Solstice

as day is to night and night is to day
     the longest day with shortest night
until it swings back the other way
      the longest night and shortest day

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dVerse prompt on solstice couplets

Monarch Migration

I hurried 

     from five blocks down the street

          equipped with a jar

               and father’s fishnet

so much orange

was more than I expected that August day

the white of milkweed in the field

     fluttered with brilliance of orange

          a cluster of milkweed and butterflies

two or three 

     clung to a single stem

while some rode others

     on their backs

          sun upon their wings 

and few would fly

     as they sucked a clover flower

I stood and picked

     as though they were poppies

          to fill my jar

and only when

     next to the coolness of glass

               did those wings start to pound

No More Liver and Onions

I swore this would not turn into a food blog. My second thoughts and the idea of serving a cookie for breakfast and baked in the reality that I have always sifted the thought of writing a cookbook since meeting my former and present husband, Greg, who taught me how to cook liver and onions. If that sounds like a run-on sentence it probably is, and so also is the desire to be a good cook and to write about it.

The liver and onions is not a metaphor, it was one of Greg’s prime dishes. The sweet aroma of sautéed onions waffling up in the BOQ, followed by the immergence of thin, fleshy organ meat, all cooking away in a cast iron skillet. That was the start of my desire to conquer the art of cooking and relationships. I studied it. I wanted to make it work. I even tried oxtail but to no avail. People sent recipe books for wedding presents so I did have help.

We stewed our lives together in a do-it-yourself house with two children, several dogs and a cat. My skills improved. The heat of the cast iron skillet still on the stove, melts the butter, and I am free to throw in the ingredients, some that cook fast and a few that refine themselves very slowly creating an irresistible taste.

wait for the moment
stepping out of the kitchen
to eat a cookie

The Antiself

I would sing a song of myself
but I can’t sing

Write a story where I am the main character
but I can’t write about me

See a picture thinking this is I
but make it someone else

Now I sing of them
instead of me

I write their story as though
it were mine

it is a picture
that moves through my time

Now I can sing
write
see

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dVerse prompt on a song of myself