Together

Oh to be able to taste again

I have forgotten what breakfast tastes like

In the sunlight

Hard to tell which part of the body is singing

Too cute

I search the day for pretty words

Coffee coffee buzzbuzzbuzz

So it is settled

This is how the end comes

It is as hot as Texas

There is something about a Queen

I sleep deeply under the strawberry moon

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dVerse prompt to take first line of first poem written in each month of 2022. I wasn’t very prolific this year so had to snitch a couple of lines.

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Minnet

New Year’s Day was a birthday for my second born and a smorgasbord for the relatives. Pickled herring, cheeses and pressgurkin, gravlax, pate, pepparrot, Janssons frestelse, kuttbullar, sometimes lutefisk, bruna bonor, appelflask, oxrelader.

Akvavit poured in just the right amount. How we linked arms and shouted “skol”. I can still hear my mother-in-law’s voice, “That will warm the cockles of your heart.”



midwinter hoarfrost

crispy sharp on old flowers

cold stabs in the mind

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dVerse haibun prompt on New Year memory. Forgive my Swedish spelling.

Reminiscing

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Texting with my daughter

This is how the end comes

This is how the end comes.

It is wrapped in silver like a gift.

The gift is most welcome,

eager to see what is inside.

Inside was not what I wanted.

It was full of memory.

Each memory had a story.

They played inside my head.

The head was filled with irrelevance,

as I sought for the divine.

What could be more sought after

than a life of heartfelt love?

In love with the only One—

this is how the end comes.

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NaPoWriMo Day 27 prompt to write a duplex sonnet.

Christ’s Entry

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

https://smarthistory.org/ensor-christs-entry/

Underwater

When I was ten, I learned to swim. To hold my breath, submerge, and move underwater. Only the torso, legs and arms of other people were visible. No heads. I never timed these underwater adventures but swam about like some kind of fish. Eyes open but no gills; just my expanded lungs, increasing capacity to stay under longer and longer. I became an orca scouting its prey. My feet, the fluke, pounding surface with each new breath. My mouth spewing water into the sunshine.

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NaPoWriMo Day 8 prompt to write your alter ego.

Memory of Paper Airplanes

I folded and creased the paper

to make a fuselage

long and slender

overlapped side wings

perfect aerodynamics

hoping it would stay aloft

that it would be lifted

by a current of air

and fly forward

tailwind taking it further

before the landing

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dVerse prompt to write a quadrille using the word paper

Momento

When I got too haughty, my mother would say, “Who do you think you are? A Floradora girl?” I hardly knew the meaning of a Floradora girl but it was the tone of which she spoke it that made me pause my behavior. I knew she had a doll named Floradora. I didn’t know Floradora girls were also beautiful women who danced in a chorus line in the musical of the same name. Perhaps her mother had said the same to her when she displayed an air of arrogance.

Memory

It’s just me collecting words from memory to bring forth a future.

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dVerse prompt on memory combined with writing my first American sentence.

Little Colorado River

Turquoise water—

God or weather had made the way

for what could have been brown with silt

but not on this day—

clear was the Little Colorado River

as it careened past quick sand

past boulders

and sacred places

into the confluence

of rivers

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dVerse prompt to write a quadrille using the word careen, Learn more about this sacred place

https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/blog/grand-canyon-little-colorado-river-native-voices