Blueberries off the bush
Why does it seem I have to go somewhere to be somewhere?
Blueberry-peach pie
Could be baking a pie. Cutting butter into the flour rinsing and nibbling
and
wanted to stay home in that square of sun.
Blueberries in a green raku bowl, cold and wet
Would I actually bake the pie?
Is the house clean enough? No, to many cat hairs, vac and dust first and
Blueberry scones, egg white crystallized with a small teaspoon of sugar
The lull of the morning will be gone when I get home.
Blueberries next to strawberries next to raspberries, chilled, sprinkle of lemon
A soft comfortable chair, me, a pie in the oven, a cleaner house.
Blueberry buttermilk cobbler with crusty golden crumbled on top, warm, nests in soften vanilla ice cream.
Porching a breeze, the sky changing in the minutes that you sit and
Blueberries, Ecuadorian chocolate and a glass of Argentina red...
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Spotted an old friend ... Dixie
Voices in the living room. Who's there? Cat's ears perk up. Should he leave the Perfect Sun Spot and go see? Purrr purr. Not yet. Wait a bit. Make the grand entrance. Or maybe sneak in behind the big plant. Startling people is almost as much fun as showing off the fabulous self. Purrr. Clink of tea cups means they'll be here a while. Wait. Maybe crunch a little kibble, take another nap. Cat licks some stray fur into place, fluffs himself up, finally strolls down the hall to check things out.
"Blah blah blah ... oh, look, here's Tiger. Isn't he just so beautiful?" Cat preens, then hops up on the sofa to survey his kingdom. But what's this?! Alarmed, Cat crouches and stares down at a big lump of gray under the coffee table. It moves! Cat steps back, then peers forward. Person reaches down and pats the lump.
"No, she's not doing so well ...blah blah blah." Rheumy eyes look into Cat's eyes, gray doggie tail waps the floor. Cat jumps down and slowly approaches. They touch noses, wary cat, old dog.
"Oh, look. They still know each other." Cat settles down into sphinx pose, dog sighs and flops.
"Yes, old friends."
"Blah blah blah ... oh, look, here's Tiger. Isn't he just so beautiful?" Cat preens, then hops up on the sofa to survey his kingdom. But what's this?! Alarmed, Cat crouches and stares down at a big lump of gray under the coffee table. It moves! Cat steps back, then peers forward. Person reaches down and pats the lump.
"No, she's not doing so well ...blah blah blah." Rheumy eyes look into Cat's eyes, gray doggie tail waps the floor. Cat jumps down and slowly approaches. They touch noses, wary cat, old dog.
"Oh, look. They still know each other." Cat settles down into sphinx pose, dog sighs and flops.
"Yes, old friends."
A Deep Pond - Dixie
Tell me where the goldfish are
and why the lillies hold their skirts
and what is willow curtaining
and whether dragons fly to earth
Tell me when my dreams are
safe and which far breeze
is dead and gone
Then I will twitter in my fan
and hum my heartness here
alone
and why the lillies hold their skirts
and what is willow curtaining
and whether dragons fly to earth
Tell me when my dreams are
safe and which far breeze
is dead and gone
Then I will twitter in my fan
and hum my heartness here
alone
Friday, August 10, 2007
Road Map - Greg
28 July 2007
“The map is not the destination,” the old Indian said, watching me wrestle with the large unfolded road map while the ‘78 Oldsmobile hurtled down the Arizona highway. “Do not be like the dog who stares at the finger that points to the bird.”
The map lay sprawled on my lap and the steering wheel, and the Chief settled back leisurely in the passenger seat, an amused smile on his face, the spectacular Arizona desert racing by. The windows were wide open because I had no air conditioning, and the corners of the map twittered and flipped in the turbulence while the center heaved up and down like a giant pair of lungs.
His name wasn’t really 'The Chief,' it was just a mildly racist nickname I’d given him in my mind, and then to the man himself when I asked him to wash the car windows at a gas station outside of Tucson. I’d picked him up earlier in the day, a lone Papago Indian standing at the side of the highway hitchhiking. He said he was heading up north to Yuma to visit his daughter. “Jump in,” I said.
Almost immediately the man began to annoy me the way all the Papago do. I don’t know what it is about these people, maybe their leisureliness and the way they seem to live outside of time, maybe their equanimity and acceptance of the intolerable: racism, hardship, poverty, devastation of their people and culture. If I was Caucasian, it’d probably be called White Guilt, but I was Asian, and as far as I know, no Asians ever stole Indian lands. Hell, his ancestors came from Asia. They walked across the Bering Strait 14,000 years ago. In a way, we are brothers, I said to myself through annoyance.
A gust of wind blew through the windows and yanked the map irretrievably from my hands and attention. “Listen, Chief,” another spasm of guilt--talking this way to a man 40 years my senior, “you think maybe you could navigate for me while I drive the car?”
“Can’t read maps,” he said, still calm and smiling.
“Well you think you can take the wheel while I read the map?”
“Why not pull over?”
He had a good handsome face, an Indian elder right out of central casting. I wanted jerk the door open and push him out of the moving car. Sweat poured down my frustrated face. “You’re doing, fine,” he said. “We’ll get there.”
The Oldsmobile raced across the highway. I hate this guy, I thought. But where ever he’s going, I’m taking him there.
“The map is not the destination,” the old Indian said, watching me wrestle with the large unfolded road map while the ‘78 Oldsmobile hurtled down the Arizona highway. “Do not be like the dog who stares at the finger that points to the bird.”
The map lay sprawled on my lap and the steering wheel, and the Chief settled back leisurely in the passenger seat, an amused smile on his face, the spectacular Arizona desert racing by. The windows were wide open because I had no air conditioning, and the corners of the map twittered and flipped in the turbulence while the center heaved up and down like a giant pair of lungs.
His name wasn’t really 'The Chief,' it was just a mildly racist nickname I’d given him in my mind, and then to the man himself when I asked him to wash the car windows at a gas station outside of Tucson. I’d picked him up earlier in the day, a lone Papago Indian standing at the side of the highway hitchhiking. He said he was heading up north to Yuma to visit his daughter. “Jump in,” I said.
Almost immediately the man began to annoy me the way all the Papago do. I don’t know what it is about these people, maybe their leisureliness and the way they seem to live outside of time, maybe their equanimity and acceptance of the intolerable: racism, hardship, poverty, devastation of their people and culture. If I was Caucasian, it’d probably be called White Guilt, but I was Asian, and as far as I know, no Asians ever stole Indian lands. Hell, his ancestors came from Asia. They walked across the Bering Strait 14,000 years ago. In a way, we are brothers, I said to myself through annoyance.
A gust of wind blew through the windows and yanked the map irretrievably from my hands and attention. “Listen, Chief,” another spasm of guilt--talking this way to a man 40 years my senior, “you think maybe you could navigate for me while I drive the car?”
“Can’t read maps,” he said, still calm and smiling.
“Well you think you can take the wheel while I read the map?”
“Why not pull over?”
He had a good handsome face, an Indian elder right out of central casting. I wanted jerk the door open and push him out of the moving car. Sweat poured down my frustrated face. “You’re doing, fine,” he said. “We’ll get there.”
The Oldsmobile raced across the highway. I hate this guy, I thought. But where ever he’s going, I’m taking him there.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
The one that got away Melinda Jean
I. How could it have been different?
Perhaps no adoption no smoothing mother,
that's him although
hear me!
I, the voices like the small echoing deaths.
Not all at once
one here, or now and again
they then crowd, drowning-out
even their own voice
until the murmur is the blur static
like on a radio station that has shut down for the night,
actually maybe there in the dark
I can start to sort and find was it me who got away?
Did I even show up?
II. The many rushes into living.
I couldn't stand still, but could I?
Or maybe can I now is more the question.
What we have;
something that is molded by hands,
hands of mothers, fathers, and all the "have to's."
I remember walking to school as a girl
and so very grateful for those minutes when my thoughts
could be my own and I could just listen, it was such a finding.
I don't know that there is "a get away"
it is a moving on
a way of not staying dead.
Maybe I haven't meet the one that got away
unless of course it's me.
Perhaps no adoption no smoothing mother,
that's him although
hear me!
I, the voices like the small echoing deaths.
Not all at once
one here, or now and again
they then crowd, drowning-out
even their own voice
until the murmur is the blur static
like on a radio station that has shut down for the night,
actually maybe there in the dark
I can start to sort and find was it me who got away?
Did I even show up?
II. The many rushes into living.
I couldn't stand still, but could I?
Or maybe can I now is more the question.
What we have;
something that is molded by hands,
hands of mothers, fathers, and all the "have to's."
I remember walking to school as a girl
and so very grateful for those minutes when my thoughts
could be my own and I could just listen, it was such a finding.
I don't know that there is "a get away"
it is a moving on
a way of not staying dead.
Maybe I haven't meet the one that got away
unless of course it's me.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Crimson - Melinda Jean
Creeping in the crack after the sun has just melted a crimson line appears, as if the crime does not matter, as if nothing of consequence exists in the breath into another. She lie on the carpet her blood slowly soaking in, giving her warmth. She can move her head, just slightly and there through the looking glass she can see the slash across her throat had dripped and pooled, no longer the beaded look it had earlier. 'It looks worse than it feels,' she thought, still numb from shock she supposed. She didn't feel angry as she imagined she might feel being a chosen victim to some altered mind's attempt to conclude her life. Maybe others never imagined death and those moments into entering. There was an odd sense of peace and the room was expanding as the light and colors slowly left, another melting, like her body's heavy limp-like quality melding in the rug, the floor, becoming a piece of this house, her home, and the walls have scooped at the edges like a cup, she was being drunk into some other color, crimson the color beneath the door it filled her pouring in from underneath, filling her backwards.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Door Key - Maya
It was a slim gold-colored key, filigreed at the top, about two inches long. It lay on the palm of her hand like a tiny sleeping animal. She closed her fingers around it, and it felt warm inside her hand, and comfortable - right - as though it were meant to nestle there. For a moment she thought she felt it move, just a slight wiggle, like a child snuggling down into her soft bed at night. She shook her head, casting off that idea. Her mother always said she had too vivid an imagination. A fantasy life that lifted her out of reality and out of what needed to be done. A dreaminess that would ultimately do her no good. So her mother said. In her heart of hearts she thought otherwise, but her mother had harangued her so often and so bitterly that she had almost begun to believe her.
And this key, this beautiful little key, had belonged to her mother. At least she assumed it did. She had found it in a little compartment in her mother’s puffy, blue, satin-covered jewelry box, an object she had found mysteriously fascinating as a child. She had spent endless hours sifting through it. So many daydreams were invested in that little box. Even though none of the jewelry was expensive (or “good” as her mother called it), the necklaces, pins and bracelets inside were a queen’s jewels to her. Or the treasures of a fairy princess. Or exotic belly dancer. Or perhaps a movie star. But somehow she had missed the key, never noticed it before.
Now her mother was gone, and the contents of the jewelry box – and the box itself – belonged to her. The end had come quickly and mercifully, for there had been pain, smelly hospital rooms, and unpleasant procedures done in haste. It had been a whirlwind of activity that ended suddenly, as though all of the gravity had been sucked out of the room, releasing everything into space. It felt like that. And here she was, the recipient of things once longed for and no longer wanted. Her mother’s legacy.
There was no message or note explaining which door the key opened. It was too big to be the jewelry box key, though she tried it anyway. Maybe it was just a key to nothing, something her mother liked the look of, the shape of, the color. She looked closer. It had a tiny rose engraved on it. Curious. It would not have been like her mother to collect a utilitarian object merely because she thought it beautiful. No, she was too practical, too efficient, too full of common sense. She was everything her daughter wasn’t. That key must open something.
She asked her father, but he had no idea, and no will to try to figure it out. These weeks later he still had not emerged from the shock of first grief. She’d get no help from that corner of the world. Any caretaking here would be hers, of him.
(To be continued.....)
Prompt: Door Key, 5/5/07
And this key, this beautiful little key, had belonged to her mother. At least she assumed it did. She had found it in a little compartment in her mother’s puffy, blue, satin-covered jewelry box, an object she had found mysteriously fascinating as a child. She had spent endless hours sifting through it. So many daydreams were invested in that little box. Even though none of the jewelry was expensive (or “good” as her mother called it), the necklaces, pins and bracelets inside were a queen’s jewels to her. Or the treasures of a fairy princess. Or exotic belly dancer. Or perhaps a movie star. But somehow she had missed the key, never noticed it before.
Now her mother was gone, and the contents of the jewelry box – and the box itself – belonged to her. The end had come quickly and mercifully, for there had been pain, smelly hospital rooms, and unpleasant procedures done in haste. It had been a whirlwind of activity that ended suddenly, as though all of the gravity had been sucked out of the room, releasing everything into space. It felt like that. And here she was, the recipient of things once longed for and no longer wanted. Her mother’s legacy.
There was no message or note explaining which door the key opened. It was too big to be the jewelry box key, though she tried it anyway. Maybe it was just a key to nothing, something her mother liked the look of, the shape of, the color. She looked closer. It had a tiny rose engraved on it. Curious. It would not have been like her mother to collect a utilitarian object merely because she thought it beautiful. No, she was too practical, too efficient, too full of common sense. She was everything her daughter wasn’t. That key must open something.
She asked her father, but he had no idea, and no will to try to figure it out. These weeks later he still had not emerged from the shock of first grief. She’d get no help from that corner of the world. Any caretaking here would be hers, of him.
(To be continued.....)
Prompt: Door Key, 5/5/07
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