So sweet, the summer scent of grasses
enveloping, floating them with ease
across the yard, never touching ground,
it seems, tumbling, cart-wheeling,
timorous hand stands, “Watch me! Watch me!”
Green stained feet squeaking on cool wood floors.
Toes striving, pinching for purchase
on chairs and thighs, climbing with moist aroma,
lap squirming, so willfully loving.
Flesh of my flesh of my flesh;
joyous as salvation, and just as fleeting.
Thank you, Anne, for this!
Anne at A word or two has nominated Belated Words for A Thought Provoking Blog Award. Anne was the first to offer actual constructive criticism that helped me improve. She is very talented and versatile, writing short stories as well as poems. Please check out her work!
The rules are:
1. Thank the person who nominated you.
2. Post the image on your blog.
3.Share seven things about yourself.
4.Pass the award to five blogs you enjoy.
O.K…I am a retired “UPS Man”, both my wives were redheads, but both have now gone gray (not my fault), I am still and will for ever be married to my second lovely wife, our kids, two each from our first marriages, are now grown with children of their own. We have a total of ten grandkids with ages ranging from one year to seventeen years old, but we do not babysit!! We cherish our privacy and solitude. I am painstakingly slow when it comes to writing but that is just the way it is…I do some gardening, renovations on our house and have built a few pieces of furniture. This is typical ‘old retired guy’ stuff, I guess, but it, particularly the writing, keeps me halfway sane…..thats enough….I guess we only really reveal our true selves in our writings…all the above is really just the circumstances of our lives. Oh, yes! I want to share my favorite quote by Abraham Lincoln, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt” We all violate this every day, don’t we?
I’m going to violate the rules and only nominate two blogs which I follow. They may not respond, but I want to let them know how much I admire their work. Check them out, please.
First, a rinse under a gentle stream,
veins down to earth cascades flow,
cold water sweeping clinging grit
rolling glints over savory emerald-ness
of Gaia, like amoeba, feasting as they go.
If prepared whole, some leaves would drape
over both hands, an offering of perfection,
but, as we are, pretenders to the thrones,
we claim all honor of discovery and prep;
we must tear, chop and season to our taste;
salt, pepper, onion, pork, even brown sugar
Are we attempting ambrosia?
Collards, food of a more caring god?
Perhaps, Prometheus presented this gift
to us along with his glowing coals
since we, had been denied ambrosia
and fire’s warmth for no other reason than….
I do not know why we were denied;
merely created and left in want.
I do know, sadly, that few of us have suffered
as Prometheus, to love and care for mankind.
During the first break in the tests, you cried;
frustration twisted your face tight as pain.
Tears could not blur fright from your seeking eyes
as you pled, silently, for solace which
I tried to exude by words, touch, even
by pure will. “There’s no right or wrong answers,”
I smiled, “the test will help to understand
why you forget….”
and look at me without
comprehension as if I were a stain
or quadratic equation on a board,
and obsessively relive your childhood,
and stumbling, you fall against the world.
You are the locus, the center of spin…
your affliction makes you so….I know that
but try to think this way, it’s more soothing:
take a line….horizontal is calming….
and on that line, you are a data point,
a point enclosed and held in the safety
of a cluster of points, immersed and bathed
in a like community, and not left
sitting alone, an outlier astray;
a unique Me trembling in white space.
I just fell off the page;
for hours it seems I slid
and at the edge my hands,
cupped in ells, failed to grasp,
and so, until I crash,
I’ll pretend I’ve more important things to do.
They ask for money daily now;
horrid how principles rain ruin,
hinder purpose, drain the coffers.
I give one more quick donation;
ten dollars, freely with sadness
…..and hope. We have a little left
this month, but the donut hole looms,
a snare that could snap both bone and will.
Always the palpable dread turning behind
my smile or frown; I’m the victim in the
horror film that feels the sentient house’s
aura on approach, the foreboding, the angst.
Behind the pulled shade she waits to inform,
throwing looks, crying distrust of even me,
her tenaculum snared offspring. I come to do
her bidding grudgingly; a calloused hearted son.
I’ve never learned: I attempt to reason, to plea,
but logic is dead in her house, killed by disease
which mints lies and villains as readily
as harsh light cast shadows onto a wall.
She’s not the one needing help she warns,
but the others and, yes, me too, if I think so!
So absolute in her anger…I wish it were true;
this helplessness precludes affection.
There were footsteps outside my door last night;
loose gravel crunched, there was a catch in a gait.
Something stood squinting in the darkness
checking a number or matching a date.
My heart ran rampant, throbbing, pumping dread;
an emptying slash…..now a cavernous hollow.
Opened now……anti-being knows my smell;
when will it beckon for me to follow?
I was actually 40 before I seriously considered and accepted the concept of mortality. I awoke in the middle of the night with the most horrid feeling which haunted me for days. This poem was an effort many, many years ago to put words to it. This feeling initiated the clichéd “mid-life crisis” which I quickly and completely recovered from…I’m now content, accepting and at ease.
A frame, a portal box to view the past,
reruns of the slow years entice:
a clown, fake feet, in rags of gray and grime
ascended a ladder tipped against
a wire strung taut across the stage that night;
a deft, stealth cat move and the ladder flipped.
The clown entangled with ladder and wire
was hung to dry…to fain ineptitude….
his look of bewilderment held for laughs.
I was a watcher struck by time, amazed
by memory more clear than that of today’s,
Ed Sullivan…. Live….the early sixties.
I had watched his act, probably smiled
my same quick smile, and lived fifty fast years
never thinking of it again and now,
a clowns’ skill, his perfected art, saddens,
begs of fifty years of imperfecting:
why are our looks of puzzlement the same?
There’s a simple delight in knowing
a grackle in flight by the tilt of his tail
or an iambic line by its sweet flow.
There’s simple delight in knowing
how to string and break beans or
that a child can’t feign affection.
There’s simple delight in knowing
that its ciphering itself that counts
and not the sum of the equation.
Belated Words 