micropoem for the day: do clothes have feelings?

Sometimes I wonder, “Do clothes have feelings?” It’s not the kind of wondering that keeps me awake at night but it’s still wondering. When I open the closet door, are the shirts calling out, “Pick me, pick me.” Does one of the pair of pants say, “Please don’t pick me. I’m not feeling well today.” Or “I’m not my best.” When Adam and Eve put on those first fig leaves, were the fig leaves talking back? Did Queen Elizabeth’s crown get tired of her complaining, “This thing is just too heavy.” Was the crown coming back with, “You’re queen now. Get over it.” The queen might have returned, “Well, it’s a rough job but somebody’s got to do it.”

slippers on the floor
waiting for my feet
what a lonely job

Uncle Bardie’s Song Spotlight: Riders of the Storm

Once a week on Friday, Uncle Bardie celebrates the creativity in others by shining a Spotlight on a movie, a song or a creator. This week’s Spotlight Song is the Doors’ “Riders of the Storm“:

I wasn’t much of a Doors fan. The Rascals, the Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds were the American bands for me. Then I heard the album, “L. A. Woman”, and I was impressed. “Riders on the Storm” was the last song on the album. It could be that it is the Doors’ “A Day in the Life”. It was the Doors’, and Morrison’s, last song, and one of their best.

It opens with rain. Then the keyboards. Then Morrison’s voice and the guitar. There’s a hypnotic effect from the music and a certain spookiness. The music is so powerful that I tend to ignore the lyrics. Inspired by “Ghost Riders in the Sky”, the music has the effect of taking you into a ghost world.

micropoem for the day: paying attention

Sometimes I wonder if Mother Nature isn’t showing off just for me. Yesterday, as I drove back and forth to work, I got to glance at some of her works in progress. There was that bird singing out her birdsong blues. There were those ants marching back and forth, working like there was no tomorrow. There were some flowers of various colors lifting their buds up in praise of the sun. Sometimes I wonder if they are not dancing and their feet are going around in such slow motion, I can’t see the motion. And that moon over yonder ain’t no slacker. This gig on Planet Earth can be such a delight.

trees line the street
their branches arch
shadows fall like leaves
in autumn

Near 500 words: The gift

Alicia wanted to go dancing. Dancing had been her passion since she was a girl. When she was thirteen she had tried out for ballerina.

“Your butt is…well, let’s just say, your butt is too much butt,” the dancing school owner told her. “And besides you’re too short.”

Wasn’t that just the way with dreams?

In high school, she’d liked painting. And she’d been half good the way she was with a lot of things. She was a half good sketcher, a half good runner, a half good writer, and a half good singer. Half good but nothing special. Until she got a camera for Christmas.

It was from her mother. Her mother, who hated Alicia’s dreams being quashed. Every night she went to sleep thinking how she might give Alicia some support. It broke her heart to see her daughter’s face drop when she was told she couldn’t. Her mother wasn’t sure about the camera.

Alicia looked at the camera. It wasn’t much of one but it was all her mother could afford. She’d picked it up at a pawnshop. And she had gotten her daughter two rolls of film.

Alicia took the camera out and examined it. Played around with it the way a boy plays around with his first football, giving it a good once-over before he tosses it. Finally she opened the box with the film. She pushed one of the rolls into place. Without being told or reading the instructions, she knew just what to do. She adjusted the lens, aimed and shot her mother. Click went the camera just like it had been waiting to do.

That first roll of film her mother paid for. “But that’s it,” her mother said. “I don’t have the money for more.”

Alicia picked up the developed photographs a few days later. She waited until her mother came home late that night from her job.

“What’s going on?” her mother asked, giving her a suspicious look. She’d never seen that kind of look on her child’s face. She wasn’t sure whether to be concerned or happy.

“I picked up the pictures,” Alicia’s voice full of all the excitement a girl of fourteen can have.

Her mother dropped her purse on the table. “Well, let’s see.”

The two, mother and daughter, sat at the table as Alicia opened the treasure chest of a packet with her photographs. She shook them out of the envelope and onto the table. Her mother picked up one and she picked up one. Then they exchanged. The photographs were only half good. All of them but one. That one was magical.

That was years ago.

Now Alicia was ready for some dancing. She jumped on the back of Daisy’s motorbike and off the two of them went. They were going dancing, and then Alicia would take her pictures of the whirling dervishes of dancers on the dancing floor.

That night she danced and drank and laughed and took her pictures, knowing that the world had many more photographs waiting for her.

micropoem for the day: many lives

Modern life takes us on one long ride. We rush from one world to another as our heads spin just to keep up. And little time for ourselves. Unless we are in our cars and driving from here to there. On the long shuttles, we blast ourselves out with the music from iTunes or Spotify or we listen to some radio commentator blab blab blab, telling us what we should think. Instead of taking advantage of those moments of peace and quiet.

shuttling from life to life,
work, friends, church,
each life a map
returns me to myself.