. . . our December twenty-fourth dinners with Alice’s jello salad and pineapple-coconut bars. Rather than bowing our heads and saying grace, we shared cards at the table. One for my mother, dad and brother. And theirs to me.
Raising our family, the tradition continued. Handwritten notes inside meant the most. Some just covered with Xs and Os, some with a memory from that year. Always a personalized declaration of love.
Alice’s recipe is long forgotten. But miles away, with children of their own, our children still live the card tradition. Now, almost in our octogenarian years, we still smile knowingly on those nights as we reach for the personalized card on our plate.
It’s NAPOWRIMO (National Poetry Writing Month) day 2! Today we’re asked to “write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.” Photo from an old photo album…note the writing at the bottom of the photo. Yep, that’s me with my brother (9 years older than me) and my mother.
From the time our children were two and four, we’ve held hands before our evening meal and sung a song called The Circle of Love. With a simple and happy tune, the words go like this:
“The circle of love goes around and round the circle of love goes around. Reach out your hands someone needs you. The circle of love goes around. Amen.”
It’s not by others’ standards, a real table grace. Grace is often defined as the free, unmerited favor and love of God toward humanity. And a short prayer before a meal is often called “saying grace”. For us, this singing together before supper was and always is a moment to celebrate family. Smiling at each other, sometimes grinning, we sing loudly and with energy. What we’re really singing about is the unconditional love and happiness we share. No matter the food – from cheesey chicken casserole to shrimp scampi to Thanksgiving turkey, The Circle of Love was always the first course of the meal.
Now, approaching our octogenarian years, with five grandchildren who are twenty, eighteen, and fifteen, and our children and their wonderful spouses in their fifties, we treasure the rare times we are all together. The eleven of us, or a fewer number on occasions when busy lives and miles intervene, still carry on this tradition. When we come to the table for an evening meal, no matter the happenings of the day, the first thing we do is join hands. And then we sing, loud and clear. Grateful for each other and for the meal we share.
Wild flowers in fields different shapes, sizes, colors always face the sun.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Punam is hosting Tuesday Poetics presenting us with the following prompt: “For today’s Poetics, I would love a presence of food in your poems. You can employ any form but touch upon food; vegetables, fruits, meat, dairy, desserts you love or hate. It could be about why you love/abhor cooking/baking, your most memorable/miserable meal ever, your relationship with food…the possibilities are endless.” No particular form or length is required. A Haibun is a Japanese poetic form that combines prose with a haiku. I guess you could say I’ve written about my family’s relaionship with the evening meal!
Photo is from a family gathering about six years ago.
Sun shimmers through forest’s canopy. Moon cuts path across ocean’s abyss. Infant’s mouth opens to circle small, pink tongue slides in and out and in again.
Girl grins, pumping swing as pigtails fly. Puddles appear inviting all to splash. Child’s momentary shock as bat hits ball, then small feet fly to first.
Thick carpet of pristine snow invites children of all ages to lie down, swooping arms. Create guardian angels among us.
Folks sway in jazz club, hear saxophones mellow out. Watch nimble fingers create piano riffs, brushes rhythmically swish on snares.
In the midst of ever present news, cacophonies of catastrophes. Find space to feel lightness, safe harbors for hope.
I seek a trip to calm. A land called Calm where love abounds all people are valued leaders seek to unite children skip confidently to school. Where lies are confessed, not repeated bragadociously on the news. Who can help me find that land?
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today is Quadrille Monday and we’re asked to write a quadrille (a poem of exactly 44 words, sans title) that includes the word “trip” within the body of the poem. Image from Pixabay.com
Protected life within glass sphere, clear at times. Watching my outside world family and friends doing everyday things. Hearing laughter, secrets, television sitcoms and news. Watching mealtimes, relaxation, rushings to get out the door.
On display annually, unwrapped with holiday treasures. Seasonal awakenings, year after year. Douglas, Fraser or Balsam fir garner most attention. Delicious scent, sparkling lights. I sit unobtrusively on the coffee table.
Many times a day my life tips upside down, sometimes by gentle hands. Young children’s eyes watch my snow fly as if magic lives within my sphere. Flakes so gentle, softly floating all around.
Some hands roughly shake me. Up and down, sideways back and forth, and then up and down again. Blizzard-like conditions their aim. Snow flies about at a quicker pace, for a moment view obscured. Snowflakes however, remain same sized, soft in weight as they whirl about.
I treasure the holiday season, my opportunity to offer a magical world. Obliging those who want to see clearly. Happily providing a different view, for those who want a whirling blizzard, but never cold, never damaging. Most treasured of all? Being held in all those loving hands.
Written for dVerse Poets Pub, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Kim is hosting and asks us “to write about snow as you see, feel or imagine it, in any form you wish.”
Hope for the wrongly convicted. False confessions coerced confessions eyewitness misidentifications forensic science errors public defenders inexperience.
Cell doors clang shut futures stunted tears long since evaporated possibilities suffocated except the Innocence Project has my name.
Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Melissa asks us to consider the song, “Folsum Prison Blues”, written and performed by Johnny Cash. The first four lines of the song are “I hear the train a-comin’, it’s rolling ’round the bend And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when.” Melissa asks us to write a poem inspired by the song….and by Johnny Cash actually going to Folsum Prison and singing to the inmates. The Innocence Project is an organization that works toward the release of prisoners who are wrongly accused and imprisoned for crimes. To date, their organization has succeeded in the release of 250 innocent prisoners. The Exonerated Five (formerly the Central Park Five) are some of the more famous individuals who benefited from their work. Image by Daniel Vanderkin from Pixabay
People are different. Color, ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, language, citizenship, culture.
Gather them all in one place, in concentric circles facing each other, holding hands. Each circle defined by a trait.
Note: circles have no beginning or end. He who joined first disappears. She who joined last disappears. All are integral to their circle.
Herein lies a truth of geometric principle. Concentric circles differ in radii but have the same center point. And what is that same center point?
As Maya Angelou famously wrote, “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” The center point is our humanity.
Sadly however, truth is not constructed reality when the builder is a demolitionist.
Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets across the globe. Today I am hosting: go to https://dversepoets.com to see the prompt this poem is motivated by.
I roam this curving shaded path. Hopscotch through my youth in rompers skinny legs, scraped knees, curly hair. Naively sweet and unaware.
In my myopic teenage years I roam this curving shaded path. Blinders on, friends all important. Time flies, motion undetected.
Parenting years, our sweet children. Together we laugh and love as I roam this curving shaded path encouraging strong roots and wings.
Now approaching eighty years young with less trail ahead, we rest more. Your love, holding the light high as I roam this curving shaded path.
Written for Meet the Bar Thursday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Laura asks us to write a Quatern. That is a poem of 16 lines, divided into 4 quatrains (4 stanzas, each with 4 lines). Each line must have 8 syllables. There must be a repeated refrain that is the first line of stanza 1, the second line of stanza 2, the third line of stanza 3, and the 4th line of stanza 4. Photo from a vacation some years back.
In the waning days of autumn nature sheds its hilarity. Crimson red, halloween orange, and golden yellow leaves shrivel, lose their vim and fall. Farmers’ fields, stripped of crops seem eeirly clold and barren.
I seek warmth, light and respite. Candles lit, afghan wrapped, mulled wine and book at hand, I hibernate. I am, afterall, a creature of nature. Slowed by age and sensitive to seasonal biorhythms.
Shared with dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.
Time moves incessantly ambles as we stroll rolls as we revel cascades in times of joy turning, flowing, always forward.
Time separates, even while moving forward. Distance added to time. Friends diverge to their own paths amble, roll, cascade. But true friendship transcends time.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Lisa is tending the pub today, as we return from our two-week summer hiatus to celebrate dVerse’s 14th anniversary! She asks us to include the word “turn” in our quadrille: a poem of exactly 144 words, sans title.
My poem today is dedicated to dear college friends, Brian and Cher. I’ve included a few photos from our friendship over the years….the last one is just this past Friday night. Brian and Cher spent 5 wonderful days with us….reminiscing, laughing, sight-seeing, and playing cards at the same card table we sat at with them 55 years ago! Can you guess which photo is from our college days? And which one is from 1974, when our daughter Abbey was born?
lillian the home poet 