Month: April 2018

  • Where Water Meets the Sky

    I am once again using a poem I wrote several years ago, for this year's National Poetry Month Scavenger Hunt. (I checked the rules and it's not cheating.) The prompt today is #5 Water. Lately I've felt adrift in a sea of confusion and change. I hope someday soon I can find that place where the sea of change meets the freedom of the sky and I can take flight. For now, I'll tighten my life jacket and keep paddling into the waves.

    water sky

    WHERE WATER MEETS THE SKY

    Like fishermen in children’s rhyme,
    I find myself afloat
    Upon an endless crystal sea,
    Inside a fragile boat.
    At times the sea is blue and still,
    At times the waves are high,
    And I would leave my little boat
    And spread my wings and fly,
    If only I could find the place
    Where water meets the sky.

  • Falling Asleep

    I just got home from a ten day trip to Arkansas. Four of those days were spent driving and six were spent with family. It was nice to be able to see my mom more than I usually do and hang out with my sisters, brother-in-law and various nieces, nephews and greats. I even managed to spend some time with my brother, my uncle and a cousin on the way down. It was all very nice, but I was still on medication from a very nasty sinus infection and was exhausted the entire time I was there. I went to bed early most nights, took a strong sleeping pill and slept late most mornings. And yet, I still felt tired all day and yawned constantly.

    My doctor recently prescribed a weaker strength of the sleeping pill. I'd had the old, stronger ones in my pill box for months because I don't like to take them when I'm alone in the house. They work really well and I tend to sleep through things that should wake me up, like the neighbor's house burning down a few years ago. My last night in Arkansas, I was out of the strong pills and took one of the weaker ones. I was still awake at 4:30 AM. It was a very rough eight hour drive to the hotel I'd booked in Illinois. I had to take the weak pill that night, as well, making for another very rough eight hour drive home. I'll never understand why it's so hard to fall asleep at night in bed, but so easy to fall asleep while driving. I talked to my doctor today and she gave me permission to go back to the strong pills.

    The following poem describes how most of my nights pass. I'm sure there are many people who can identify with my lifelong struggle with insomnia and have passed many similar nights.

    This poem uses prompt #4 from the National Poetry Month "Feeling Foolish Scavenger Hunt" put out by murisopsis.

     

    Turn and toss,

    Twist in the covers,

    Check the time.

    Stand and stretch,

    Straighten nightgown, smooth the sheets,

    Lie back down again.

     

    Aching back;

    Pull out heating pad.

    Sip water;

    Have to pee.

    How can night pass so slowly,

    And dawn come so fast?

     

  • Flowers

    This is my third entry for the NPM Scavenger Hunt. I'll have to go back and look at the rules to see if I cheated. This is an original poem, but I wrote it several years ago and I've posted it a couple of times over the years. This poem uses prompt #3: Your favorite flower.

    DITCH FLOWERS

     Ditch flowers

    If life is a garden and we are the flowers,
    I want to be a ditch flower.
    I have no pretensions to superior breeding,
    no delusions of delicate beauty.
    I am common.
    I hope that, like the flowers that spring up behind the guard rail,
    I am tough,
    tenacious,
    resilient;
    Able to flourish wherever the wind takes me.
    I want to be that splash of vibrant color around the curve
    that causes people to pause on their journey
    and marvel at the unexpectedness of me.

  • So, I got a little carried away...

    The prompt for today's National Poetry Month Scavenger Hunt entry was simple: #2. Your Favorite Animal. My favorite animal is a no-brainer, but still I decided to scroll through a list of many, many animals and... let's just say my fertile imagination got carried away and my poem kinda derailed, but I did manage to clumsily get things back on track by the end. I know murisopsis advises reading poetry aloud, but that's maybe not such a good idea with this one, unless you're someplace private. Oh dear.

     

    There are so many animals

    On this world that we live in,

    And many of them seem to have

    Been named by horny men.

     

    Kirk’s dik dik could have been named

    By William Shatner, who

    May also be responsible

    For long-billed cockatoo.

     

    And with his predilection for

    Females of wondrous color,

    He may be quite familiar with

    The lilac-breasted roller.

     

    Some names are quite descriptive;

    Southern screamer sounds unnerving,

    While yellow-rumped siskin

    Is out and out disturbing.

     

    Let’s not forget the titmouse

    And the bush baby, as well,

    And hoary marmot, likely named

    By men who couldn’t spell.

     

    While woodcock and woodpecker

    Were surely named by men,

    I suspect nutcracker’s name

    Has female origins.

     

    White-faced rat I confess

    Brings a certain man to mind,

    And every woman’s known an ass

    Of the two-legged kind.

     

    I’m sure that there are women

    Of every creed and culture

    Who can put a face and name

    To the white-rumped vulture.

     

    All of this has been quite fun,

    But hasn’t brought me near

    To answering the question of

    Which animal’s most dear.

     

    Thanks to Mr. Henson,

    I love to say g-nu,

    But my favorite animal’s

    A little dog named Boo.

    4.3 Boo

     

  • Awake!

    It's National Poetry Month and murisopsis has posted a scavenger hunt! Woohoo - blogging inspiration! I'll be traveling at the end of this week and visiting family much of next week, so I'm not sure how much poetry writing and blogging I can accomplish, but today I had a lot of downtime while sitting at a park doing some math and sending a text, getting a long overdue pedicure and waiting for a very long time in a very hot examination room. Today's poem is brought to you by NPM Scavenger Hunt prompt #1 - Waking Up.

     

    Soft brown blanket cast aside,

    Clad in green asleep still lies

    A slender maiden, soft and fair,

    Lithe of limb and golden haired.

    Awake! O, favored little one!

    Lift shining head to feeble sun,

    And chase away the winter chill.

    Awake! Sweet golden daffodil!

     

    The daffodils have been primed to bloom for two or three weeks now, but they're still curled up tightly in their green nightgowns and sleeping. I can't blame them - my phone said it was 18 degrees when I awoke this morning; I didn't want to get out of bed, either. They'll probably bloom while I'm down south visiting my mom.