__________________
Texting with my daughter
Reminiscing
memory
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.
____________
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?
_________________
NaPoWriMo Day 21 prompt— a person forgotten, a job taken, a memorable piece of art, an unanswerable question
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.
______________
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 even further
before the crash
__________________
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.
_______________
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
______________
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
My Kindergarten Class
Kindergarten (garden of children) was the garden where I bloomed.
I went down around Colonial Circle and two blocks east, past the school patrol at the corner and there was West Elementary School. The classroom was light and airy with large windows along two sides. A long child-sized table was lined up by the windows and little chairs where we could sit. There were no desks. (Desks were in the 1st grade.)
Miss Nelson led us in art and theatre. (Seems like I was always a star.) My self portrait hung on the wall and I sang “Where is pinkie…..” in a performance for the parents. Miss Nelson took us to the post office, a creamery, a train ride and the Bell Telephone Company. The phone company had an exhibit of the evolution of the telephone, right up to the phone where you could see the person you were talking to.
I didn’t get to go on the train. The day before, I slipped going up the brick stairs to my front door and cut open my lip. The teacher and my mom thought I would bleed on the train. No train ride, no Hollywood career, and I wouldn’t eat butter for fifteen years because we had shaken a pint of cream until it turned. I was sure it would taste sour.
experience base
creates spirit of learning
growth of the person
_____________________
Back to school in my memory with a dVerse prompt on school.
Condor
Standing on Navajo Bridge
I see two condors
on the cliff face they look small
great wings tucked and resting
Colorado River moves below
takes rafters through the Grand Canyon
hoping to see a condor
maybe a peregrine falcon
Our guide tells of the time
high on the rock ledge
temperatures so hot
fledglings died in their nest
Still I want to see a condor take flight
I want to watch it soar
_______________________
Nesting condors have been observed at Zion National Park and I am hoping that global warming doesn’t push them out of their nests too early. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9814501/amp/Two-critically-endangered-California-condors-spotted-near-Zion-National-Park.html
wordshophop 