Like the fall season, she was prepared
to leave this life in a flamboyant flourish,
decked out with dew-drop tears
upon her rouged and wrinkle-veined cheeks.
live for today
Prism
The more I look at this one sentence poem, the more I understand how the words we choose can reveal so much about who we are.
This is indeed how I see the world — not in black and white, and not just in the shades of gray between those two choices. I love colors: their variety, life, warmth, and depth. How they can blend and blur. So look below and tell me, how would you answer the question?
Prism
When I’m asked How do you view the world?
I squint a bit under the bright lights
looking for the crimson of her scarf
and answer “Through a kaleidoscope.”
The Next Stage
Have you read About me yet?
So here I am, comin’ round the bend in my stages of life. And it occurs to me, there’s a reason why I bought a refrigerator magnet that says Do More of What Makes You Happy. Do you do that? Guess what I choose in the poem below.
The Next Stage
A tectonic shift in life occurs
racing to the next mile marker.
Youth and middle age behind,
we peer
beyond the line.
This time
we will choose.
We’ve earned that right.
Read carefully
and then apply.
Wrinkle-free?
Slap on an age-defying
mystical cream
or pull on press-free
dungarees and tee.
Duty-free?
Must have
a tax-free everything-watch
or toss off the Timex and live,
task-free with exuberant flair.
Pollyanna
If you haven’t read my About, now would be a good time. Looking at this post, it seems to fit with who I am quite well.
Pollyanna
She was called a pollyanna.
Positive exclamation addicted
she high-stepped and varied her pace
through life’s shifting textures.
Retrieving sea glass and a scallop-cut piece of shell
from the day’s foam ruffled waves
at the edge of iridescent aquamarine.
She lived as a greeter.
Always expectant, rounding each corner
to meet until-now unfound friends or catch
a coin’s shiny glint from the sidewalk’s crevasse.
A collector too, she gathered smiles as she
walked past and sometimes toward faces
moving to their meeting places for the day.
She said regrets lead backward.
Ruminations rehash long ago or too current
memories looking for what-ifs and what-thens
not in her mind the stuff of collectibles.
She chose to live today
and dream tomorrow
always loving forward.
This was written in response to a poetry class writing prompt: think about your regrets. I sat down with my journal, a morning cup of coffee, and began to “spill” on the page. Thoughts, not coffee. And then I stopped. Not fun. And it wasn’t me. So I started again and out came Pollyanna. Have you heard the term? I can define it by something my daughter once said to me, Mom, every movie can’t be The Sound of Music!!!
The picture is from Provincetown, MA, many years ago. It just seems to fit with this post, right? Besides, sunflowers always make me smile.
lillian the home poet 