my fall bucket list:
cinnamon-honey butter
for breakfast bagels
next I’ll knit a warm wool hat
after that, I’ll brew clove tea
then I’ll buy a pear candle
and snuggle our dogs
just them and me
Fall Bucket List
Belonging in the Change
a tiny black wet
Schnoodle nose
nudges my arm as
marble-black eyes
covered with wild brows
peer up at me
from the camper seat
when I lift my arm
to raise my mug,
drink cold brew coffee
from my Halloween
Snoopy mug I truly
believe will make
the cool temperatures
arrive sooner ~
Fitz is slumped
against me,
seeking, too, all
the magic of
forthcoming fall
the changing
of seasons, gentle
wind blowing outside,
a tad early for the
acorns peppering the
camper’s roof but
all the rest of
the comfort of rituals
he knows as
reassuring trust
and belonging
in his forever family
Early Morning Schnoodling
somebody woke up
grumbling, growling
snarling over space
scrapping, snapping,
licked my sleeping face
tussling, pulling, beckoned
me to play
early morning
Schnoodles
greet the day
Getting a Grip
getting a grip on
her future starts with
burning the Christmas tree
boxes one decade now in
her attic
buying enough hummingbird
nectar to last through October
and watering the string of pearls
cascading from the porch table
getting a grip is festooned with
saying goodbyes to too much
long held hostage from living
new lives in better spaces
like all those music boxes
of childhood and sad, stained
table linens frayed with holes ~
gaps in the timelines of
lineage like broken branches
on that cross-stitched tree
of names and thread strands
of who goes where and how
pre-affair, divorce, remarriage,
cousins once-removed now
fully removed and never coming
back because they did the
same thing with their goodbyes ~
they burned the Christmas tree
boxes and all that’s left is
the cooling ash of
what once was
before their birds
left the nest for the skies
Backseat Whale Feeding
twenty five years ago
we smiled at family pictures
taken that same day
with all the colorful striped
fish in the Gulf of Mexico
swimming between the lens
and our smiling eyes inside
our masks after our
cruise ship dinner
fish not there to make the
water look like a happy place
teeming with adventure
but to eat of the photographer’s
fish food, tiny dollar signs
not evident in the photos
which is why I told a friend
in Massachussets when we
were in the Uber going whale
watching that the only reason
they could guarantee a
whale sighting was because
they feed them
and her expression said
it made sense to her
but not the Uber driver
who snapped back
that’s absurd!
we do NOT feed our whales,
the ocean does!
but I kept it all
stirred up from the
back seat
asking whether
the tour boat sold photos
and t-shirts and mugs,
nodding with
suspicious raised
eyebrows at his retorts
to these whale feedings
before his bombshell
revelation question~
and you two ladies are whale
watching in those clothes?
(it was true: we were
wearing thin long-sleeved
t-shirts, one layer only,
having forgotten about
the fierce ocean winds
of late October)
where are your jackets?
you’ll freeze
to which I replied
heck, no, sir! we won’t freeze
we plan to buy
the souvenir jackets
when we buy our bag of
whale food
in the adventure shop
my friend could hardly
contain her laughter
and we exploded with
belly-burning snortles
when we stepped
out of the car,
rushing in to buy
thick hoodies and sunglasses
at the ticket pick-up
but we knew he’d won
with a quick phone call to
the tour boat company
when the boat narrator
announced she’d heard
that there are people
who mistakenly believe
that the boats
feed the whales
(glancing in our
direction, everyone
else giggling and
exchanging raised
eyebrow eyerolls)
before explaining
the truth
Day 5 of the August Open Write with Anna Roseboro
Anna Roseboro of Michigan is our host today for our fifth and final day of the August Open Write. Anna encourages us to walk through poetry from #VerseLove 2024 and apply the TIME acronym to the elements of a poem and construct a verse about one of our choice. You can read her full prompt here. I chose Stacey Joy’s Our Old Kitchen Table to think about these elements in her poem and to write about each.
Time
Imagery
Music
Emotion
Tabletime Tempos
Through all these tender table times
In games, gatherings, cartoons, showers,
Meals, drumrolls of dice and laughter and tears against
the backdrop of time ticking
Emanating life tempos tintinnabulated and tolled, thus told
around the old kitchen table
August Open Write Day 2
Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, Linda is our host for The Open Write. She inspires us to write Clunker Exchange Poems, intentionally exchanging a line (I chose into another world to use in my poem and offer all of my lines as clunkers today). You can read her full prompt here.
Sunday Morning Scrambled
all hell breaks loose
here on this peaceful
Sunday morning as I
sip coffee, write
a clunker exchange ~
sudden frantic barking
of my three vicious
Schnoodles bounces
and echoes through
the house as they
slo-mo scramble
from window to window
no-traction toenails
on the rugless wood
floors, looking like
Saturday morning
Flintstone cartoon
pets running for all
they’re worth but
going nowhere fast
when I look out and see
mama D-E-E-R
(no need to spell it
now – besides, our one
speller alerts the
other two anyway)
streaking into the woods
her two spotteds
stumbling along behind
her, pausing at the edge
to look back at this
house of horrors
where hell hath unleashed
its fury on this holy morning
then disappear
into another world
with dangers all its own
far from here (here~
where I want to exchange
all the clunked-up lines
for world peace
on the Funny Farm)
The Narrowness of Grief
sometimes when
I am alone
only the stars are visible
in the empty darkness
my mother’s laughter
twinkles from Heaven
and I feel the
narrowness
of my grief
Invitation to My Barbed Wire and Fig Picking Party
if y’ain’t never
took down no
barbed wire
fence with
reg’ler pliers
and a tractor
bucket, yer
invited to the
barbed wire
party next
weekend ~
c’mon,
y’all – free
pickin’ of
the last of
the figs ~ and
don’t forgit
to dust yer
socks for
ticks ’cause
them deer
ticks’ll
keep you
itchin’
in places you
didn’t know
were there
Heat Advisory
we cancelled
camping
for the heat
advisory
so I asked
what we’d do ~
take a tour
of Kroger’s
freezer section?
stand in Sam’s
where they sell
the milk and butter?
take cool comfort
in the movie
theater?
we talked
we discussed
we decided
we bought tickets
to the Immersive Titanic
exhibit in Atlanta
we’ll wear jackets
and talk through
chattering teeth
counting the minutes
back to the heat
Common Threads 