Victrola plays Glen Miller’s Moonlight Serenade. She sits dozing, blue-veined hands quiet, elbows on doily-covered armrests. Asleep, she was dancing with him. Awakening to reality she stares at his empty chair. Only a figment in her dreams now, she still misses him every day.
A quadrille written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. I’m hosting today, asking folks to include the word “figment” (or a form of the word) in their poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Image created in Bing Create.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus
Some years back we found ourselves near the town I grew up in – Waukegan, Illinois. I’d not been there in decades. We decided to take a detour in our planned trip and drive by some of my old haunts.
Sadly, the house I lived in for my first nine years was in a state of disrepair. Rickety porch steps, missing shingles. My mother’s beloved lilac bushes were no more. The downtown where I’d “scooped the loop” in the front seat of an old Chevy was barely recognizable. Not one store name was the same. Most jarring was my walk through the Catholic church I grew up in. How could it be so small? I remembered lighting candles inside a hushed space – a side grotto/cavern made of dark rock. There I stood, inside the grotto, looking at battery operated candles and grey plastic simulated stone walls. After lighting a candle and saying a small prayer for my mother, I decided to end our nostalgic tour. I wanted to keep the rest of my memories intact.
stream rushes surely rocks tumble and change their shape nothing stays as is
Frank is hosting Haibun Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. His prompt for today is to “imbue our haibun with mono no aware. Write on any topic that you like as long as your haibun embodies that wistful sadness marking the beauty of transience.” A haibun combines prose and a haiku.Image is a photo I took some years back on one of our vacations.
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.
Praises to the table, the one our family gathered round. You held court with meals, never minded spilled morsels. Gained rings in the process from sloppy milk glasses.
You listened without judgement. Heard the hijinks of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, knock-knock jokes, teacher complaints, family disagreements, high school gossip, vacation plans, college choice deliberations, and joyfully sung table graces.
You welcomed guests who crammed in extra chairs. More elbows leaning in, more spills, raucous laughter. Birthday party guests and gangly teens who occasionally kicked your legs.
Now in another house but still in the family, serving another generation. From toddlers punching playdough to kids’ paints slopping on your surface, you still stand proud after all these years.
Written for day 9, NaPoWriMo. The challenge is to write a poem every day in April, which is National Poetry Writing Month.
The NaPoWriMo challenge today, takes a page from the famous poet Pablo Neruda. His poetry, translated to English, is treasured by many. Among his poetry are a series of Odes. An ode is a poem written in praise of a person, place or object. The challenge today? “Write your own ode celebrating an everyday object.”
Photos are of our family table over the years….could not find any when our kids were infants or toddlers. We sure celebrated many a birthday at this table! The table has been at our daughter’s home since her children were very young. They grew up at the same table their mama and uncle did. Last two photos are of our daughter’s and son’s children sitting at the table in more recent years.
There are certain phrases we hear so often we just naturally assume they’re true, or at the very least, in our experience we never hear them as new.
All through our married life we always had dogs, as in two, because everyone knows “two is easier than one” is true.
You’ve heard that well worn phrase, “they fight like cats and dogs.” We always assumed adding a cat to the mix would result in a myriad of scrappy conflicts.
So it was with great trepidation, we agreed with significant hesitation. Buckling under to our daughter’s frustration we agreed to her pleas, with much consternation.
We added a cat to the mix expecting a storm of scrappy conflicts. Blossom was a Siamese kitten so cute, we were all quickly quite smitten.
And weren’t we incredibly surprised when our fears were never realized.
Lyra stretched out her long Shepherd frame, Blossom circled round, staking out her claim. Lyra settled in for a nice long nap and Blossom curled up, at home in her lap.
Written for NaPoWriMo Day 8. The challenge is to write a poem every day in April, National Poetry Writing Month.
The prompt at NaPoWriMo today is to “write a poem that centers around an encounter or relationship between two people (or things) that shouldn’t really have ever met – whether due to time, space, age, the differences in their nature, or for any other reason.” Photo is of our very large German Shepherd, Lyra, and our Siamese kitten, Blossom: taken many many years ago when our kids were very young.
One of four children, her parents died before the age of sixty from massive heart attacks. Her two sisters did the same; as did her brother. She buried her youngest sister on her own birthday and did the same with her only son, who died at fifty-one, also from a heart attack. Her husband died at seventy-three, from complications following open heart surgery. She defied familial medical history and lived to eighty-one, her own heart having been broken many times. She was my mother.
When they called, I rushed to her side. Congestive heart failure finally took its toll. “We’d like to operate,” the doctor said. She quietly shook her head. “I’m so tired, Lillian.” I held her hand and she smiled. But that smile was the last smile to come upon her face. I whispered, “Go and find dad, mom.” And she did.
Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Lisa asks us to use the line, “But that smile was the last smile to come upon her face” in a piece of prose, no more than 144 words in length, sans title. The line is from the poem Ballad of Birmingham, written in 1968 by Dudley Randall. My mother, Helen Cecile Petitclair Gruenwald died in 1998. I had the privilege of being at her side as she transitioned to another world. I remember it clearly.
Discover with me your family tree. Ignore online apps promising filigree.
Instead, help me decorate my Christmas tree. String tiny lights round and round with glee. Stand on tip toe to place Grampa’s ribbon rose at the very top, where it always goes.
Hang wooden orange giraffe beside spunky little brown horse. Decades ago they made you laugh, hanging above your crib, of course.
Be extra gentle with the pink glass bell, fragile as a thin egg shell. Your grandmother’s as a small child, looking at it, she always smiled.
Add red ornament with letters painted white, Lillian spelled out, still brings delight. Made by my teacher in first grade, her love for students proudly displayed.
Treasure these ornaments year after year so many belonged to family so dear. Behold this memory filled Christmas tree, see and touch your ancestry.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Grace provides us with the last prompt for 2023 as we will now be on hiatus until January 1. She asks us to write a culinary rhyming recipe poem.
While we do indeed have a number of recipes handed down from generation to generation in my family, I’ve taken a bit of poetic license and written a poem with a “recipe” for my adult children (now 47 and 49; I’m 76) to discover their ancestry/family tree by looking at the ornaments on my Christmas tree. Just a few are mentioned in the poem. There many more including a fragile airplane that was on my father’s tree when he was a little boy. You can see it in the photo, next to my mother’s pink bell. There are ornaments made by my children’s babysitters; two painted by my father; some made by neighbors from the house where we raised our children; some made or given to us by aunts and uncles; sadly some given to us by relatives now gone from this earth. There are ornaments made by our kids when they were 4 and some when they were in grade school. There are ornaments collected from family vacations. It is what I often call a memory tree. Almost every ornament has its own story. In a way, they are the ingredients, melded together and on display, that enable us to reconnect with our family every year, no matter the distance or time that separates us; no matter if they have left this earth and only reside in our hearts.
Whatever holidays you celebrate, I hope they are joyful and shared with loved ones. I also wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year.
Love. Snow mist nature kissed. Evening stroll through quiet street. Bells chime afar. Carolers’ voices carry through neighborhood. Candles glimmer, lights shine. Thoughts turn to memories. Eyes tear from cold or yearning. Family members gone still cherished, warm my spirit this time of year.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Bjorn asks us to use the word “snow” in our quadrille, a poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Image created on Bing Create.
I was not there, the day everything changed. When was that? When World War II ended? When Einstein discovered relativity? When nine-eleven crashed into infamy?
Or when Harry really met Sally? Or when you simply ate a peach that summer day, juice deliciously dripping down your tanned wrist. Somewhere at that moment, I suppose a child was born.
Truth is, everything changes with every breath we take. Every pivot, every spin, every loping run, something new becomes.
Nothing stands still. Except perhaps sentinel mountains in the Norwegian fjords. Yet even they are marred by subtle granular shifts as we gaze up at their rugged rockface surface.
Like when we turned around and our children became adults. We noticed when their braces came off that summer, but we didn’t register the daily shifts.
I don’t understand my image in the mirror. I know it’s me. But how did it become . . . that? Wasn’t it just yesterday, I was a brunette and you introduced yourself to me?
Fifty-seven years later, we walk more slowly, still hand in hand more often than not. We’ve passed through so many seasons together, the path is now longer behind than in front.
And so my love, in this moment that shall also pass by all too quickly, I simply must tell you. I am thankful for every day. I am thankful for you.
Written to share with dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.
Saturday, March 18, dVerse will go LIVE with audio and video from 10 to 11 AM EST.
Folks from across the globe will meet face-to-face via Google Meet to read a poem of their choosing, and to visit across the miles.
lillian the home poet 