NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 21

Ventured out to see Mom, get sunflower seed for the birdies, get katfüd for the kitties and have some dinner. Amazing the changes in the world in a week plus. Although it was quite nippy today, sp many flowers and trees in bloom!

closed my eyes briefly
now the hills are fringed in white
lacy wild cherries

magnolia and
weeping almond and cherry
line my mother’s street

in my own garden
the first of the daffodils
are fading

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 21

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 20

Today is the last “official” day of isolation for me. Yes I could have gone out after day 5 (and I did get some needed groceries, masked and ducking in and out of the store one day). I am advised my tests can be positive for three months! I am advised, rather too mildly I think, to wear a mask in crowded places. I think we’ve lost track of what we’re doing here but I’m not an advisor to the CDC etc.

Today is also day twenty of NaPoWriMo and the prompt today was “write a poem that recounts a historical event. In writing your poem, you could draw on your memory, encyclopedias, history books, or primary documents.” I do sometimes tell people about how I went to a lecture in early March 2020 and felt iffy, had a headache and then was sick in bed for two weeks. Luckily I stayed home. And when I went to the doctor on the twelth to get a note to return to work he said, well, we’ll never know for sure… And right after that, the world shut down. And I never went back to my workplace to work.

March 6, 2020

I hope you are well.
Tuesday night I went to a lecture
it turned out to be surprisingly a bust
but I had a headache. Maybe it was me.
I drove home wishing I was home.
I crawled into bed and woke up sick.

I slept most of today. I have a cough
and think I have a fever but I
can’t find my thermometer
just the one I use for the cats.
So I went back to bed.

A few days later and the radio voice
says there’s some sickness
filling hospitals and they don’t know.
I stayed home trying to breathe
I fixed a thermos of hot tea and
I’m crawling back into bed
trying not to cough
the news says stay home.

Hope you are well. Be safe.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 20

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 17

Sunny and rain. Another April day at the edge of New England. Lately I keep thinking – I enjoy writing haiku, writing in such a small format, trying to snag a moment or an image, but I can’t pretend to be Japanese. Perhaps this is where the idea of American Sentences comes from. I cannot write to satisfy the ancient cultural ideas of a culture that’s not my own. So, bear with me in my haiku/senryu practice.

no cherry blossoms
i am not japanese
daffodil haiku

another day
another two pink lines
more isolation

easy to stay home
a gift of the pandemic
welcome lesson

coffee and take out
chili, spicy and so hot
fragrant car ride home

In other news, I let the two young cats rummage through a laundry bag of laundered toys and balls. This amused them for quite a while and then I heard them move through the house with new jingly noises. I was surprised to find that one of their choices was this big plushy racoon. Only the head is stuffed. This was not just pulled out of the bag, but carried all the way upstairs to the bedroom!

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 17

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

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 11

Well, yesterday I woke up with a sore throat. Thought process: I will wear a mask to the eye doctor appointment but just let me test so I can say I did. LOL – that second pink bar just FLASHED into place. So fast I re-read the instructions because I’d never seen that! I am pretty confident I had COVID-19 in the first couple weeks of March 2020 but no one knew then what it was, there was no test, no vax. I did my best to let all the people I’d been in contact with know, feeling rather sheepish. This time around it feels like a bad head cold, but with a little fever. I’ve napped (that is totally not me). The first time I barely got out of bed for ten days. So thank you for vaccinations and taking reasonable precautions. PSA: check your covid test expiration dates.

being infectious
i’ll stay home with the cats to
keep it to myself

black cat in sun patch
solar energy leaking
out all orange

occasional sun,
some daffodils and peepers are all
you need for spring

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 11

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 10

Today has been an… interesting… day with a few fucking plot twists. (Please note that I did not say “unexpected” or “surprise” plot twists since by nature, all plot twists are these. It is likely that some do not fall into the descriptive category I chose. So there is that.)

When I went to check the optional NaPoWriMo prompt this turned up on the page of possible inspiration points so I just went with it. More regularly scheduled haiku below the photo.

when I was younger
swearing was forbidden
now it saves lives

sun, wind, rain and clouds
passing through the front yard today
kissing daffodils

head rests on table
not so uncomfortable
as necessary

though not Japanese
i write in haiku format
unabashedly

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 10

Covid Isn’t Over

Got a text that V-safe check in will be ending June thirtieth. Signed up for that with my first COVID-19 vax and it’s made me feel like a tiny part of the solution for something.

PS – Yesterday I found out – oops zero hashtags have been arriving here at masto, so wtf is up with that? No doubt something like my theme got updated and overwrote the changes I’d made… ratz. hate that when that happens! Will now attempt to fix.

Covid Isn’t Over

Using Technology to Communicate and Connect

One of the best things to come out of the pandemic was the embracing of things like Zoom, YouTube, Facebook live etc for communicating. We got to be live with people far away and spread out and sometimes who we might never had had the chance to spend time with. Some community grew up around that. Places like museums and bookshops that embraced online gatherings kept the interest of their followers and gathered new ones. During the early months of covid I had a daily and weekly schedule of these which really helped a lot.

https://www.facebook.com/BillyCollinsPoetry/videos

Cocktails with a Curator

Baumgarten Fine Art Restoration

The Metropolitan Museum

Laura Boswell, Printmaker

Udon Noodle Restaurant

I learned a lot from very knowledgeable folks who generously shared with an unseen audience. I appreciated folks who showed what they did or what they were interested in via video or audio online. I can’t really explain so easily while watching people cook in tiny Japanese or Chinese restaurant kitchens is soothing but I went with it. I learned quite a bit about art conservation and how to restore mostly metal objects. I sat daily with a former poet laureate (and a few hundred other homebound souls) and sipped adult beverages like we were in a salon sharing witty conversation and ignoring the world for a half hour. I received close up guided tours of objects I might never visit or be able to view that closely.

Some of that has mellowed as people have ventured back into the world but I’m still taking advantage of things which come around and this week that included this:

An Anniversary Edition of Braided Creek by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison, published by Copper Canyon.

It’s been interesting to see the use of technology evolve over these past few years, and to see people grow more comfortable using it and understanding how it can be used and best used. Thanks all!

Using Technology to Communicate and Connect

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

Day One – NaPoWriMo

Rode home to visit the kitties today and the daffodil leaves and buds were whipping in the wind. My facebook memories show that they were blooming last year on April first and that they got snowed on later in the day. That might have been true the year before too.

Yesterday Mom and I got our booster booster. She sailed through without a problem but my arm wasn’t happy and what a headache! Tonight I’m feeling 95% all better and I squeaked out some daffodil haiku.

last year april first
the daffodils were blooming
and later it snowed

today no flowers
many buds sway in the wind
waiting for warm days

hostas chewed down by deer
bright green barely there above
hoof prints in the dirt.

Day One – NaPoWriMo