live for today

Ode to Puttering

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NaPoWriMo  day 23 without a prompt. With a shout-out to Lisa Dingle’s Just Ponderin’ blog for mentioning the word “putter” which got me to thinking, then reminiscing. Words do that, right?

Ode to Puttering

Dawn to dusk wage earner kind of guy
one business suit, five starched shirts
Monday-Tuesday
Wednesday-Thursday-Friday
cubicle confined.

Suit shed
like a snake-wriggled-from-skin
sloppy slippers, baggy pants
uniform is no form
Saturday Sunday putter time.

Basement workshop sets him free
Skippy jars stuffed and ready
screws and bolts, drill bits, nails
epoxy glue and old television tubes
scraped sandpaper sits by stained soft rags.

Puttering
that practical art
relax to see to do
replace a blade, splice a cord
refinish renail a peglegged chair.

Dad the doer, mom the asker
knick knack shelves, built-in whatevers.
Puttering, like Jack Benny and Lawrence Welk
a lost art from today’s rush and run, buy and toss
and buy again kind of world.

Choose the Light

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NaPoWriMo  Day 20:  without a prompt.  Who needs a smile today? This poem should be in my About. 

I choose life in lightness
sun or clouds, day or night
seek the circle’s upturned half
peripheral vision, occasionally required.

We wake up watchful ready
sweetly taste our morning smiles
tickled baby beams a toothless grin
dimples born in happiness and glee.

Grandkids’ knock-knock jokes
silly faces feign gargantuan guffaws
I choose to step lightly through life’s travails
aging knees, fingers stiff, imagination in Neverland.

From Boston, Paul Revere, Take Notice!

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NaPoWriMo  Writing Prompt:   it’s the eighteenth of April, the 240th anniversary of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.  In keeping with the theme of rush and warning, write a poem that involves an urgent journey and an important message.

Boston marathoners
poised and ready again
take over streets
race their way
to a 21st century
interpretation
of words you once lived.
Boston Strong

A time to remember those killed in the Boston Marathon bombing, pay tribute to first responders on that day of pain and resolution, and praise the indomitable human spririt that rises in the face of evil.  

Tillie’s Folly

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NaPoWriMo  without a daily prompt. Some people are bigger than life, right?

Ernestine by name, Tillie by choice
her steps swish with a joi de vivre
cultivated in French 101 enrichment class.

Blinking an eye, she sees the world in pink
through custom made cats eye glasses
with one fuchsia tinted lens.

Treasured childhood memories
hot vacation drives, windows rolled down
rest stops with pralines and all things Florida.

Collector of girlie things
orange blossom eau d’ cologne bottles
among lipsticks on the mirrored vanity.

Milliner by trade, homemade hats
spill from the antique wardrobe
in a cacophony of colors.

Eons of moons ago, a girl of five
learned to live her dreams
a spark of creativity began it all.

Red and yellow feathers molded to rings
she strutted through kindergarten
hand made tiara fit for a queen.

Tillie’s Folly, hat shop to the stars
sold to the highest bidder
her  sashay through life moves on.

Sole Soul View

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NaPoWriMo   Day 13 is to write a riddle poem.  Three descriptive clues/views of the same thing — very pedestrian!

1.
Every day
on floor carpet sidewalk
step briskly to corner office
tap below glass-top desk
by floor to ceiling window
sealed shut to the soul.

2.
Move forward upward onward
stretch tall to top shelf
where dusty books and what-ifs lie
walk run tip on toes
ready-set-go
limp across today’s finish line.

3.
Climb berber covered stairs

to suite with rose trellised paper
quickly untied unshod slip between
slick and silken sheets nuzzling her toes his mates
meeting hopefully so late again this night
like last and last and last.

Sunrise Return to Sweden

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Four years ago, we took a Baltic Cruise, including a day in Stockholm. My husbands’ family is very Swedish. His grandfather, Hjalmer Siegfried immigrated in 1906, at age 22. Painter by trade, he decorated the basement walls to look like the USS Sweden, the ship that brought him to Ellis Island — complete with ship railings, sky, and sea gulls. Some visitors actually got seasick after a Yule drink of homemade glog. Well, honestly, I don’t know if it was the simulated ship or the grain alcohol in grampa’s glog!  Criuise highlight?  The VERY early morning glide through the absolutely quiet and rustic archipelago, leading into Stockholm. Island after island….stunning!  NaPoWriMo day 8 entry, without prompt.

     Dawn in the Archipelago, outside Stockholm….just entering Sweden.  IMG_6095      

Sunrise Return to Sweden                                                             

I stand mesmerized.
Dawn awakens serenity’s beauty
rippled patterns glisten on black sea
gulls hover over softly churning wake.

Moving patterns of white wings
against dark greens and grey rock edges
the occasional light house turns its eye
wood frame homes nestle in their woods.

The ship slowly glides in dark waters
through Sweden’s archipelago
guardian isles to myriad lines of ancestry
protector from the city’s growing girth.

A lone call from among the gulls
pierces still air, a stark welcome
primitive in nature, surely heard before
by our grandfather and his and his and his.

IMG_6136

Monday’s Promise

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April is National Poetry Writing Month.  NaPoWriMo 2015 is a challenge to write a poem every day in April.  Today’s prompt:  write an aubade – a morning poem….perhaps about love, perhaps about Monday.  

Monday’s Promise

Last night’s shooting star
carried my wish
streaking across the sky
someone listening
outside our universe
promised me
tranquility and love
in yesterday’s tomorrow.