On the Bus to Vancouver 2

Haiku signs directions ~ 

buildings, buses, parks, highways. Orderly life rules.

"Good order is the foundation of all things."

~ Edmund Burke

Limerick about Friends

There once was 

a great group of gals.

A plain ol’ posse of pals. 

They laughed as they talked

and talked as they walked.

This passel 

of gals and of pals!!

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."

~   Ralph Waldo Emerson

Advice for the Worried

When you’re worried 

wash your face.  

When you can’t do anything 

about your situation, 

situate yourself in the shower.

When thoughts hop 

frantically around your senses,

slow down - 

be a turtle, not a hare.  

Pick one thought.

Worry it and put it on a list.  

Worry ~ a creative companion

that hurries too fast into dark alleys.  

So distract and dodge 

until solutions are your own.

Remember your capabilities. 

“Worry is a misuse of imagination.”

~  Dan Zadra

Facebook promo from Aug.1, 2012: Written exactly 2 years ago today, this poem is not to minimize worries, but to find a place for them. I try to follow the suggestion to act and to slow down, as worry has occasionally been quite paralyzing.”

Authors note: Edited November 18, 2023

Moving

Stumbling in the darkness,

I trip and fall over bulky roots of memories,

long forgotten in the light of day.

Preparing to move reminds me of places I have been,

people I have lived with,

homes I have lived in,

gifts of life and love brought forward with me.

Memories pile up in great drifts in front of me, stalling the packing and sorting of today’s hard realities.

Everything mingles together, moving and shifting about

so my mind is a mass of the tangled webs of my life.

There is no stopping the memories,

so I change my address,

fill a box,

re-arrange my belongings,

And move on.

“Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.”

~ Cherokee Indian Proverb

The Right Tool for the Job

The Right Tool for the Job

Tongs. Sam shook her head: "What on earth do I need tongs for? I have a real problem here and tongs don’t exactly look like the tool I need, but that’s all I’ve got. Hmmm." 

Scratching her head, she forgot she had dirt filled garden gloves on. Brushing the loose dirt from her hair, she decided that just maybe she could make the tongs work.  

Outside on a great summer day, she was doing some pretty heavy yard work. There was not the slightest breeze moving the tiniest leaf. As she worked, she kept pushing her glasses up, but the more she worked, the sweatier the bridge of her nose got. Each time she pushed the glasses up, dirt and grass clippings smudged her face.  

Sam had a random thought about a favourite, but quite traditional uncle. Uncle James would surely correct her and tell her in no uncertain terms that ‘perspiring’ would be a much more polite term, and that she was getting quite dirty...not very feminine at all.

Regardless of what her uncle would have thought, she kept on with her task - to clear more garden space for future plantings.  Then, before she could push her glasses up, they skidded down her sweaty nose, landed on the lawn and slid into a very deep, but narrow, hole in the back yard. She sighed “I guess I’ve got some critters coming up in my back yard to visit."

“Even it I had a flashlight I couldn’t see how deep the hole is ~ I can’t even see two inches in front of my face. I am so near sighted! But now my glasses..... they’re gone!” 

By this time Sam was talking to herself, not even worrying whether anyone on the other side of the fence might be listening. “And all I’ve got is these tongs. Why on earth do I only have kitchen tongs handy? I guess I won’t be using these them in the kitchen any more. So here goes...” 

The first thing Sam was able to pull from the hole was a big fat worm. She looked around to see if there were any birds in the yard. Across the yard, up on the fence, a red-breasted fat fellow watched. She tossed the worm in the robin’s direction. “Here you go. Lunch.”  

Then, returning to her task, she thought she had her glasses in her grasp. She could feel the gritty feeling of the mud against the slippery hard feeling of the - oh no, the lenses! The very shock of scratching her lenses made her drop them again.  

“Carefully now. Probe just a little bit deeper. Now I’ve got hold of something - I think I've got the arm this time. Carefully....and slowly.. just pull a little bit more....gently now. They’re holding.” 

Sam stopped....took a deep breath and with just another tiny tug, she was able to reach them with her other hand. Phew! She sat back on her heels. Finally, I'll be able to see again. With  the garden hose, Sam rinsed her glasses off and dried them with the not too dirty tail of her t-shirt, then wiped her face and voila! 

“I can see again!”  

“Do not wait: the time will never be “just right”.  Start where 

you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your 

command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”

  ~  George Herbert

Authors note: **This story is from a writing exercise in January 2011. My subject was 'tongs'. I have done some revising from the original. A fun exercise.

Authors note: Edited November 18, 2023

An Adventure of Innocents

And I think of a summer’s day in the 1950's walking to Corinne with my best friend Marybeth under a wide blue prairie sky underlined with lush green wheat fields. When I entertain that memory I feel my bare feet padding the warm pebbled shoulder of Highway 39 paved with asphalt too hot to step on with uncalloused teenaged skin.

Our adolescent conversation was seven miles long with only occasional concern that we hadn’t told our mothers that our ‘walk’ would take us out of the sheltered bounds of our small prairie town. No cars passed either way, so no hint nor even mild suggestion of danger that could lurk on the broad highway crept into our young and innocent minds.

This digital image of late summer fields that accompanies this post, although an image taken fifty miles from Highway 39, and about fifty years later, evokes memories of what now seems a much more innocent time. This sun-warmed and kind memory is a place that I like to go ~ this carefree adventure onto the open road with a friend by my side.

“It’s surprising how much memory is built 

around things unnoticed at the time.”

~ Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams