aging

Incandescent

lillian11 Comments

Quick-minded youth leap to decisions,
days assumed to blaze in glory.
Bright eyes focus on the glossy
blind to consequential reality.

Those with blue veined maps on their hands
contemplate the world as a Pensieve.
Luminescent vapors
teem with incandescent memories,
decisions weighed accordingly.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe where today Mish asks us to create a quadrille (poem of exactly 44 words sans title) that includes the word blaze.

Also written for NaPoWriMo Day 29 where the prompt is explained in this way: “If you’ve been paying attention to pop-music news over the past couple of weeks, you may know that Taylor Swift has released a new double album titled “The Tortured Poets Department.” In recognition of this occasion, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous yourself, but we’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title.” One of the words in the list is incandescent.

Time: the Conundrum

lillian1 Comment

The future is beginning now.
When I arrive,
I am what was missing before.

Tomorrow always becomes
a yesterday. My past
was once unknown to me.

Time is after all, a glutton.
Best to concentrate on the moment,
every time it comes.

Written for NaPoWriMo day 24.

The prompt is to “write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it.” “The future is beginning now” is from Mark Strand’s poem, The Babies, published in his Collected Poems published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2015. He is a former Poet Laureate of the United States and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Image is from Pixabay.com

Lillian as Lily?

lillian9 Comments

Living my life as a perennial?
Lily of the valley, that would be me.
Closest to forever
I ever would be.

Lily of the valley, that would be me,
planted beneath our family tree.
I ever would be
blooming and seeing generations to come.

Planted beneath our family tree.
Closest to forever,
blooming and seeing generations to come,
living my life as a perennial.


Written to fulfill the prompts for for day 18 of NaPoWriMo and for Meet the Bar Thursday at dVerse the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Prompt for NaPoWriMo today is to write a poem where “the speaker expresses the desire to be someone or something else and explains why.”

Prompt for dVerse today is to write a Pantoum: a poem of any length written in quatrains and using the prescribed line directions below:
Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Line 4

Line 5 (repeat of line 2)
Line 6
Line 7 (repeat of line 4)
Line 8

Last stanza:
Line 2 of previous stanza
Line 3 of first stanza
Line 4 of previous stanza
Line 1 of first stanza

Time in a Bottle

lillian3 Comments

When I was very young
time meant having fun.
The road ahead of me . . .
well I couldn’t see the end
much less fathom the turns,
detours, or optional routes
in the long journey to come.

A septuagenarian now,
closer to eighty than seventy,
my memories are glued in scrapbooks.
From early marriage days
to birthdays and holidays,
newspaper clippings,
and recital programs.

Wedding albums,
birth announcements.
Photo albums filled with
tent-camping vacations,
early grandparenting days,
family reunions,
scenery shots from cruising days.

There is no doubt about it, time is a glutton.
It eats up seconds, months,
and precious years. But if we could stop it,
collect special events,
and put them in a bottle,
the question is,
at what point would we do that?

What would be the ripple effect?
Which moments might be lost,
what aspects of human development
might be missed in that stutter moment
between stopping the clock and starting it again?
Can we really judge what is significant enough
to stop everyone’s else’s world to save our own?

And just as important to consider,
how many bottles would we need?


Written for NaPoWriMo day 17 where the prompt today is to choose a song, and write a poem whose title is the name of the song. Time in a Bottle was made popular by Jim Croce.

Birthday Week with Gramps

lillian13 Comments

She’d lived with her widowed grandfather since she was orphaned at twelve. He proudly walked her down the aisle when she married. Every year since, she’d returned to the cabin to spend his birthday week with him. They watched movies on VHS tapes. His favorites were the old ones starring Cary Grant, Spencer Tracey, or John Wayne.

This year, she’d brought the Harry Potter series on VHS tapes. They were twenty minutes into the first one when he complained loudly. “Wizards? This is ridiculous!”

She started to ask, “What does it matter that . . .”

“The stars we see are already dead. The ones we always watch. They’re in plots you can understand,” he harrumphed. “I’m gettin’ a beer and goin’ out to watch the moon. Seein’ a man up there is more real than this!”

She smiled, “Okay, Gramps. You win. I’m coming too.”


Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Dora is hosting and introduces us to Amy Woolard. She asks us to include the line “What does it matter that the stars we see are already dead” from Woolard’s poem, Laura Palmer Graduates, in our post.

Prosery was invented by dVerse: one line of poetry is provided and we must include that line, word for word, within a piece of prose/flash fiction that is 144 words or less (sans title). It’s the one type of prompt on dVesre, that does not involve writing poetry.

Image created in Bing Create.

It’s a Craggy Life We Live

lillian14 Comments

From this vantage point,
looking up, like looking back.
Contours evident.
Cracks, crevices, smooth edges,
veins streak across surface.
Planar sedimentary laminations
mark periods of sustained times.
Strength, resilience,
past layered upon past,
weathered but still tall.
Pulpit Rock in Norway
metaphor for life.


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today we’re asked to write a Quadrille (poem of exactly 44 words, sans title) that includes the word “contour.” Will also use this poem for the first day of NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, where the challenge is to post a poem every day in April!

Photo taken two years ago, on a Celebrity cruise where we visited Norway and took a boat trip down the Lysefjord and saw Pulpit Rock.

About to Celebrate 54 years . . .

lillian21 Comments

Dance with me
through these elder years.
New rhythms. Calmer,
slower yet upbeat,
even when adagio.
In sync still,
thankful for every day.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, Mish asks us to write a poem that has something to do with dance. Video taken on our last cruise by a passenger who saw us dancing. About to celebrate 54 years on February 7th with the love of my life – my dancing partner through so many years.

Illusive Time

lillian27 Comments

My kaleidoscope memories,
colorful because they feature you and me.
Time before you
sepia toned, indistinct.

Like a deeply embedded sliver
tender to the touch,
fear festers
as you sleep beside me.

I need
longer days
and many many more,
to continue being us.


Written for dVerse where today it’s Quadrille Monday. Kim is hosting and asks us to include the word “sliver” in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title.

Image by Dmitri Posudin from Pixabay