Silent Sentinel

Oh, look! I actually remembered to repost my poem of the week here. :-D

Okay, so it’s a little late. But better late than never, eh? And considering it’s another uber damp (it was actually pouring rain when I went grocery shopping), headache inducing, coolish kind of day, you’re lucky you got it at all. Readers of my writing blog are still waiting for this month’s picture prompt story. (It’s coming, it’s coming!)

This week’s poem is just a random one I chose from my files. It was written in 2013 and I believe it was “poemwork” for a poetry group I was a member of. As I recall, the assignment was to write a poem from the point of view of an inanimate object. In case you can’t guess from the poem itself, the point of view is from a stone that was carved into a gargoyle.


Silent Sentinel

I remember my birth
torn from the quarry
then found to be unfit for the stone circle.

I remember the superstitions,
the Wild Hunt's ride, sacrifices to beg a boon
the dancing and the Green Man's bride.

I remember the poets,
who spent years perfecting the faultless rhyme
that would make of them heroes

I remember the old gods
no longer worshipped, not knowing why,
turning their backs on man.

I have felt the passage of time
felt the reshaping of my limestone form
awakened in my new home atop the cathedral

I have watched the world turn
the pleasure and the sorrow of man
the life and the death. Oh, so much death.

I have watched the city rise and fall
the new replacing the old until only I remain
keeping your secrets carved in stone.

Mulism Monday

mulism ~ obstinate quirk or habit

You know, one of these days I’m going to get my sh*t together and do amazing things. Last week had none of those days. This week doesn’t look promising either.

Once again I missed the poetry post on Friday, which is ridiculous when you think pretty much all I have to do is just re-post it from my writing blog. However, last week was a little busier than the previous week.

Tuesday, I took the grandbaby to visit her great grandparents, which meant I picked her up an hour early. Then Wednesday was our regular play group day, which also means picking her up an hour early. I had actually planned on blowing off the play group and taking her to the park instead (it’s been a while since we’ve been there) but it was cool and overcast, and it turned out I made the right decision because it started to rain.

I might mention that I woke up with a sore throat and the sniffles Wednesday morning and it was a full fledged cold by Thursday, the day I got to babysit from 8:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. The daughter had a work thing - and by work thing I mean she got waited on hand and foot at a spa, dinner included.

The trade off was that I got Friday off, which would have been great except I was so sick from my cold I didn’t get any of the things I’d planned on doing done. I pretty much read, napped, watched X-Men Apocalypse, and napped some more.

It rained off and on during the week, but Thursday night it started a steady down pour that kept up until about supper time on Friday. As you may recall, last time it rained like this we lost our beach, which is still more water than sand. This time we had more flooding inland.

This is a picture of Elgin Street, which runs east/west, early on Friday.

Now, see the traffic lights in that picture? This picture is taken at that intersection, sitting on Elgin and looking north up Division Street later in the day.

For the curious, you can find a slide show of photos HERE

And lest you think the sky gods are done with us, they’re calling for thunderstorms to start this afternoon and continue into this evening, with rain every day except Wednesday for the rest of the week.

Anybody got blue prints for an ark?

Malaxage Monday

malaxage ~ softening of clay by kneading it

It’s Monday. Here we are again.

*Looks around aimlessly*

So...how was your week? What about your weekend?

I have to say, last week was a pretty slow news week in my little corner of the world. So slow in fact I forgot about posting my poem on Friday. Oops!

And yet I made several rather lengthy entries in my journal - mostly mundane stuff about housework and babysitting and taking the grandbaby to play group. And of course there was the requisite whining, mostly about housework and babysitting and taking the grandbaby to play group. LOL

No matter how well or how often you do housework, there’s always more to do. It’s like getting rid of junk that collects in your closet - more junk always seems to take its place. So while I knocked off a few things, like cleaning the corner of the dining room where the cats have been misbehaving and dusting the corner cabinet, there’s always more tasks left to do.

The grandbaby was in full mischief mode last week. Not bad or bratty, just full of energy and getting into things. Like Friday. After play group we went to Walmart to get some cupcakes to take to Grappy at his office, one of her favorite things to do. And because by that time Grammy’s energy was flagging, I picked myself up an iced coffee. Which got dumped all over the floor of the kitchen when I nipped outside to look for my phone.

And there were a couple of completely unrelated journal entries, like the one I made about the daughter’s baby robins. She has a small ornamental tree outside her living room window and every year a robin builds a nest in it. The eggs always hatch, but usually the cat across the street gets the babies before they can fly off. This year, however, the daughter caught the cat in the attempt and chased him away with a broom. I would have paid good money to see a video of that! ;-)

Anyway, I checked the nest last Monday and there was only one baby left. There’d been three altogether and two of them flew away on the weekend. The last one was too scared to leave the nest, poor guy. So after the grandbaby went down for her nap, I stood at the open window and gave him a pep talk.

I guess he must have listened to me because the next time I checked he had left the nest and had made it as far as one of the branches beside it. He looked at me a little accusingly, and I think he was trying to get back into the nest but he couldn’t get turned around. At any rate, he did eventually fly away.

When I thought about it, I realized he was a braver bird than me. I went straight from my father’s house to my husband’s. So technically I never did leave my nest.

Something to think about.

Misosophy Monday

misosophy ~ hatred of knowledge or wisdom

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a giant light bulb. It’s the apocalypse! No, it’s ... the sun!!

We actually got a couple of days of sun last week. And the temperature rose enough that I was able to have the deck doors open during the day and we could leave the windows open at night. Yesterday we even had dinner out on the patio.

Thanks to all the rain we had earlier in the week, my garden was totally rocking the sunshine and all my seeds are starting to come up - the wildflowers in the planter boxes and even the dill in the top of the herb pot.

And of course along with the nicer weather came the “changing of the closets.” I put away some (not all) of my heavier clothing and brought out the lighter stuff. It’s always fun discovering clothes you forgot you had. Not so much fun trying to make room for them in the closet. LOL

Of course I didn’t start out with the intention of switching the closets over. I went digging through the storage closet looking for what little we kept of the daughter’s old Barbie stuff for the grandbaby. When we were at playgroup on Friday she spent the whole time playing with Barbies and I promised her I’d find her mother’s old stuff. Sadly, I gave most of it away long before the grandbaby was born - her mother didn’t want it and I didn’t want to keep storing it.

While I had the storage closet open I found my summer clothes and filled a couple of boxes with junk to donate. It’s amazing the way junk breeds, isn’t it? No matter how much you get rid of, there’s always more to take its place.

And of course along with the changing of the clothes goes the changing of the shoes. Up until Saturday I was wearing socks and shoes. I’m not sure where all my summer shoes went, I checked the shoe closet and only found one pair of sandals. Obviously I put them somewhere to get them out of the way in the fall. I just have to figure out where. LOL

The daughter and I went to see Wonder Woman on the weekend - it was pretty awesome. I’ve never been a particular fan of this super hero, so I went with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised. There are so many ways they could have ruined the movie - turning it into a jiggle-fest, having the man taking charge - but they didn’t.

The casting was perfect (Gal Gadot rocks!) and I loved the back-story of her growing up. And the Amazons were totally bad ass! I’m not going to say too much more because I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t already seen it. And if you haven’t, why not? Go see it!

Right now!

Poetry Anyone?

A few years ago I used to have a separate poetry blog and I would repeat the weekly post on this blog, just to share my love of poetry. But then I got away from poetry for a while (you can read the story about why HERE.

I’ve written a few poems over the last few years but haven’t shared many until Jamie and I did our poem a day challenge in April. It brought back fond memories of poetry, and gave me the urge to do more with my poetry going forward.

I decided I’d start including a poetry post once a week on Writing Blog and then I thought, why not repeat it here like I was doing before? Therefore, the first Friday of the month (Wednesday on the writing blog) will feature a poetry form, the following Fridays will be just random poems - some new, some old, some of my old favorites.

So... without further ado, I’d like to share this month’s form, the sestina.

The sestina was one of the most challenging forms I’ve ever encountered. It has 39 lines in total, divided into six verses of six lines each, and a three line envoi at the end. Sounds easy enough, right? Especially since it doesn’t have to rhyme. But here’s the thing. You start off by coming up with six words, and each of these words is used as a end word of one line in each of the six verses and the order changes in each verse.

For my sestina, I used the words: truth, grave, life, night, death, and stone.

Night Dweller’s Truth

In every breath there is a truth
that overshadows every grave,
a truth not found within a life
that shines its beacon into night,
a knowledge brought about by death
and graven into hardest stone.

A thought that’s carved in precious stone
contains what we perceive as truth,
unsuppressed by certain death,
as cold and alien as the grave,
deep and dark as empty night
just before it bursts to life.

If I’d but know how sweet is life,
not just a pathway strewn with stone,
perhaps I’d not embraced the night
that fills me with its awful truth
and takes me far beyond the grave
out of reach of even death.

And what is that which we call death?
Perhaps another way of life,
the end is more than just the grave,
a fresh turned mound that’s capped with stone.
Perhaps we’ll never know the truth
before we pass into the night.

Come and share this sweetest night
where we can stand abreast of death,
and we will seek the perfect truth
of what is that which we call life
that gathers round us like a stone
and leads us blindly to the grave.

You look at me with visage grave -
accept my words, accept the night,
accept that fate’s not carved in stone.
Turn away from Lady Death,
her promise of the afterlife,
and know what’s in my heart is truth.

We’ll find our truth without the grave
and make our life within the night,
then vanquish death with shattered stone.



If you’d like to learn more or better yet, try your hand at your own sestina, here are a couple of sites that I’ve found helpful in the past:

Baymoon
The Poetry Foundation
Shmoop

Monoousian Monday

monoousian ~ having the same substance

Warning: Picture intensive post!

I’ll give you three guesses what I was doing this weekend... Gardening!

We bought our plants on Friday night and I was appalled at how much we paid - to the point where I even suggested to the hubby that we could forget plants in the front garden and just fill it in with decorative wood chips instead. I think I’ll be buying a lot of seeds next year. Maybe some bulbs this fall.

But before I get to my garden pictures, a couple of people asked me about the christening gown I made last weekend. I know it’s kind of hard to picture it from my description (you can click on it to see a bigger version), so here it is in all its glory:

Not bad considering I was working without a pattern, eh? My friend was thrilled, her daughter was thrilled, but I have no idea how the baby boy felt about it. LOL

Now, on to my gardens. First we have the front garden, always a treat because it’s so long.

As you can see, I lost both of my dogwoods and one of my sand cherries over the winter. Not sure how that happened considering the winter wasn’t all that bad and they’re right up next to the house. These are the same shrubs that made it unscathed through the ice storm a few years ago.

Anyway, here’s what the garden looks like now:

I added a pink begonia hanging from the shepherd’s crook yesterday, but didn’t take a new picture because it was raining.

The other major planting I did was in Kelsey Park. Kelsey Park, for those of you who are new, is a small round garden with a fountain in the center, under which our border collie Kelsey is buried. There are also three cats buried in various spots around it - only the hubby knows for sure where, and he also knows where the others will be going when their time comes. Our own little pet cemetery. :-)

This is what it looked like before:

The after picture kind of looks like I just planted my plants amongst the weeds, and in a way that’s exactly what I did. When I bought all those bedding plants, I did not realize that the sweet pea seeds that I planted last year and didn’t come up came up this year. So now as well as pansies, marigolds, and tufted things, I have sweet peas growing around the edge of the garden.

And last but not least, a few years ago I lucked into a terra cotta strawberry pot. That was the same year I found a variety of mint plants - spearmint, chocolate mint, lemon mint, pineapple mint... I can’t remember what store had them, but I thought it would be really cool to do an all mint indoor herb garden in the pot. And I’m sure under the care of someone else it would have been. But for me the plants died rather quickly and the pot has been empty ever since.

So this year I started thinking about what went wrong and I wondered if maybe I should have had the mint garden outside for the summer to let the plants get well established before bringing it in for the winter. This year I only found two kinds of mint, but I found some thyme, chives, and sage for it and I bought some dill seeds to plant in the top. Now it’s sitting on the deck where it will get lots of sun, if the sun every comes out for any length of time.

According to the 14-day forecast on the weather network, it’s going to be another week before we see any significant sun. While I’m sure the plants in my gardens will enjoy the good soaking, I’m not so sure about the wildflower seeds I planted in the boxes bordering the patio.

Guess I’ll have to post more pictures at the beginning of July to show you how my garden is growing. :-D