Memories can be carbon copies that we keep locked in a file in our copious brain, and yet some memories get deleted with time, distorted, and rewritten by our aging gray matter. At a family reunion you can listen to the same event told by several retired siblings, and the dates, and people present will change. The hero or heroine of the event is sometime one of the aunts, sometimes another. Some things do not change though, and that is the memory of shared laughter, or the way the meadowlarks sang at dusk while the family sat around the pond eating sandwiches and fishing for perch and catfish. The memory of the dragonflies darting towards the corks bobbing on the line, and the way the sun shimmered on the water as the snake slithered across.
Grandparents give us a heritage of one another, an extended family for sharing memories; that is the greatest legacy they can give. The farmland can be sold; stocks can crash with the market. Cousins to catch crawdads with, or help sell lemonade and bait, that is our richest heritage.
AD libs
Rubenesque woman seeks debonair man to dine with
wine with, spend quality time with.
Answer this ad immediately as I may soon be moving on
to greener pastures.
This is the way of mail order brides in the 1800s.
Now we have Facebook friends and ads for companionship prosper again.
THREE IS ENOUGH
Gurgling water like laughter falls over the river rocks as I recline on a boulder under the shade of some Douglas firs. The ripe wild berries have brought the bees buzzing around. After watching a trout drift downstream, I wander over to taste a few of the salmon berries named because of their pinkish orange color. The Oregon Willamette Valley on this July afternoon has a soothing effect as I listen to the shrieks of my sons and their newfound friends splashing each other in the natural pool beneath the rocks where I have been sitting.
A pang of regret makes my eyes sting as I remember their father will never again make a foursome at our picnics. I realize I have packed the usual four plates, cups, and plastic ware in the hamper. Quickly I spread a blanket and arrange the fruit, sandwiches, and carrot sticks on three of the plates. As I fill the boys’ cups with milk from a thermos, I visualize the three of us sitting on the large blanket and hurriedly place the hamper and thermos on the empty corner.
Leaning back on my elbows, I remember the call I received three weeks before. The boys had just gone to bed and I was loading the washing machine whenever I heard the phone ringing. Thinking it was a friend, I settled on the couch and answered with a cheery hello.
It was a friend but she seemed upset. “Is everything all right?” I questioned. She stammered a few syllables and finally blurted, “Your husband has a girlfriend. I just thought you ought to know.”
My head was spinning as I tried to comprehend that my husband of 16 years and the father of my two sons was seeing another woman. I recalled the doubts I had been having about his all night fishing trips. Once there had been a phone call he had received from another woman. He had explained that she was a supervisor from work but I knew he had only two male supervisors.
The next few days went by in a whirlwind of questions and denials, culminating with my husband moving into another house. I reluctantly filed for divorce.
A noisy gull brings me back to the present. I paste a smile on my face and summon up my courage to appear happy before the boys. Watching them from the bank I observe how happy they are and my melancholy is replaced with the joy of love for my adoring sons.
“Chris, Jeremy,” I call while carrying their towels to the edge of the water. They dogpaddle over and get out of river as they playfully shake water onto me.
We are soon seated and as I bow my head to give thanks for the food, my five year old questions, “Mommy, can three still be a family?”
Biting my lower lip, I whisper, “Sure, Jeremy. It is not the number of people that make up a family, but the amount of love. Yes, son, three is enough.”
Van Gogh ‘s Starring Role
Critics with verbal dysentery,
Effusively eschew your life:
Weighing your indiscretions
Weighing your indiscretions
against your canvas legacy.
Starry Night perhaps your magnum opus.
Night Cafe and Starry Night Over the Rhone,
My personal favorites.
So much color on your palette.
No less color in your social life.
Hopefully now you are at peace,
With the creator of the stars.
Hot mail: Trusted
Sandcastles of Our Minds
We erected sand castles on the shore
I designed them and you painstakingly formed them
Into edifices complete with turrets, flags, and moats.
We even won the contest for the most authentic.
Now the only castles we build are in our imaginations.
You don’t even recognize your queen anymore and I
am sad at the ravages that alzheimers has afflicted my king.
Oh, to be young again and sit at sunset and watch the tide
sweep away our castles, slowly and gently.
Perhaps we can sit on the balcony tonight and hold hands.
This may be the day you call me your queen again .
Thursday Poets Rally Award
PERFECT POET AWARD
Thank you for this award for my poem, Ode to Pacific!! I nominate
http://poetrydiary.wordpress.com for next week. Thanks again poets
from Thursday Poets Rally!!
Ode to Pacific
Are you aware of your scope and sway,
that the moon controls your destiny?
High tide, low, or waning,
she sets the limit of your boundary.
For centuries man continued to aspire,
to ride your waves to unknown shores.
Times you spew him like dragon’s fire,
others you cradle him like a babe.
Poets forever speak of your beauty,
sonnets formed for you alone.
Romances blossom along your side,
to be washed away before the dawn.
Mankind mirrors your volatile moods.
Rising from the peace of the neap
to the height of powerful tsunamis,
mysteries lie buried in the deep
Haiku on wind
wind is tearing limbs off trees
howling noisily
born to blow eternally
My Maestro
(musical perspective of Psalm 23)
The Lord is my composer, filling each moment with music.
His songs soothe my soul.
The notes are new each morning, like a prelude at dawn.
When the day’s stress becomes a crescendo,
He calms me with a synchronized sunset.
Amidst darkness He gives me melodies of praise.
Hope and joy are the keys He strokes on the keyboard of my heart.
He removes my sour notes and restores them with perfect pitch,
Bringing us all into His heavenly harmony
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