Artful
in its soft demureness,
pink pretends
a lack of sureness,
but I see
its aery blush
as preternatural
victory flush:
Ceres’ triumph
everlasting,
winter’s death grip
counterblasting.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
Tag Archives: pink
September 3.18
A kid with a cone
in raspberry shoes
teaches a lesson
we can all use:
know your priorities
focus, be serious
(a chinload of ice cream
is not deleterious);
practice makes perfect
as life goes along —
if you’re not getting sticky,
you’re doing something wrong.
I don’t know who took this picture, but I know that’s Emmy braving the hard work
of learning how to eat an ice cream cone. Sometimes work is indeed its own reward.
Happy Labor Day, dear reader!
Connections: May 4.18
A lather of spring pinks
foaming panoply
peppermint, strawberry, cherry
ice cream canopy.
Connections: April 21.17
Connections: August 6
Just when I think
the yellow and pink
are all that the eye can take in
a butterfly skims
like daydreams and whims
to flaunt how I was mistaken.
Connections: June 11
Connections: June 1
Connections: April 17
My neighbors have a tree
confused as it can be
it cannot think
if white or pink
so bedazzles dually.
Connections: February 18
Ionic promise
Genesis green
pinked with labor
slow
ever slow
perhaps not vow
of what’s to come
but covenant with
the exuberant
Now.
The dad thing
There were some good lines in M*A*S*H. One in particular was spoken by my favorite character, Winchester, when he said to Hawkeye something like “You’re lucky: you have a dad. I have a father.” He said his father was a good man, a good father, but that was different from being a dad.
Indeed.
I had a dad. It wasn’t that he was the warm cuddly type; he wasn’t. He was a bit distant and certainly undemonstrative (except when Notre Dame played), but still he was a dad. And I’ve known other dads with daughters; I’ve seen the bond, part genetic and unavoidable, part deliberate and conspiratorial. Despite the occasional head-butting, there remains between them an invisible wink which says “We rule!”
My son was a stay-home dad when his daughter was born, and they enjoyed each other mightily. There was trust and security, yes, but also that mysterious shared scoff at the rest of the world.
She’s nine now, and last week they ran a race together, a race not to be first but to finish. That life lesson. The weather was hideous but there they were, in step, headed to the finish line, her bright pink duct-tape bow bobbing in the icy fog.
I look at the photo and I think of being in step with my dad those last years of his life, when it was Dad, me, and the dementia: the caregiver’s race with the inevitable. Dementia outruns the caregiver every time. But the life lessons apply, and it’s the running to the end that may, after all, be the winning.
Our dads probably taught us that.
Pretty In Pink and Mr. HuffNPuff: life lessons
