Sunday Sounds
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The game is on in the background
The woodstove clicks warming the home
Soft padding as the kitty roams
Dominoes clatter marking next round
Loved ones chatter, glasses clinking
A great Sunday to my thinking.
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Sunday Games
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Playing games on Sunday afternoon
No one will win anytime soon
Twelve more rounds of this game to play
Keeping our dots incognito
Until our turn at dominoes
Family chatter causing delay
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Practice Makes Permanent
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Visualize letting go
Egolessness is there
Sending, taking daily
Samsara evasion
Everything’s workable
Loving kindness to all
*
Om – open mind relax
Future is the presence
Yielding to compassion
Om – relinquish control
Understand discomfort
Reflection is the way
*
Meditation practice
Ahimsa is the goal
Invite self-awareness
Testing, acting, healing
Resisting judgement
It is always practice
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Winterizing
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So clever are these furry squirrels
Tails twitch, swirl, gathering food
So rude, around branches they twirl
Hurling leaves, nuts from altitude
Barking with attitude, spunky
Chunky things, feeder invaders
Compost raiders, birdseed junkies
Charm school flunkies, hawk evaders.
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Burnt Sienna
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A new box of crayons waxy points undented
Deep in my mind the fragrance is cemented
It’s wasn’t until I saw a bald cypress tree in fall
That I had any idea what burnt sienna was at all
Detours out of thick black lines once lamented
In reality my vocabulary augmented
*
My world is colored by crayolas pigmented
Names partnered with hues gave me the wherewithal
To precisely describe my world big and small
Into my memory these colors are cemented.
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(A Sonnetina Quatro)
Taxodium distichum
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You think it’s dead but instead it’s going dormant
In summer scenes it looks evergreen, so tricky
*
Not a Christmas tree you see it’s deciduous
In winter’s glare it’s completely bare of needles
*
Unlike other trees it sends up knees for breathing
Found in swampy spots and parking lots it adapts
*
Round top is skyward bound, leaves cover ground gently
Bumper lode of spherical cones explode softly
*
A tree is waters dark and large parks, majestic
A tree of mystery and beauty, Bald Cypress
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Traditions
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Holidays roll around
Anticipated but always more quickly
Than you thought, and with them
Come an avalanche of rituals, customs, stories.
What is your tradition?
*
In all the chaos and stress
And all of the change-up of daily routine
What we do the same each year calms us in the chaos.
My calm is making cranberry orange bread from scratch
Hand chopping, hand mixing, warm and heart warming.
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(A Sonnetina Cinque)
Decisions
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Two roads diverged in a wintery wood
They will converge again with different tales
One trail to the creek, one between hardwoods
One should keep your feet dry, boulders to scale
Other entails wet rocks hops and strong deadwood
Each would be a challenge, now to pick a trail
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(A Wreathed Sestet with a nod to Robert Frost)
Tsuga canadensis
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Where there is now a nascent hemlock stand
A grand hemlock of many years once stood
Should you want to know the story of the land
Stumps are shorthand for rains and winds withstood
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Autumn Snowfall
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An autumn snowstorm has all the allure
Burgundy and golden leaves fall
With the unique snowflakes
A surprising
Artwork
Berserk
Mesmerizing
Looks like nature’s mistake
Colors mixed with no color at all
A collection of all nature’s grandeur
Consistently proving she’s not a bore
She just can’t help but to enthrall
Puts all the time she takes
Slowly devising
Field work
Fireworks
Emphasizing
The seasonal outbreaks
Bright sun, fall leaves, gray rains, snow squalls
An autumn snowstorm has all the allure.
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A Picture and a Poem 