ring
                                                               
                                                                A sparkly one
                                                                with faceted face
                                                                But he'll find out
                                                                in tonight's embrace

                                                                Unless I get that rock
                                                                old man
                                                                all you'll get
                                                                is the
                                                                two-lips
                                                                plan

                                             

Monday's Microfiction # 24

Hosts a weekly writing prompt to be written in 140 characters or less.
Think it's easy...try it





 

We stood in silence
leaning over the stone bridge
watching mallards with their ducklings;
not another word of regret left
to be spoken.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Don't let his looks fool you




My kitty,Webster, is a hunter. Yes, you heard me, a hunter.
You can see the body count behind him in the photo
Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Piggy got away today
but he'll be back
back in the basement
stalking the vast wilderness of boxes for his prey
Hide Teddy Bear!!
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

For Nessa

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Everytime we go to Galena I make sure I visit these trees,
a row of old oaks that stand guard over the farmer's creek.
I have loved them through all seasons
watching them dress and undress
Galant gentlmen of nature.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them,
whoever knows how to listen to them,
can learn the truth.
They do not preach learning and precepts,
they preach undeterred by particulars,
the ancient law of life.

...Herman Hesse,
Wandering
                                   


I love the ancient oaks.
When I can I stop and touch their trunks
caress their bark
whisper to their leaves
my questions of what they have endured
what they have witnessed
what they have suffered
But they can only tell me
by showing
their broken branches
their hacked up limbs
their fallen comrades
and I grieve for their losses
But I take hope in their God given
urge to go on
produce acorns
watch their seedlings
nearby that have heard the call of the mighty
and have pushed their way through soil
and rock under the watchful eye of their kind
May they remain long enough
to cast a shadow
I love the ancient oaks.
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Monday, March 22, 2010

Magpie Tales #6

Write a poem or short using the below photo prompt from



This week's photo prompt was agonizingly hard for me. I had to really dredge the mindfield. I have had a drought of the mind lately, unable to read or write anything.  I know when this happens to just let it.  I keep saying soon, soon, I will return to my life....only to discover I am standing in it. 
Ha..the jokes on me!

I gave it my best....what's more important, I showed up.
 Thank you, Willow, for making it difficult.


The day after my high school reunion, feeling rather disappointed and deflated, I decided to 
drive by the old house I grew up in to see if it was still there.
Maybe it would be a better walk down memory lane.
The white frame bungalow sat abandonded and according to the neighbor out front it was in foreclosure.
I swung open the old gate and noticed that it was the very one that I used to swing on, I know because my inititals were still there covered in layers of white paint. My feet quickly remembered the spacing of the old steps up to the porch where I peered through the windows of my old house and was shocked to see that the entire place had been stripped to the studs. I tried the front door but it was locked so I left the porch and went out back to the garage.  Nostaglia filled me as I saw that the door, with the old leather flap over the lock, was still there. I lifted it expecting to see the old forged nail stuck through the levered handle, but there was nothing under the leather flap but a hole in the wooden door which I promptly pulled open. My eyes needed to make a sudden adjustment to the dark, but my nose was instantly familiar with the smell of old oil and varnish, and by instinct I walked inside expecting to see my father sitting at his cobbler's bench putting cleats on my shoes. How I hated those cleats. But,my father knew that he couldn't afford to get me new heels all the time, so he insisted on extending the wear of my shoes by adding those little pieces of embarrasment to my feet. At the back of the garage was a little closet that my father had hidden the train he had gotten me for Christmas one year, the Christmas I ruined for him by snooping around where I didn't belong.  I leaned my body into the door and it gave way as in my mind's eye I saw the train hidden behind the old suitcase where my father had also hidden a bottle of whiskey.  Nothing was there of course, but I stood and closed my eyes wishing that I might just hear his voice one more time.
 Five minutes passed and I left the closet and walked back passed the empty space where his workbench had been and headed for the way out. As I reached for the door my hand struck a piece of cardboard and a box of nails went spilling onto the floor. I dropped to my knees and began searching the dirt floor for the nails and as my fingers hit the grimey soil a memory struck me out of nowhere. A memory of my playing in this very dirt on late afternoon in summer, when my father burst into the gargage and headed straight back to the closet. I remember getting up,then hearing the faint sound of crying coming from that room. I wanted to run and hide, frightened by his crying and embarrassed for him if he should see his son hearing him cry.   My father then stepped out of the closet, holding in his hand what seemed to be a letter.    He stood there, it seemed then like an eternity, staring at me before I decided to head for the door knocking over a box of nails. I turned around and saw my father's tear soaked eyes and barely caught his voice saying, "My father is dead."
I knelt down in the dirt and began picking up the nails as my father leaned his body against the wall and sobbed. 
It was the first time that I saw who my father really was...and in that darkness with the smell of oil, from a long gone oil drum surrounding me, I saw for the first time who I really was.
I leaned my back against the wall and began to cry, then heard myself sob in the darkness,
"My father is dead."
 

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