What gardening sage
will I have to be
to fathom the how
of this galaxy?
I can fathom the why:
to make our lives livable.
That is an axiom
I hold is unquibabble.
It grew from a blob
aesthetically dubious,
like tentacled shmoo
squatly lugubrious.
I can’t figure how
such blithe transformation
from dowdy drab bulb
to winged constellation.
With thanks to my dear friend Donna,
who sent these winter wings.
There once was a housefinch named Louie
who fretted crabapples were hooey:
“They pucker my beak
and strain my physique!”
And he flew away chirping “p-tooey!”
Once again, dear reader, the urge to add Burma Shave.
If you were light
and could play on a rose,
would you slide,
do you suppose,
down velvet hill,
where shadow splash
marks your soft plop
with grinned panache?
Then would you climb back up,
find that shy frill,
and pirouette there
in lucent trill?
Would you leap tip-to-tip
with weightless toes,
like drunken sprite
in perfumed throes?
Under, behind
each vale and peak,
would you dodge and dive
in hide-and-seek?
Would you stop perhaps
and oly-oly-ocean-free
to bask in the stillness
of unfurling reverie?
There is mystery here, dear reader. Apparently some call “olly-olly-oxen-free.” I was intrigued to see that some people who were kids in the Chicago area called “oly-oly-ocean-free” because that’s where I was a kid and that was our cry. So, oxen or ocean, nobody knows, though I did like the suggestion that olly/oly came from all-ye as a call at the end of the farm day to put everything, including the oxen, away for the night.
I remember it as inviolable. Once called, nobody could be tagged. Non-negotiable.
Many thanks to Susan Rushton for the beautiful photo!
Writer’s Lament
I look out the window,
searching the sky,
one vast lumpy cloud
like a wakeful bed
where sleep has been sought,
demons of night manacled,
resisting,
in tangles of blankets.
Just so the sky
in its tumbled, restless look.
No words there.
I search the ground,
cold sticky mud,
chevroned in black stems
cracking in a wind that crawls
on its belly through dead herbs,
pulling useless things.
No words there.
In drawers full of some-days
which become nevers,
no words.
In closets,
epaulets of dust
on heedless hollow shoulders,
I fumble in every pocket,
surprised by gloves
limp and soft, snuggled
like sleeping kittens.
But no words.
In sepulchral boxes
crowded with the mute past,
pages and faces that crumble,
where Then is more alive than Now,
longings, wonderings,
but not one word.
Others wander in this word desert
but it’s a lonesome place.
And so, dear reader, have I tried to grapple with yet another writer’s slump. I figured since I can’t find words to write about anything else, I might as well write about the slump.
When I write the first word of something, I have an idea what the last word will be. What a laugh. Writing has its own idea of where it’s going, and it’s rarely where I thought I was steering it.
Ten years ago, when I was 70, I promised myself I would do two things: learn how to bake biscotti, and start a blog. My writing mate Tamara graciously set up the blog for me, and I began, tentatively, intending to write mostly about caregiving, and hoping to learn how to tell a story. In August of 2015 Tamara prodded me to try photos as prompts. I was hooked.
So, as with all my writing, I did not go where I thought I would.
I’ve always been Oddment(s), but the themes have morphed from “Connections” to “Disconnections” to “Coping” to “Coping, but barely,” all reflective of my life and the life around me.
But the subtitled quest remained: In search of story. I can make biscotti, but I still can’t tell a story.
So I ask myself, “What at 80?”
The table is set,
pristine and inviting,
the menu unknown
as of this writing.
I wish you, dear reader,
a stew of your choice:
a toothsome concoction
for palate and voice,
words for your writing,
health for your soul,
a generous helping
of vision and goal.
May loved ones and muses
fill all the seats,
your fingers and spirit
be ever sticky from sweets.
Thanks yet again to photographer S.W. Berg,
and kudos to The Baker’s Wife Bistro,
Hampton, VA, for the ambience.
I wish you a good year next, dear reader, with my thanks for your presence here, and I dig down to the very last remnants of depleted optimism to express some small hope for peace in our future. I do find our little corners of blogdom are places for peace. Plus a few laughs. Some nostalgia. A touch of snark. Communal sighs. The occasional coffee-spit on the keyboard. Thus is peace had, and I’m most grateful for it. Thank you for helping me bungle through 2022!
Maureen
Jeweled confection —
how dare we bite in? —
so perfect a morsel,
toothmarks would be sin.
The art of the little,
meticulous craft,
we must linger over,
admire, fore and aft.
From various angles
its magnificence savored,
the eyes are the palate
to guess at how flavored.
To taste with the eye
is the manner of some,
while others prefer
to taste with the thumb.
To find telltale hole,
the proof of the borer,
causes mannered among us
to recoil in horror.
What weaselly ways,
what etiquette lack,
to know what’s inside
and then put it back!
You may recall, dear reader, the indignities of my youth, with blue jeans not allowed. Not proper, said my mother. And yet — and yet! — there were the Fannie May or Mrs. See’s chocolates all pristine in the aerial view, but — what’s this? — a hole in the bottom? A hole which just happens to be the exact same size as my mother’s thumb? This is proper?
Thus did I learn that proper is a relative concept. My mother being the closest of relatives.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
The perfect world
isn’t real
except in goo
of warm pinwheel.
Perfection twice:
Christmas then,
and today rich air
savored again.
My wish, dear reader,
whatever your feast:
may memory and hope
be your yeast.
The other day I had the privilege of teaching my grandchildren about yeast dough and sticky buns, closely related to the brown sugar rolls Grandma O’Hern used to make, and also the Christmas breakfast of their dad’s childhood. Once again the kitchen was crowded, not just with teenagers, but with ghosts happily looking on. (They were happy because they didn’t have to clean up. Sticky buns are so named because of the state of the kitchen.)
I don’t think I look for a perfect world, though I think I’d like it; I do, however, look for a world with some sanity, and that seems completely elusive most days. Then comes a day to bake with grandchildren and I see perfect order in the universe.
There are many beautiful traditions at this time of year; whichever ones you treasure, dear reader, may they bring a moment of peace and wonder to your heart.
My tree is still in pieces,
the cookies are unbaked,
my cards still in the box,
Christmas mood cannot be faked.
I’m tired and feeling old,
I can’t pretend I’m jolly.
I’d like to arm myself
with Scrooge’s stake of holly.
Crazed, near-sighted drivers,
shoppers all phone-zoned,
news of inhumanities,
life bewailed, bemoaned
tarnish all the tinsel,
make carolers sing flat;
I need to find a rabbit
to pull out of my hat,
something made of magic
that laughs along with me
even though to others
we’re total mystery.
Aha! It’s just the thing
to make the dismals better:
from my haute couture collection,
a rousing Christmas sweater!
When I was in junior high, I wanted blue jeans. The in-crowd wore them. My mother would have none of it: blue jeans were not what proper girls wore. Wait. Did I say I wanted to be proper? I wanted to be cool! Mom and I had this divergence of opinion all the time, and thus did I learn to live with not being cool. Therein lies the explanation for my bewilderment at why Christmas sweaters are so much maligned. They are deemed ugly, uncool. I like my Christmas Duck sweater! It’s my mother’s fault.
One may argue for a goose, and I grudgingly concede this might indeed be a Christmas goose, but you know my feelings about geese, dear reader. Ergo, it’s a duck.
With thanks to Susan Rushton for the photo of my mood!
Those of you who have kindly read along for a few years know that for Christmas I put together scrapbooks for my sons about some aspect of family history. That these scrapbooks hand down to them a history according to me is totally obvious — and satisfying.
This brilliant idea of mine has its flaws, however: it makes an infernal mess.
And it forces a reckoning. One cannot dig through boxes of family flotsam without some creeping sense of clairvoyance in one’s forebears.
Case in point: my mother carefully noted in my baby book that on 30 May 1943 I first stuck my foot in my mouth. How did she know?
Oddments 