Category Archives: prose

Beauty in the Eye of the Eyesore

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“Your yard gets a lot of attention from my visitors!” my neighbor calls from the edge of her manicured lawn. I survey my property, a burgeoning habitat for native plants and the native critters that feed upon them. 

“Yeah,” I reply. “Someone recently asked me if I was letting the yard go wild to reduce my property taxes.” 

My neighbor laughs, and then admits the nature of the “attention” to which she had alluded.

“My visitors ask, ‘Does she mean for her yard to look that way?’ ‘She’s planting all that brush intentionally?’” 

bear grass and buckbrush,
coyote bush and deer fern…
and skunk cabbage? Please!

I wonder if those are the thoughts of visitors or of my neighbor, or maybe of all who see my native landscaping. So be it. I settle into the rocking chair on my back porch and watch bees – legs plump with pollen – buzz through the California poppies. Ladybugs dine on aphids among the large-leaved lupines, and a pair of mourning doves peck for seeds beneath  a clump of prairie june grass. 

summer solstice nears
farewell-to-spring’s pink petals
blossoming on cue

dVerse Haibun Monday: Summer or Winter

Equinox

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It is the autumn equinox, where light and dark balance equally for a day before the scale tips to favor longer and longer nights. 

Two days post surgery to repair a detached retina, I am sporting a bulky protective eye patch, my field of vision impaired to half light and half dark. I trust that this scale will tip toward the light as my vision is restored. 

There are so many cycles in nature and life, ebbing and flowing, waxing and waning. I am thankful for all that I see. 

two parts make a whole
dawn to dusk, then dusk to dawn
in perfect balance

In response to dVerse haibun Monday: Equinox.

Just Silly

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Day Three of NaPoWriMo! Today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo.net:

write a surreal prose poem. For inspiration, check out Franz Kafka’s collection of short parables (my favorite is “The Green Dragon”).

Here’s my attempt:

Just Silly

When the zebra’s spots turn paisley, you know it’s time for lunch. You may cook oatmeal, but don’t expect it to pop up from the toaster when it’s done. It will, instead, crawl from the slot like a drunken Tuesday, and wrap itself into a Celtic knot in the center of your plate. Not to worry; there will be room on the side for marbles and mood rings.

Soup goes well with oatmeal, but do not put the soup in the toaster. That’s just silly. And besides, zebras prefer their soup strung on skewers and roasted over hot pink. 

Half Life

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We likely all know the trope of whether a half-filled glass of water is half full or half empty. In truth, the glass is completely full: half water and half air. Both are vital to our survival. 

Like the cycles of the moon, our lives are said to wax and wane. Coming into my seventh decade, I am by force of nature inarguably waning, and yet my life is full to overflowing. As the cycle continues, I am quite curious as to where I will find myself at my own next new moon. 

whole moon half-hidden

wax and wane like hide and seek

steadfast in the sky

For dVerse prompt: Haibun Monday ~ Mezza Luna

In the Stars

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I was debating with my daughter the other day as to whether I might be an alien, (something to do with my long toes), and I was reminded of this piece I wrote in 2013 for my original (now defunct) blog. As I am the master of my own blog — if not my own destiny — I decided to post it again. Herewith:

Psychic Revelation

You’re not going to believe this… well, maybe you are. I didn’t at first, but now the notion is kind of growing on me.

You see, I just found out that I’m from another planet. Maybe even another star system. It’s a little hard to wrap my mind around the idea, but it would sure explain a lot.

I had a reading with a psychic yesterday, and among other (very accurate) things, she told me that I was an old soul (I’ve always felt that), and that I was a “star seed.” I’d never heard of a star seed. The psychic indicated that I had a lot of “homework” to do to get up to speed on all of this, so as soon as the reading was over, I ran right to my computer to research the whole matter.

The Sirius Temple of Ascension website tells us that “Star Seeds are beings that have experienced life elsewhere in the Universe on other planets and in non-physical dimensions other than on Earth,” although they may have had previous life times on earth as well.

Old soul star seeds are “Guardians of the earth” and have usually had “hundreds of life times on earth going back to the beginning of humanity” or even the beginning of earth. The life missions of old soul star seeds are “tied into the long term evolution of earth and humanity” and so they have incarnated on earth multiple times to fulfill relevant “projects.” Once the projects are completed, the old soul star seeds discontinue their cycles of lifetimes.

The psychic indicated that my purpose was related to healing. She mentioned Reiki (a form of hands on energy healing) and I told her that I was, indeed, a Reiki practitioner. The conversation somehow got sidetracked there when she said that my cats didn’t want me to give them Reiki because they were evolved beyond that and so they just roll their eyes when I try it on them.

I was so astounded at the idea of my cats rolling their eyes at me that I forgot to pursue the whole old soul star seed topic any further in our discussion. My subsequent research, however, turned up some tests that one can take to determine whether or not they are a star seed. My favorite is the Starseed Quiz. It consists of 100 questions and the nifty part about it is that the computer calculates your score at the end.

Some of the questions that intrigued me:

“As a child, did you have an imaginary friend?” I had three. Didn’t everyone?

“When alone & indoors, have you ever worked or studied in the nude?” That would be a “no” for me. Eww!

“Do you have a blank space/or unusually high level of memory of your early childhood years?” My memory of my whole life is pretty blank, not just my childhood. Not sure what that might indicate.

“Do you like tapioca?” Well, yeah! What’s not to like?

“If offered a choice of meeting a celebrity or an alien ~ would you choose the alien?” I wasn’t convinced this had to be an either/or question. I’d personally like to meet a celebrity alien.

The results of my test indicated that it definitely could maybe be a possibility that I am indeed a star seed.

So what am I going to do with this newfound information? Well, my cats can forget sitting on my lap for Reiki any time soon, that’s for sure. But I may need to do some further investigating into the rest of it. Even though I am poking fun at it, who am I to say what is and isn’t within the realm of Universal possibility?

I mean, tapioca seldom lies.

Plus One

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NaPoWriMo day one prompt: “The prompt is based on Robert Hass’s remarkable prose poem, “A Story About the Body.” The idea is to write your own prose poem that, whatever title you choose to give it, is a story about the body. The poem should contain an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one crisp visual image.”

Six weeks, it had been. Six weeks of “boot camp” at a CrossFit gym. The final day, a repeat of the first day’s timed workout. Only this time, preceded by a one-mile jog. My legs were spent. “Want me to go first?” my workout partner asked. I could use the recovery time, but she’d be tired, too. “No, I’ll go.” She’d track sets, count reps, cheer me on. I’d try to complete the workout before time ran out. Last time, I’d fallen short by nine burpees.

Sit ups, squats, I can’t recall what else. And those last ten burpees. It wasn’t pretty. Fling my body to the floor, a wobbly push-up, drag myself upright, jump and clap my hands above my head. Repeat. I was last of the whole class. Time running out. Everyone stood around me, cheering. “Keep going! You’ve got this!” Struggling to stand upright. Coach called “time.” One burpee short.

My workout partner moved close. Quietly, tentatively. “I think that was ten,” she offered. Our eyes locked. “I counted nine.” She nodded appreciatively and wrote down my final time. Plus one for the uncompleted burpee.

Six weeks. Nine burpees. I’ll take it.

Creature Comforts

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I’m awake. The cat has been sitting on my chest for several minutes now, grooming himself. You wouldn’t think of cat’s paws as anything but soft, but something hard is jabbing me in the ribs. Do cats have elbows? Sharp pointy elbows?

I shift pillows and comforter from the edge of the bed and summon my dog with a pat on the mattress. Sometimes he comes, sometimes he sits in the doorway of the bedroom and scratches himself, his back foot thumping a frantic beat on the hardwood floors.

When he deigns to join me, I lift my face so his sloppy greeting licks my chin and not my face. Then -usually – he turns his back on me and plops down, waiting for his back rub, or his “booty scritch” as I call it.

His luxurious coat is so soft, I bury my face in it and work my hand up the length of his spine and back down. He leans into the pressure, and turns his eskie smile on me. A pat on his bum, and a final smooch from him ends the ritual, and he hops to the floor.

Less nimble, I roll to the edge of the bed, sit up, place my feet on the cold floor,

and climb out of my comfort zone.

Bloganuary daily prompt: Write about the last time you left your comfort zone.

spitting on the fire

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With July’s record-breaking high temperatures here, it’s been frustrating and – truth be told – rather depressing to watch flowers in my native plant garden wilt before reaching full bloom and then turn end-of-summer brown without setting seeds.

What happens, I wonder, if annuals can’t reseed themselves? What happens if birds and other critters have no seeds to tide them through the coming winter? What happens when spring pollinators show up and find but a few flowers to feed upon?

I do what I can for my small domain. I water the roots of my plants; can’t do much for the sunburned leaves. This fall I will plant more natives. In the winter I will feed the birds. Next spring, I will build a fountain of some sort to provide reliable water for thirsty creatures passing through my yard.

Sometimes my efforts feel quite satisfying, like I’m giving back to the planet. Lately, it just feels like someone trying to extinguish a forest fire with spit.

leather brown leaves curled

fists shaking at the August sun

give us a reprieve

dVerse haibun Monday: August

Summer Solstice

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The first day of summer dawns hot and dry; not like it used to here in the moderate Pacific Northwest of my youth. The air outside is stifling, so I stay indoors listening to the hum of the fan and worrying about the young plants in my nature garden. The shrubs and berries and grasses – all native to this area – are not supposed to need supplemental watering because they are acclimated to thrive in their natural environment.

But this climate, altered to unnatural heat and drought, is not what Mother Nature signed on for when she gave us the delicate mosses and ferns, the soft evergreen needles, the supple, shiny leaves of shrubs like snowbrush and Oregon grape.

This evening a breeze will pick up and give at least the illusion of coolness to the air. I will visit the garden to make sure the ladybugs, bees and butterflies have water in the little pool I made for them. And I will utter an apology on behalf of my species for the damages this planet has endured. The rain, when it comes, will be happily welcomed.

Imperceptibly,

summer solstice pendulum

pauses, shifts, recedes.

dVerse haibun Monday: Solstice I