Provincetown Pilgrimage

lillian20 Comments

I mellow in my Provincetown days.
I watch and listen to the ocean tides,
their fidelity to lunar rhythms.
My body rests in this place.

Skies often pastel my respite.
Blushing dawns. Tinted sunsets.
Sherbet orange melts into lemon yellow.
Pinks blur into shades of grey and soft orchid.

I’m struck by how colors blend here.
As if the palette is tipped
just ever so slightly
and delineations disappear.

For two weeks every year,
I leave the world behind.
I do not come to recharge;
quite the opposite.
I simply come to be.

Written from Boston, having recently returned from our annual two weeks in Provincetown. Posted for OLN at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Apologies for those who have been reading a lot of my poetry about Provincetown the past two weeks….this is the last one for this year. I promise!

This photo was taken on one of my last mornings there this year. Somehow Provincetown IS an artist’s palette. The challenge is to recreate it in words. No photoshopping here….it really looked like this. Mother Nature a la the impressionist painter? Until next year…..

Which Reflection?

lillian36 Comments

I seldom use it –
the full-length mirror.
When I do, it makes me wonder,
who is that person?

I’ve had fun with crepe paper.
That weird webbing you could stretch.
Make it wider and longer.
Hung it all over the family room
for many a birthday party.
So I have crepe skin on my arms.
Okay, be honest. In other places too.
I understand the term’s origins.

How did my mother climb into that frame?
Save your clucking tongue,
your “you haven’t changed a bit” comments.
I prefer to see my value in other ways.
In my husband’s eyes.
In my daughter’s forty-seven year old smile.
In my forty-five year old son’s weekly calls.
In the tik toks and quick texts shared with five grandkids.

I’ll wear capri pants, sleeveless tops,
sparkly eye shadow below my thinning brows.
I love my almost pure white streak
in the midst of my grey hair.
Save your tears for somebody else.
I’m quite content to be a septuagenarian.
The mirror be damned!

Today I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. I’ve asked folks to go to the website https://mybirthdayhits.com and plug in their birth date. The site then gives you the musical hit that made #1 on the charts for every birthday you’ve celebrated until 2021. So for example, if your birthday is today, September 28th and you were born in 1952, you plug in that date and the site will give you the #1 hit for every year on September 28th from 1952 until 2021! AND the site gives you a recording you can listen to as well. Such fun! So the prompt today is to take at least one of the #1 hits from your birthdate and include the song title, word for word, in your poem. You can use more than one #1 hit if you wish.
My birthday is May 13th: In 2007, my 60th birthday, the #1 hit was Makes Me Wonder by Maroon 5; in 2021, for my 74th birthday, the #1 hit was Save Your Tears by The Weeknd. You’ll find those titles in my poem today.

Worlds Apart

lillian27 Comments

Before this
brick, concrete, two hospitals,
Old West’s church steeple.
My Boston’s high-rise views.

Before this
seventh floor balcony,
city walks.
My outside.

Here, the ocean lives outside my door.
Sun rises in pastel silence.
Serenity lingers on the breeze.
I can just be.

Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for global poets. Today the word to use in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title, is linger. Photos taken from our deck this morning in Provincetown, at the very tip of Cape Cod.

Dementia

lillian19 Comments

Her brain lingers.
Tries to recall the thread.

But she’s stuck.
Can’t remember.

Her tongue fumbles.
Later she excuses herself saying

My brain , , , it
lingers
these days
. . . stuck
on the
last good
conversation
we – – –
had.

But that was in 2017.
He’ll visit again tomorrow.


Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for global poets. Today the word to use in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title, is linger. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!

It’s a Wrap

lillian10 Comments

Petulant nature
angry at summer’s demise.
Rain pelts. Thunder roars.
Lightning cracks and flashes.
Temper-tantrum stomping.

She pouts today.
Glum gray overcast sky,
like widow’s shroud.
Hides distinct features,
individual clouds indiscernible.

Cormorant swarm takes its leave.
Thousands bob in ocean.
Race forward, then streak to sky.
Mass exit. Black shapes,
like inkblots everywhere.

Provincetown deserters,
just like tourists.
Summer in their rearview mirror.
Fading. Disappearing. Gone.
Page turned.

Autumns’ quiet delights
somewhere on the horizon,
not quite yet in view.

Written for OLN at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Photo and video taken yesterday morning in Provincetown. Sadly, I didn’t think to get my phone to photograph and video tape it until the swarm’s mass had already passed … this is the tail end and it’s still incredible to look at these images!

My Love and I

lillian1 Comment

Wine me this evening.
Let us sit together
sipping and listening.
No words needed.
Waves roll in, roll out.
No other sound.
Love can be silent.

Side by side many years.
Children raised, married,
parenting their own.
We have time to reflect
on what was,
what is,
and what is yet to come.

The years ahead,
far less than those behind.
And yet we smile,
sit together,
sipping and listening.

Photo taken this week in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

A Gull’s Story

lillian19 Comments

This is my place,
Provincetown’s quiet eastside coast.
Let my distant auk relatives
claim the boring inlands.

Each dawn I take my perch,
lone tall rock on submerged jetty.
Preen patiently,
wait for morning sun.

Dawn tints the sky,
glistens ocean path.
My rock is center stage,
lone gull in nature’s spotlight.

I dipfish in shallows when schools swim by.
Clams succumb to my drop and crack maneuver.
I pick and peck lobsters asunder. Swallow as is.
Melted butter a human absurdity.

You are not alone, you know,
bragging on your mythology.
Gull lore says that generations ago,
pilgrims landed in Provincetown.

My ancestors met them,
an entire colony of gulls.
Squawked so loud those humans left,
sailed on to Plymouth Rock,
obnoxiously omitting us from history.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Sarah has provided an interesting prompt entitled Creepies and Crawlies. She introduces us to the idea of writing in the first person, as a spider, a cockroach, a butterfly, a dragonfly, or, I may be taking poetic license here, an animal of our choice. Since we are in Provincetown at the very tip of Cape Cod, I’m writing from the perspective of the gull pictured in the photo I took this morning as I watched a new day dawn in this amazing place. And, it is true. The pilgrims first landed in Provincetown but for some reason, they sailed on to Plymouth and thus the famous Plymouth Rock and the overlooked history of America’s beginning.

To read a short poem about the same photo, from the human perspective, click here.

Provincetown Dawn

lillian4 Comments

Gull claims its spot,
lone protruding rock on submerged jetty.
Preens itself then waits expectantly.
Sliver sun peeks out from low slung cloud,
turns near darkness into luminescence.
Bathed in rouging blush,
water glistens in dawn’s appearance.
Gull preens again, swathed in nature’s spotlight.
My contented sigh, applause enough
as curtain rises on a new day.

Photo taken this morning in Provincetown, on the very tip of Cape Cod.

Loss

lillian14 Comments

There is no silence here.
Not in my mind
not in the landscape
not in the memories.

Damp sand between my toes.
Infinitesimal salty granules
gathered on my upper lip.
Nothing registers.

Remnants of another time
though they are happening now.
You kissed the salt away
and now you never will.

The swishing of waves,
those white capped petals of the sea.
I have stood many a time
at the doorway of dreaming.

But you always stood with me.
Your laughter.
Your gentle eyes.
Your hand holding mine.

We dreamed together.
Now I stand alone facing this vast sea.
Shall I simply wade into the darkness
or shall I sit and pray?

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets where today Sanaa is hosting. She asks us to use one line of her poetry in our poem….but we are to substitute derivatives for one or two of the words and see where that takes us in writing an original poem of our own. I’ve chosen the line “The rustling of leaves; I have stood many a time at the doorway of dreaming” from Buck Moon ~ Part two: Seeing things. I’ve substituted “swishing” for rustling and “petals of the sea” for leaves. Photo from Bermuda a number of years ago.

Attitude is a Choice

lillian60 Comments

Sum days her mirror reflects the years.
Grooves etched beside eyes,
crevices left from emotional stress.
Blue veined highwayed hands tattle,
leaving behind tremor shaken script.
But open-toed shoes reveal her true self.
Shining sterling peace-sign toe ring,
defiant purple glitter-polish on her nails.

Quadrille written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Today De is hosting and asks us to use the word “groove” or a form of the word, in our Quadrille (a poem of exactly 44 words, sans title). Image from Pixabay.com