NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 13

Not sure what the prompt was today but my focus was mainly my trusty thermos. It’s not my first thermos. I’ve had several that have travelled to work and even to Wales with me because there’s nothing quite like being able to pause for a hot cuppa. I’ve learned the pleasure of making a thermos when I’m sick and being able to have a hot cup in bed without the tea-making activities. So my thermos is getting its moment of spotlight these days. Worth every penny. It’s not a damn travel mug. It’s a Thermos®. And it keeps things VERY hot. And it turns out you can actually pour without removing the stopper all the way (oh, the things you learn along the way!)

another day sick
another cup of hot tea
cooling

making myself
a thermos of hot tea
for the afternoon

boil up the kettle
thinking of the endless cups
at grandma’s table

And while outside righting and filling the feeders, I noticed some new developments in the front garden.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 13

Day 2 NaPoWriMo 2024

While waiting for Mom doing her PT, I pondered today’s prompt:

…write a platonic love poem. In other words, a poem not about a romantic partner, but some other kind of love – your love for your sister, or a friend, or even your love for a really good Chicago deep dish pizza. The poem should be written directly to the object of your affections (like a letter is written to “you”), and should describe at least three memories of you engaging with that person/thing.

And as I slurped the last of my coffee, it came to me in a flash!

This familiar paper cup
This brown cardboard sleeve
this carefully molded white lid —
How I look forward to our meetings!
I know the level of half and half
I know how much sweetener
I know how to pour the fragrant liquid
quickly and neatly
I have exact change ready
We fling open the door
to face the day!

And a couple haiku:

A card from a friend
pen to paper, add a stamp
reading in the yard

Three postcards today
happiness in the mailbox
unexpectedly

Day 2 NaPoWriMo 2024

Day 13 NaPoWriMo 2022

Quiet day – made an appointment, took out some trash, made some coffee, admired the daffodils. I have had several instances recently of thanking Dad for teaching us how to watch for roadside critters.

when all colors fade
and the windows light with sky
daffodils still glow

thanks to my father
i watch for an ear to twitch
a revealing eye

several deer cross
now watch the side they came from
might be another

the eyeball spotted
turned into a small red fox
slipping into grass

Day 13 NaPoWriMo 2022

Day 3 NaPoWriMo 2022

It’s earlier than normal for me to be sending haiku out into the world but hey, sometimes they’re just there, laying alongside your morning tea cup, right?

Welcome visitors, and thank you for your comments! Isn’t it a lovely thought to think about a tour of so many poets visiting so many other poets this month? Sort of a world cruise in its own world within a world!

I look for routine
among the shreds of daily —
what feels normal?

to fill, to empty,
to dirty, to clean again,
to go and return

familiar comforts
in troubling times — to stop,
pour the tea — drink it

Day 3 NaPoWriMo 2022

NaPoWriMo Day Thirteen

I went outside to sit with the daffodils today. It may snow. That’s right. It may snow. Won’t be the first time the daffodils have been beaten down in their glory but it seemed a good idea to sit with them and paint a bit today… just in case.

For several years I’ve been attached to the news – aggregating it, summarizing it, passing it along, being horrified by it at times. Since January I’ve tried to cut back some. I’ve eliminated a couple subscriptions and try not to spend so much time reading but here we are again needing to put our shoulder to the work. Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was worth a ponder so here you go –

There it is, all above the fold,
large letters announcing the latest
I take a slurp of coffee to prepare
and push my glasses up by habit
I don’t know how they did it
but that idea of all men and women
being entitled to life, liberty,
the pursuit of some sort of happiness –
that seems to have caught on at last.
Legislation accepted, approved, amended,
ratified and sent back
signed sealed delivered
and there it is, held up to the world.
We’re going to try this again
only this time like we mean it.
The caption declares that all
the people in the photo are happy
maybe I think, maybe they are happy
but now our real work begins.
I take another swig of coffee.

We are all equal.
And it’s time to act like it.
we stand together.

NaPoWriMo Day Thirteen

NaPoWriMo Day Eleven

I did a bunch of things unrelated to poetry for most of the day. I guess that’s most days. I did end up with a bowl of a really tasty bean soup made with some leftover lamb and some smoked turkey bones I had – that made a good dinner. Worked on the web-based project. Sometimes troubleshooting is more like shooting-a-ghost-in-a-hypothetical-barrel. As in – no answers found. But work arounds we got in plenty so it’s all good.

Regret

why didn’t I finish my coffee?
It was the perfect temp
and so full of hope
once.

and a short version of a short poem:

forgotten coffee –
what started out so perfect
and full of hope – cold.

Apparently I took no photos other than of my soup so here’s a view from last year.

NaPoWriMo Day Eleven

December 2020

I’ve been home for a little over nine months now. You would think something would have come of that time and stuff has, just maybe not the stuff you might imagine. I’ve painted. I’ve taken photos. I’ve written. I’ve read. I’ve learned to interact to others via a plethora of online platforms.

I had gone to a lecture at the Clark and felt like I had a headache. Didn’t much enjoy the presentation, drove home and went to bed. Was sick with mildly flu-like symptoms and was more than glad to stay in bed napping for quite a number of days, long enough that for the first time in my working history I had to go to a doctor for a note in order to return to work. By then it was clear that something was going on. I had no way of knowing if I’d had the flu (yes, I’d gotten the shot), bronchitis, or whatever this new virus was. But I went to the doctor and he had nothing to offer because now, two weeks later, I was well. I seized the moment to get a test for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases which came back negative.

I got the note and sent it in and then my workplace was shut down.

So began my time at home. I stayed home a little longer, just to be sure about whatever it was I had early in March. Then work evolved and food shopping turned to delivery and pick up and life went on. I officially started doing real work-from-home stuff in early June. In September I signed up officially to do that for six months. And then another round of scheduling fuzziness ended my research into different retirement scenarios and my last working day was October 28. After that I was on “vacation” for a little over a month and now I am officially retired.

Last night I erased the computer I’d been sent to work on and packaged it up. I cleared out a little drawer that held a stack of post it notes – tallies of each day’s work. Yes our work was trackable online – so many interactions over the course of the day and all, but for me, it was a pleasure to tick each chat and perhaps note what the question was. I think the largest number of ticks was 46 or 48. Some days, due to outages or events were much lower. Thirty plus was the norm. I laughed as I quickly flipped through the stack looking at all the slashes. Each a person, for a few minutes or longer.

Now, as I have since March, I can take a few minutes to look around each morning as I go out to offer my coffee grounds to the garden or get the mail. The things to see are many. I fill the bird feeders. I look at the sky. I don’t have a long daily commute to think about things or listen to audio books, although I’ve finished several long audio books since being home. My Prius was showing 112.2 “mpg” the other day because many of my travels are within the electric range of the car. I don’t stop in a store just to look around. I took a pass on the normal Thanksgiving because it seemed like the best thing to do.

Today is 42 days away from Inauguration Day and that is good, even though the fight goes on to turn our country towards what it was before 2016 and maybe towards what we would like it to be. The fight continues to keep people healthy. The stay at home thing continues. So I look around and see what the world has to offer each morning and go from there.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
— Joseph Chilton Pearce

December 2020

Where did June Go?

Mainly it went in a swirling of brain-drain as I trained and adjusted to doing a new thing while working from home. It has taken really three weeks to go from abject terror to only moments of wondering what-the-heck-am-I-doing, LOL. Toward the end of last week, which ends on Saturday, I had moments of – oh, I know what to do here! Or hearing someone else asking a question in our support chat and thinking, ‘isn’t that…?’ So slow but sure.

Working at home means no forty-five minute plus commute each way, but also means I make my own coffee and breakfast and lunch. And dinner. Sometimes I get to eat one or all of those sitting on the front steps. Sometimes I get to dash out afterwork because the sun is out and I can get a painting in and take photos of the evening coming on.

July brings with it World Watercolor Month so get ready for a more regular appearance of paintings here. After that – August Poetry Postcard Festival 2020 – although with the pandemic in play, some of us started early on that. I did a month’s worth of postcards during NaPoWriMo in April.

I feel the rhythm of my year changing and yet it’s the same. A few photos popped up in facebook of watercolors I’d done in 2016 and 2019 and it was interesting to see what was the same and what was different. Since being home I found a place in New Lebanon where there is a 360 degree view of the sky. Looking back years from now I’ll be reminded of the pandemic by many many panoramas of the sky and clouds and landscape.

Here are photos from today. Mostly clouds and landscape but a few plants and flowers and a couple mushrooms that snuck in at the end. Look close – some of the clouds were being visited by birds and other things!

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Where did June Go?

NaPoWriMo – Day Thirteen

Well, to say the least, it was raining. And then it rained some more. And then Billy Collins did his live reading at 5:30 – Thank you Billy!

When the rain came down
making circles in circles
of the world already so wet
Out painting, grey isn’t
what I was there to do
so I broke out the tea
thinking this will pass.
It poured and I poured.
On my phone, a poet
reading. How amazing,
to sit in your car and
watch a favorite poet
read and talk about
his words. He was, in fact,
apologetically in Florida.
While he spoke I viewed
the fuzzy world past two
watercolor palettes and
laughed so I painted
them and him and went home.
It was a good day despite
the endless rain and news.
Another day of staying home
or at least alone, painting
and writing and finding
a scrap or two of laughter.

I can’t complain really, this morning it was so wet and windy that I stayed in and painted this.

Art to me, is seeing. I think you have got to use your eyes, as well as your emotion, and one without the other just doesn’t work. That’s my art. — Andrew Wyeth

NaPoWriMo – Day Thirteen

NaPoWriMo – Day 10

There were three poems, but this one was a little more ready to go. More in the continuing string of longer than normal poems! Someone on facebook asked what pickles were on our refrigerator shelves and a lively listing ensued. Later it was summed up as a great long and very informative conversation that had nothing to do with the news! I totally agreed. What a welcome diversion.

After I was sick at the beginning of March, I took an actual list and did a pantry shop, just before things got locked down. (When I’d started to feel well enough to stay out of bed for awhile, I had got it in my head to clean out the pantry and kitchen shelves, which I did, a little at a time and many trips to the trash can.) I was glad to have just freshened up all my go-to items, and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to get some groceries for pick up and some fruits and veg delivered!

In these days —
“these difficult times”
when grocery shopping has
taken on a whole new
sense of adventure,
we talk about our
childhood meals and
favorite candybars and
how our sourdough is doing
as though we are indeed
in “difficult times”
My pantry has all the
old standbys, spaghetti,
makings of sauce, baked beans,
soup, sandwiches, pickles, relish.
Tea, coffee beans, sugar.
A few bottles of adult
refreshment for evening
Raisins, a jar of oatmeal.
Doubtful I will starve
although the cats would
tell you otherwise.
They seem concerned.
I reassure them daily.

.

NaPoWriMo – Day 10