I can’t really say I loved him. Love does not come easy for me. He was my first kiss, a little bit of making out, kind words from his thin lips.
I went on to guard the pool, to save a life, my tanned olive skin a beacon for men. Then one day a man walked through the gate and I watched his choppy strokes across the water and married him.
We vowed to love art. To make art out of our lives. We traveled both locally and abroad but that huge painting on the Getty wall stays with me— Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 by James Ensor.
When will He come?
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NaPoWriMo Day 21 prompt— a person forgotten, a job taken, a memorable piece of art, an unanswerable question
The oyster knife fit perfectly in her hand, its old wooden handle smooth and darkened with a century of use; how it pried open the barnacled shell (shell after shell) until there was a pile resting at her feet and the soft flesh of the oysters filled a bowl, their delicate lace edges curling outward away from the green sack of their being. She slipped one into her mouth— oysters on the half shell always her favorite. Always a top shell and a bottom shell. Never a pearl. Someday, she said to herself— someday she will find a pearl, but until then she promised herself, she would keep on eating oysters.
When the blade goes dull, I will think of Zora Neale Hurston who wrote
“No, I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
Sharpen your knife.
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dVerse prompt to write prosey using the words of Zora Neale Hurston from 1928 in World Tomorrow —How It Feels to be Colored Me.
Also using Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft Exercise 3, using long and short sentences.
Real old oyster knife pictured found at a thrift shop San Juan Island.
My daughter loved the book of poetry Where the Sidewalk Ends. She took it to bed. Nestled in those pages was the line “If you are a dreamer, come in.” by Shel Silverstein.
I remember the dreams I had for me and I remember the dreams I had for you. Not just ordinary ones like getting a good grade in school or going to a fine university, living in a two story house or taking a trip to Greenland. Not the dream to be a poet or magician or architect. My dreams concerned paradigms, broader in scope than world peacekeeping or disarmament. I dreamt contentment for us all, lack of greed and pride, love of the human race, coming in together.
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dVerse prosey prompt on Shel Silverstein quote from his poem Invitation.
Will men understand the mysterious language of those tears? Pope Pius XII October 17, 1954
I went there
Basilica Santuario Madonna Delle Lacrime
Siracusa, Sicily
Weeping Madonna
housed in the architecture of a tear
I took a photo there
ignorant of its meaning
until now
when asked to fill a space with poetry
and now
I want to know the meaning of those tears
Does she weep for His suffering
or for the plight of a humanity
trying to return to God?
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NaPoWriMo Day 4 prompt. I took my own photo of the Basilica Santuario Madonna Delle Lacrime in October 2019, not knowing that it was home of the weeping Madonna.
wordshophop 