Elegy for Eunice: Mono No Aware, For dVerse Poets 5/20/24

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When I was little, life seemed like one long summer day.

Elegy for Eunice

Most who might have mourned her
have followed or preceded her to dust.
Those few who still do,
think of her less often every year.
It is only in the fleeting moments
when beauty she might have appreciated
crosses our vision
or a song she once favored is heard
that a sweet pang of missing her
stabs into our busyness
and we remember
how she guided our footsteps,
taught us a gentle way with animals,
prodded us to attain more
and let us go.
This is an elegy to one we have forgotten
too easily and too soon.
One that calls her back to mind,
restores her to her rightful place.

The dVerse Poets prompt today is to write a haibun making use of mono no aware–the beauty of transience . My post is not a haibun, but I hope it meets the rest of the prompt. You can see how others responded to the prompt HERE.

Mono no aware is not simply a morbid attitude toward impermanence. Rather, it is accepting “the beauty of passing things.” As such, Mono no aware lies at the heart of Japanese poetry. Basho, the progenitor of the haibun, exemplifies mono no aware in an excerpt from his “Narrow Road to the Interior” that you can read on the Dverse Poets prompt above.

The Numbers Game #22, May 20, 2024

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Sorry, Morrie. No more room in the hammock.
More Hat Face
2012
With Blue in Peru
Ollie has decided he wants to go, too.
My Senior prom
Bob’s gift to me our first Xmas. He made it..two mouthpieces play two different notes out of the same instrument at the same time. Gongs and a wooden marimba as well.
The eighth and ninth muses.
Big smoke, small smoke
Chapala, Mexico
1968, Portugal, World Camput Afloat
Second office

Click on Photos to Enlarge.

Welcome to “The Numbers Game #22”  Today’s number is 143. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find under that number and include a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.

This prompt will repeat each  Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below.

“Sunday School” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 655, May 19, 2024

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Sunday School 

Memories dancing through my mind
sing lyrics of the hopeful kind—
church on Sunday, exultation
of a once-united nation.
Loud amens expressing hope,
unheedful of that misanthrope
squirreling away those nuts
of “ifs” and “whens” and “ands” and “buts.”
Forgetting brotherhood’s kind needs.
Choking peace lilies with weeds.
“Make American Great Again!”
expressed with a malevolent grin.
White-robed zealots burning crosses,
Proud Boys complaining of losses
promulgate a hateful nation
fearful of miscegenation.
Ladies sipping afternoon tea,
if you still have hopes for liberty,
rise up against that chanting mass,
hateful, vile-filled and crass.
They are the very anti-thesis
to those lessons taught by Jesus
back when we were innocent,
believing truth was heaven-sent.

 

Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl Wordle are: forget church dancers tea robes weed sing exultation hope squirrel nuts amen. Image by Ben White on Unsplash

A Whiff, For SOCS, May 18, 2024

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A Whiff

What’s that smell
that spray can’t quell?
Smells a bit
like puppy shit,
but never fear,
no puppies here.
It comes alone
from Mom’s cologne.
Efforts relentless
to turn her scentless?
Those ends we sought
have turned to naught.
Each day or two?
A new pee-yew!!!!

 

Without a doubt, the absolute worst perfume ever invented on Earth was Ben Hur. Guaranteed to empty a room the minute its wearer entered!

 

For SOCS: What’s that smell? For this challenge we had to write stream of consciousness with no editing….Phew.