Category Archives: joy

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Mother, daughter

Hooray for the eclipse, and everyone of all sizes and colors and genders who came together and enjoyed it!

I did NOT get a good picture. I was working. And ours was partial.

In the afternoon I got up and saw this mother, daughter pair resting in the back yard. I am on a busy street for our small town, but the fence along the street makes this a quiet place, unseen by cars and walkers and local dogs. I love that the younger one is mimicking mom’s position.

 

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fire eater

I spent much of yesterday at the Uptown Street Fair in Port Townsend. The Farmer’s Market was beautiful and busy, a second street was blocked off for craft stalls, and Lawrence Street had entertainment on stage from 11:00 until after 4:30. I finally danced myself into the ground and went home! I am a bit stiff this morning! Hooray for the bands and the tiny uptown parade, the color guard, the police and all of the people and businesses who put the fair on, came out, and shared a stunningly gorgeous day!

The Kinetic Sculptures were out, a wonderful drum group, the Port Townsend brass band, artists, dancers, buskers and lots of food.

Today is the County Picnic…..

For the Daily Prompt: trance, though I don’t think she was in a trance at all. I think the audience was entranced!

 

 

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feature

I was thinking “feeture”.

This is a stealthie from Thursday. Thursday was complicated by unexpected events and was busy! I tend to dress up more when I am stressed. I don’t know why having tights that match my dress would decrease that stress, but never mind. Over a decade ago my nurse informed me that the office had me figured out: the shorter the skirt I was wearing, the more dangerous mood. People move to town and unload their work suits since we have many retirees. I had a red-orange very short skirt suit with labels in Japanese: that was the watch-your-step-with-me suit.

I don’t have that one any more. But I still have brightly colored tights that I wear some days! All went well in the end.

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Forgiveness 2

I wrote this poem in 2009 when I was struggling with forgiveness and wanting to forgive. How do we forgive when someone does not apologize? When they do not explain nor listen to your hurt and grief? Yet forgiveness is internal in each of us. The external is reconciliation and that requires listening from both sides.

Forgiveness

I want to forgive something
Someone
In fact a group
Something that hurt a lot
I’ve tried logic
I tell myself
“It was an expression of concern”

My heart doesn’t agree
It is sullen
Immobile and grumpy
It whispers
“They have not apologized”
It whispers
“When people say you’re crazy
It could be a joke
An expression of concern
It wasn’t
It was a palm held out
At arm’s length
To distance me.”

My head argues
“That’s what it felt like to you.
You don’t know their intentions.”

I want to write
A poem of forgiveness
Hoping my heart will follow

My conscious doesn’t write my poems
My conscious wrestles with an idea
The poem comes out of this struggle
I look at the poem I’ve written
I think,
“That is what I would like
my conscious heart to feel.”
My poem is often more generous
than my conscious feels

My poems are not mine
They are a gift
From the unconscious
It is much larger
Than the small conscious me
I dream of feeling envy
I climb into a bathtub
And transform myself
To battle a trickster
We are transported
To the bottom of the ocean

In the ocean
The trickster and I are one
It is unlimited
It is not my unconscious
There is no separation
It is all unconscious

I did not think
A poem would give forgiveness
But pain drove me
Into the sea
I am connected
You gave me these pearls
Thank you

 

I am submitting this to the Daily Prompt: jiffy. I wish this could happen in a jiffy…. but it is slow….

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fawn call

This starts with my ornithology teaching assistant in college, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

I LOVE ornithology. A generalist class: bird wings, ecology, biology, zoology, physics of flight and they SING! Also we walk around in the woods with the teaching assistants trying to see and hear birds. We memorize their songs and markings.

We go out at night. Our teaching assistant hears a barn owl. He replies. He is an expert at that call. The barn owl answers. After a few back and forths, the barn owl swoops over us, coming to check out the caller! The barn owl is unnerving and gorgeous, passing just over our heads.

We all talk to the birds. We make pshhh, pshhh, pshhh noises and lbbs (little brown birds) will sometimes hop out on a branch, curious about us. Hooray! It’s a warbler!

We practice our bird songs.

Fast forward to the present. I walk with my friend and he is messing with his enormous zoom lens. We see crows harrying something in the top of a tree. A hawk, who calls. I start answering. The hawk is young and calling its parents. It’s the time when the parents say, you have to go hunt. My friend gets an amazing picture of the hawk looking right at us, mouth open, crying. I dig around on my cell phone, and think it’s a Swainson’s hawk. I play the Swainson’s song and then the young hawk REALLY cries: I feel terrible, as if I have teased the young one. Yes, it’s a Swainson.

We run in to two young bucks. I sing to deer. The deer are always alert and ready to run when I appear, but when I sing they just stand and look at me. My friend takes a photograph of the buck, just watching and listening to me.

My friend finds a fawn in his yard. The mother leaves the fawn for 8-24 hours. My friend has a low fence around most but not all of the yard.

The doe returns for the fawn one day. My friend is outside. The mother hops the fence. The fawn tries to, but it can’t hop high enough. It hits the fence and cries. It tries over and over. My friend goes up slowly and opens the gate. The fawn goes out the gate after he backs off. Both fawn and doe look at my friend.

I stop by his house to pick up a package for him. I park and hop out of my car. A fawn behind the fence startles and goes around the side of the house! It’s late afternoon and two fawns and a doe were lying in the shade in the front yard. The second fawn gets up and mom stands. I hold still and sing to them a little. Then I go in through the gate, get the package and slowly get back in my car.

Word gets around. The other day my friend has six fawns in his yard. He’s charmed and a bit shocked. He is outside. A doe comes and calls her fawn. It’s a bit of a meh or ma sound. My friend tries to make the same sound. Three of the fawns eating grass stop. They turn their ears towards him, alert. One fawn walks up to him….

….so now he’s a fawn caller.

 

For the Daily Prompt: gate.