Poetry Friday On Saturday!

Maggie, at Mind Moss, riddled us to have us guess the word to inspire us for a poem or whatever. Okay, Mags, I'm riddling you back! The word was "melt".
This hot sizzling poem is dedicated to Maggie, Queen of Steam!

colourful, captivating

appealing and addictive

women covet and constantly crave you

desperate with desire

we drool and devour your divine taste

counting on you to satiate our hunger

you sooth us and we savour

easily read you

crack your coat

and reach your silky centre

we hoard and hide you

sometimes share you

we shake you

begging you

to keep up the regular rhythm

our own percussion instrument....

cymbals crash

!

we scream out you name

at the peak of pleasure

!

- and then...

the gravity of guilt grounds us

in yet another

"MELTS" in your mouth not in your hands" moment!

Epilogue: You always think outside the box, but you sure don't spend much time there!

Your IQ is not as high as your brother's....

He's a REAL SMARTIE!

HA! HA! HA!

Any answers to this riddle? (If you don't get this, you're not a normal woman or have never had PMS!)

Any titles?

The Artist Says It All

Mother Earth's Tears

On a trip out to BC, I visited many art galleries and loved the influence of the Coastal Native Peoples. Aboriginal people everywhere revere the earth and all that it gives them. I got a card with an artist's depiction of Mother Earth crying and I had to write a Haiku poem about it. The friend who received the card only had the first verse....here is the entire piece.....

Mother Earth's Tears
Slip like blue raindrops,
diamonds falling down through
her long slim fingers
Oh, why does she cry?
Perhaps we sadden her when
we mistreat the Earth,
when we leave our mark
on her land, sea, and water
and we pay no heed,
She cries for our loss
and that we don't hear her
weeping and mourning
There might still be time
to save this sacred place -
It is up to us
to respond to her,
the tall, longhaired raven girl,
shedding tears for us

Mother of Invention
copyright 2005

More Thought-Provoking Blogs

I was only supposed to note 5 but I usually do my own thing with these memes and end up tailoring it to suit me! Besides, Abigail, at Just Another Quick Question, also listed me at the same time as Rapunzel did so I figure it's almost legit! I'm more or less going down my sidebar here.

Beth, at Sheepshead And Other Stories, documents her life as a great team leader in a banking career, her friends and family, and an interesting lost love of her youth - a continuing saga. She can do amazing things with her camera! She could write a brochure on tips for job interviews!

Colleen, at Loose Leaf Notes, can write about anything! Colleen often writes a lot about the culturally hip small town of Floyd, where a myriad of cool events take place such as poetry readings, meet the author and musical happenings. She always posts pictures, often with a clever line of poetry to go with each one. Colleen has published a book as well. What a full life this gal has! I love to just catch a slice!

At Meno's, we see a ton of visitors and it's easy to see why. She writes about so many topics that especially concern women, but we also see many men giving their views which is very interesting. Often, she deals with topics that we have all thought about but have never seen brought up in a public forum. Meno just seems so like all of us that we easily identify with her writing. Somehow, she keeps up with all the individual replies! It opens my mind just to read all the comments.

Steve, at BULLET HOLES IN THE MAILBOX, is just hilarious! Sometimes, he is just off the wall which I find refreshing. He's had a very interesting life and tells stories of his early days as a chef, his childhood and parents, and the challenges of parenting older teenagers. Steve quotes many song lyrics and relates a lot of historical events. I love reading his comments! Steve is a unique combination of silly, light exterior and a sensitive inner self.

You might know Annelisa, at Words That Flow, as the gal who shaved off 2 1/2 feet of her gorgeous hair, raising a ton of money for cancer in honour of her best friend, who is still struggling with this terrible disease. She writes scads of poetry, a great mixture of serious adult and zany, silly children's material. Her pictures of skies and sunsets are beautiful! Annelisa is also the one who filmed and posted the video and my song on You Tube and my blog! She's so vibrant and upbeat!

At Red Dirt Poetry, Red Dirt Girl treats us to some insightful and succinct poetry that is full of metaphors of life. It's always challenging for me to try to figure out what the heck she could mean at all the different levels of depth! The pictures she posts with all she writes go perfectly as if they were painted specifically for her words. Recently, she is offering some of her favourite poems and thoughts about poetry in general. Your brain is definitely spurred into action here!



That's all I'll do today before I lose this delectable temptation to The Blogger's Breakfast again! I'll post some of the more recent blogs I've been reading another day.

From The Beginning!

Rapunzel chose my blog as one of 5 that make her think. I was honoured, They make me think too! They make me re-think when I read all your comments.

As I can't really just pick 5, I'm going to highlight some that I've been reading the longest.

Renny, from Oslo, always tells about various Norwegian customs and posts many pictures. His readership has grown immensely since I first started reading! I think he was one of the first commenters I had!

Barbara, at Looking 2 Live, offers such a variety of topics including her career, religious beliefs, music hobbies, family, pets and friends, She even blogged from France while visiting for a few weeks so we all felt we were with her! What's really neat is that her husband, David, blogs and they comment on each others'!

Barbara introduced me to Old Lady at Eclectic Tales, who always keeps us entertained with wonderfully written tales of her childhood, her family and funny incidents as she was growing up. Some are humourous and others are just the important stuff that makes up life. She has a lot of southern funk and soul!

I also discovered Writing Down The Words while over at Barbara's. Pauline writes wonderful poetry and even when telling about a simple daily event, she uses such descriptive words, it always sounds so beautiful that you can see it and feel it.

I think I might have met Richard, at Forbidden Planet through Barbara as well. Now here is an interesting guy! He is so intelligent and has valuable comments on anything he so chooses. His posts are enlightening and always raise questions, getting you to search your mind for an opinion.

Over at Piffle, meet Diana, a busy mother and Family Doctor. Her posts are often lighthearted and funny and can cover a wide scope of topics from her children, husband and cats, to her love of gardening. She can make you smile with descriptions of the simplest things to which we can all relate!

Maggie, at Mind Moss, shares her busy life as a mother of three, (including twins!) and writes some pretty neat poetry on Fridays. Mona, gets us all going with her word for Poetry Friday, which I often do. She's also quite open about sharing her every day happenings.

(These are some of the earliest blogs I visited and still enjoy. I had several more but I've lost them3 times now and just don't have the juice to complete it today! In another post, I'll highlight the others in addition to some recent finds.)

Poetry Friday! ("step")

Thanks for the word, Mona!

stepping out

step dancing

learning step-by-step

step together step clap

stepping in time

without sidestepping anyone

or stepping on your toes

i'm all about baby steps

slowly and carefully

up the stepladder

it's a two-step problem

and i've such a high instep

step in for me?

i'm stepping aside!

I really have no idea of what this is all about! Perhaps it expresses how I am so not a risk taker and how I depend on others who help me. I am reticent in my approach to learning new things. Sometimes I venture out into the world for a brief time, and then retreat into the safety zone and am quite okay with letting others go ahead of me. When people run me down, I withdraw more and take it to heart. Guess I'm a gentle and sensitive soul!

Any other thoughts as to what it could mean for anyone?

Friendships Re-visited!

When I wrote this, I had just returned from a two-week trip out west visiting several friends who have transplanted themselves there in the past few years and loving it. It was so neat to get a slice of their life and we realize now how much we miss them. True friends are not fair weather friends. They are there for always and amazingly, you can easily pick up right where you left off any time you see them.(It rained almost all the time we were there but that didn't make the visit any less enjoyable! It is truly the people who make it so great!)

Old Friends

Glowing embers
of golden friendships
rekindle quickly and caringly,
flare fondly, fanning the flames
and fostering growth once more
as we re-unite for awhile,
picking up where we left off,
rarely missing a beat
until our "together time" draws to a close --
It is always hard to say good-bye.
The fire subsides and smoulders
but the coals keep us cosy
and warm in our hearts
until the next time we meet.

copyright 2005

Mother of Invention

Pondering The Dance!

Poetry Friday's word is , "dance" brought to you by Mona.

reading the bar codes of life

life has given me many things,
most of which I ponder…
(too much some might say)
but I will
and I do,
perhaps to make sense of the world –
order from chaos,
the very idea on which its creation was based --
gives it a little more form
to which I can better relate – attach
and thus become an integral part.
it is a powerful thirst I seek to quench –
that need to become closely intertwined
with all that exists.
how can we simply "be" and not ask
the questions
or wonder?
like successive waves,
repeated rests,
sustained nothingness….
unless ….perhaps …
we are to enjoy some moments
and some events
simply as separate entities,
taking on a life of their own,
worthy of our respect as such,
only for us to ponder the significance later,
as I always feel compelled to do.
we are truly blessed with this earth
and all life --
the stories, the songs…
yours and mine
are the individual threads
so tightly woven into the fabric
cut and sewn by
The Significant Seamstress
for us all to wear
as we learn the steps
to The Universal Dance ……
and I know that
you too,
have wondered about This Dance.

Mother of Invention, in my dancing shoes.

Irony Massage

The Irony Of It All

Yesterday, I went to an appointment that is sure to be the highlight of my week as it is every time I go. The Massage Therapist!

This girl is young, athletic, energetic and a powerhouse of strength. But I warned her that I'd be her challenge of the week. (I bet they just love to hear that, and the fact you've been on 6 double strength Tylenol a day for a week!)
Ironically, my sore back and shoulder muscles are due to sitting for hours at my computer in a "Chiropractically Unapproved" chair, typing such things as BLOGS!


As the therapist started to spread the oil and work her magic, she commented that my muscles felt really toned.
Wow! Was I proud! (A little surprised too, as I do absolutely nothing but walk for exercise. Well, maybe I was more fit than I'd thought.)


More irony to come.


Not long into the massage, she noted that she'd never felt my muscles so tight and with so many nodules.
There was my clue. At once, I put it together and was instantly deflated.
How pathetic! Toned up? What a cruel compliment!
I just had so many spasm nodules linked together all the way up my spine, that they presented just as if I were a regular buffed-up get-fit exercise fanatic!


And it seems that these toned-up in-shape knots gave plenty of resistance to her efforts. As she wiped the sweat off her brow with a towel and left the room, she looked back saying,"That was the toughest workout I've had all week. Brutal, in fact."

And then I heard her slowly dragging herself upstairs, each foot emphatically punctuating one step at a time, leaving me dejected and painfully wishing a huge crane could hook me on and lift me up off the table!


I need a new chair!

Mother of Invention, looking forward to my next massage!

Racing on Snow!

It's a tough climb up on cross-country skis and at -44 Celsius with wind chill, it's not any easier. Why do these crazed athletes do this to themselves?

My husband has been training four times a week to get his body ready for the upcoming cross-country ski races. We had a slow start to the season so it will be interesting to see how fit everyone else is. There are 2 distinctly different types of ski races; classic and skating.

The classical type of skiing is the one most people are used to seeing and uses a diagonal stride. It involves hours and hours of waxing! This process has to take into account the length of race, the snow temperature and the air temperature. There is grip wax near where your feet are, and glide wax everywhere else. It is extremely high tech and all the Olympic skiers have technicians to do this for them. You can bet that wax is very expensive when you're talking race calibre! My husband has no technicians and has been known to spend 12 hours waxing for a one hour race! The man is a fanatic, but a very patient one!

The ski-skating type of racing which you see my husband demonstrating in the above pictures, (unbeknownst to him!) is so graceful to watch. It looks as though he is magically and effortlessly floating along the surface of the snow! Sometimes he doesn't use the poles and just puts both hands behind his back! This looks amazing to me since I never mastered this style of skiing and was never a strong ice skater. You don't need to wax quite so much for skate-skiing.

The races he's done in both categories are 15k, 25k, 30k, and 55k. He's done the World Masters in Banff , Thunder Bay, and Lake Placid and has placed as high as Silver in his age group. He works so hard at fitness, I think he deserves to get great results. When a few of his patients asked him how he did when he won Bronze one year, he modestly mumbled through his beard something that resembled, "Okay." He's a Gold in my book!

Mother of Invention, thinking he looks just like one of those explorers returning from the South Pole in National Geographic!

Poetry Friday...

Mona had Gary choose this word perhaps because he makes such beautiful, unique teapots, mugs and various other pottery. You just gotta check out his sight!
Mine is a little random today...the old Stream-of Consciousness I love so much! Always seems to give rise to a fractionalized poem, which might be called a Fragile poem without the magazine cut-out phrases.

Much Ado About Tea!

have a cuppa dear

in my fancy bone china cups

fragile

almost transparent

Spode, Royal Albert and Doulton

made in England

or Bridal Rose from Poland

and if you're lucky

Occupied Japan

embossed on the bottom

some hand painted French Limoge

delicate cups stand tall

on gold pedestal legs

a lovely flowered demi-tasse

and even smaller -

a child's pink

doll size tea set

she tells us to choose

but grandma

we both want the one

with the solid daisy handle!

we take turns

as we enjoy

using the family sterling silver tea service

and feel like rich princesses

as we daintily take out sugar cubes

with the etched silver tongs...

grandma has collected

the whole set of mini figurines

and all the bird cards

from Red Rose -

we share those too

and years later

we shall think of her

as we enjoy tea

in her fancy cups

and savour her

renowned butterscotch squares

neatly arranged

on her 3-tiered flowered plate

I do have many of my grandma's tea cups and I have a huge collection of tea cups with the solid flowers or butterflies for handles. They are very rare and most are expensive, but I just love them!

The Aurora Borealis (The Northern Lights)

Mere words can not ever do justice to the beauty of this amazing phenomenon, but here is my attempt.

I am taken back to a hot July night in 1973, at the summer camp where I worked as a counsellor. The staff was gathered in the screened porch munching on the customary peanut butter and toast, having just left our cabins with the kids settling down in their beds. Guitars were playing and we were singing James Taylor songs when the Trip Hut and Nature Area guys burst through the door.


"Ya gotta get out here, The Northern Lights are just amazing!" they announced excitedly.


Leaving the gaiety of the snack area, we filed out and our mood immediately changed to a calm and hushed tone. We stood transfixed on the hill overlooking the lake, staring up in wonder. What we beheld was a beauty unparalleled to any other.


The red, blue, purple and orange were unusually rich and vivid. We were stunned. They were more active and brilliant than any of us had ever seen.
It was a purely magical and spiritual moment, and we all felt that we had witnessed The Creator's work so closely, that we were an interwoven part of His Tapestry.


The lights danced for us and the curtains shimmered like a rainbow for two hours until, they quietly dimmed and slipped behind the stage, bowing their goodbyes. How humbled, yet honoured we were that special night.


Several times since, when all the summer camp people have seen each other, we have recalled that night with a, "Do you remember when..?" It's almost as if we still can't quite believe what we had seen years ago. And indeed, how could we ever forget?



Mother of Invention
If you have never seen The Aurora Borealis, I so hope you will be lucky enough to see them for yourself.

Poetry Friday/Saturday! "Hide"

Poetry Friday became Saturday! Mona gave the word, "Hide". Two entries today!

hidden discovery

cover your eyes

i'm counting

hide-and-go-seek

game of life

but you'll never find me -

(heck, I'M still looking!)

deep inner thoughts

sometimes hidden from me

i even sleep in a hide-away bed

camouflaged slumber

in my escape place

ever searching

for

The Clue To The Hidden Treasure

a new Nancy Drew

i'm the ghost writer

but

i can't even read it

or crack the code

to solve the mystery

of me

Take #2!

me

concealed

sheltered

shielded

protected

out of sight

obscured

unexplained --

no wonder i can't find myself