50th High School Reunion

I received an invitation that threw me for a loop- to my 50th high school reunion. I graduated in 1963 so, of course, it's my 50th anniversary, but I hadn't stopped to think about that until the invitation from a former classmate who tracked me down on Facebook. I'm going, of course, and will stay with my best friend from those days who now lives in Hartford, CT. I head for Boston the day after tomorrow. It brings a new dimension to the term elder on this journey I'm living. It makes me realize that I'm there and not just on a journey there. Although my 96 year old father says: "Your 60's are just the youth of old age.".

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this and I think actually being there will help me to do so. I'll let you know.

In the meanwhile, my computer won't upload photos to my blog. It's a new problem and I don't know why. It was preceded by the screen turning bright yellow while uploading photos and then by it turning black. Seems ominous to me. Any ideas?

What I planned to post were photos of some everyday things that fill my days. Simple things, like my Honey starting to make bread, with focaccia and ciabatta the most recent delicious examples. Of lunches and dinners enjoyed with friends, a double rainbow that followed a storm last week, new herbs and geraniums already growing on the balcony, purple blossoms on the chives surprising and delighting me (who knew?), an ancient olive tree found in the country with its branches trimmed in a fanciful way, and my daughter and the grands fostering a young hawk until he or she can survive on his or her own. My life is full, my heart is full, but 50 years since high school? Wow.

Mother's Day

Some recent photos to wish you a Happy Mother's Day.

May your day be sweet.

May your day contain beauty.

May what fills your heart cause you to soar like a hawk.

Being There

My neighbor called
crying, afraid after
a bad night with her cancer,
no treatments left, far
from home, disheartened,
faced with the transition
that no one can grasp. Not really.
Nothing to do as her friend but be there,
give a hug, listen, listen some more, and
believe in her ability to navigate this
journey.

For the G-Man and the hope for a peaceful weekend. 

Prelude

The young boy told his mother his dream,
to have a falcon of his own. But how? They
problem- solved together; can't buy one, hard

to catch one, maybe find a nest and take a chick but
where are the nests? Could he take one? Two days later
a neighbor brought an unfeathered hawk fallen from its nest,

only weeks old, unable to be returned. Despite
the dream, the young boy had no idea how to care
for a raptor. Their kinship with dinosaurs drew him.

A quick trip to google revealed their diet- snakes, lizards,
insects, mammals; things that need to die to be fed
to small carnivores. And the young boy must do the killing.

This is in response to Kerry O'Connor over at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads who asked us to write something that's prelude to the main event which we don't describe. Her article on the types of preludes (mine is one of intention) is elegant so check it out.

Fishing Shacks at Evening

He waited for the right
evening light, waited
until gray fishing shacks
on beach's far reach glowed
dun colored like rocks scattered
nearby. They sit in sand brightened
with water skim left by receding tide.
Did he see the willet caught mid-stride
in the same skim that holds shack's reflection?
Stilts shine white under two shacks, hold them
high from tide's flow and flood.
Blue green evening sky with cream clouds provides
counterpoint to short- lived wood glow.

(May, 2013)


For Open Link night at dVerse Poets Pub. Photo of fishing shacks in South Portland, Maine by Jack Kennealy, a physicist turned photographer, who waited 2 years for this shot. We lived in Cape Elizabeth, close to this beach, for 5 1/2 years.

Grandmothers - Crucial for Human Evolution

New Evidence That Grandmothers Were Crucial for Human Evolution | Surprising Science

Surprising Science supports the "grandmother hypothesis": Here's a study (click on the above hot link) that shows grandmothering was the initial step that made us who we are, gave us the leg up we needed as a species to survive longer, more prone to cooperate with each other. Grandmothers helped our overall offspring survival rate and set the stage for us to be dependent on each other socially and to develop other of our uniquely human traits. It's a fascinating article that made me grateful. Have you thanked a grandmother lately? If you are one, give yourself a treat and read this article.

Lear and Liam Win Over The Leprechauns

Liam the lowly leprechaun sought
just one thing, to fashion a fiddle
that played good music that couldn't be bought.
The teachers, the wood, the strings to diddle

made it hard to learn craft that didn't come easy,
meanwhile, leprechauns scoffed and ridiculed.
He made one and another as his friends teased
but songs squeaked horribly, quite constrictalooed.

On March seventeen lightening felled oldest oak.
Liam gathered wood with magic hoped inside
sure this would sound sweet or he's broke.
Bent he worked day after day when, woe betide,

the fiddle was done in time for summer's grand festival
but no one knew 'til the moment arrived for competition.
Liam took the stage while jeers rang out and it felt like a crestival
he climbed to raise his bow. But play he did with no need for contrition

for sky lightening and ancient oakness combined
to produce such music that all called: sublime!


Written in response to Kerry O'Connor over at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads who wrote about Edward Lear whose birthday is in May and asked us to let some nonsense happen. I love his made up words so thought I'd give it a try.

Rainforest Reconnaissance

The forest floor of our love holds
forty years of scattered leavings as loam
for yet more growth, riotous and jungly,
our understory thick as old growth mahogany.

Love, now moistly deciduous from our equatorial
heat or the chafing of our years' burdens, but so
sprinkled with caches of color, like strong- beaked toucans,
as to be in all our seasons' memories, suffused in beauty.

Now our uppermost branches expand
umbrellalike, held over the lives of loved ones
who come to sit awhile in the cool of this canopy. Some
become taller than those surrounding, a grand emergent

occurring unexpectedly, perhaps groomed by others,
like howler monkeys, in this fertile layer of our love.
Together we howl our loud lusty call down the rainforest strata
and stand awed by the swarming life sprung forth.

This is in response to Victoria Slotto over at dVerse Poets Pub who talked of Voice in poetry and urged us to speak of something we're passionate about and reveal our personal attitude in the process. Long- term love of my Honey is my passion and I seek to find new ways to express it. Meanwhile, Hannah, over at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads, asked us to write about the tropical rainforest, so I used this as my inspiration for a love metaphor. Photo is taken in the rainforest of Trinidad where my daughter and her family live.