Silly Sunflower Rhapsody

Oh sunflower with so many eyes Your seeds lined up like serious soldiers intent on springing forth into some bird mouth. You seem always hopeful even with a katydid chomping on your brow. Oh sunflower you are so powerful filling a moaning viewer with hope to cope with whatever comes one's way. Everyday is beautiful with you in it.

 Oh sunflower, who gave you such beauty? And you don't seem at all snooty. You are the bounty the booty the beauty Oh, did you want to be food in your highest moment of sunflower realization? Did you know you would be food for bugs and birds and humans? Did you stand there waiting for me? "Ah, this is what I was made for, you felt so awed to be who you are.

Sunflower confers with his conscience, his  friend, his  diner, his pest , his  pesty  pest.

 Sometimes sunflower when your petals blow in the breeze do you feel like some soft music is playing?

 Ready for another day to begin. The green of your leaves spreading, shading less brave and hearty plants. You give so much in your, relative to mine, short life. 

sideways?

 From some angles, you are so questionable and enticingly  wild and bright ... such seeming disorder

But when face on, one can see that you are perfectly sensible and so meant to be.

Balancing

Jacaranda tree leaning over hedge.

  All  so different, hanging out together happily.

Twins.

 I sometimes find it hard to let go of trying to control situations that seem difficult. But I find it easy to appreciate some of the plant friends I find on a walk.  And that can  turn me around.

Dark Day

 Even though the air is cool and moist, it feels like a mist of  fear that is  accumulating, as if some desecration has occurred, of which no one may speak.  A forbidden word, a tragedy so personal, yet it seems to reflect the whole in every shattered fragment.
Laughter might break the ice of this bleak feeling. But laughter is not permitted in such a sacred scene. The rule book of the multitudes and the rule book of almost any single being would forbid it.
What is this that has happened? It was taking role playing to another level. Like a child building a nuclear bomb in the basement, first drawing the plans with vibrantly colored markers. “I will make the mushroom green, or no, I’ll make it yellow,” he shouts gleefully with no ill intent.
Let us realize the horrific sadness of this event. Let us get on our knees. No, let us lie face down and kiss our earth. This is not rehearsal. Life is here now and yet we do not know when our life will go.
Do you want to spend your last moment groaning because you forgot to share a bag of peanuts with your mom or your son?  Do you wish you had given your daughter, your sweet daughter a bouquet of little flowers? Do you wish you had offered your friend a meal?  Or told someone that you love them madly, in spite of the fact that their shallowness astounds you.
What is shallowness?  Have you considered that some do not want to swim in the deep, because they somehow know that they do not swim well enough and would sink beneath the waves?
 Take some time to awaken from your dream of desire for your empire.  Your desire for control or fame or shiny things.  What king  or queen rules your dreams and who gave  him or her dominion?
Today I walk on a road alone, my head hung low. Am I ashamed?  A little bit? I took the bait. I thought I wanted something and it only brought me hate. What is hate? Is it the reverse of love?  Is it the outer edge of love? It hurts. Like  wanting to be warm and embracing a space heater and then carrying it on your back. I will offer my hate up. I will sacrifice it for the child inside me who needs to play free. I will place it on a pyre of ideas I thought were mine and realized after I had them that someone who wanted to sell me something, had whispered them into my ear, while I was sleeping. Probably some other dreamer, who only wanted to make a living?  Ideas that might have cost me my face and my heart. I will hand them over to fate.
I will remember the kindness in someone’s eyes. That will be my hope. That will be my dream. To be kindness. To beam kindness. To offer a hand or to bow and walk on.

Oh Frog Oh Flower Oh Butterfly

 

Oh Frog

I remember when you were a little pollywog
swimming in the stinky mucky pond
in the field across the street
We laughing children waded in to catch you and
your brethren swimming like little wondering fish
We didn’t think
We splashed and stared into the murk
and chattered about anything that popped into our
minds
popped out of our mouths like the same air bubbles
that you blew
oh we all had air bubbles
we were all in the stinky pond
And we didn’t have to think.

Then when you grew to a great green noble frog
and made music in the afternoons and nights
beautiful music to fill a heart with mystery
oh great frog what are you calling for?





Oh Flower
I do remember when you were but the tiniest seed
In fact I may have mixed you up with others you were
so tiny like a bit of tiniest straw nothingness
I might have brushed you off my hair and
you fell into that hole and what do you know
in just a day or so
you changed into a sprout of green at first one thin exclamation point
then turning into a semaphore
peeping up through the dirt
I don’t think the dirt hurt
though you were breaking up through her
And you stole bits of her and gathered them into yourself
you brought them up to the light
and offered them to the sun like a little tiny elf
I remember your first proud buds and your
surprising flowers so adept at all those petals
uncurling into perfectness.

 

Oh Butterfly

I remember you eating  flower
oh you were such a frightening worm with  a million little feet
you had strange eyes on your rear
and you were so serious about getting where you had to go
Eating and eating and marching with such intense intention
the flower stood bravely and did not fight you
but offered her self in  meekness
I kind of wondered if you would survive as the
early bird arrived
but chose to dine on your sister instead 
You didn’t look up nor wave good-bye
you might have sent her cordial wishes in your dreams
I wouldn’t know 
 You had another aim and so you
kept on eating and ignored the awful pain and fear
at your sister’s tears
Oh but that was when you were but a caterpillar
You were a  silly roly poly sort of worm
I remember one day you wiggled off
And I didn‘t see you until one day when I saw
you clinging to a leaf
your wings drying
for a brief time you were so vulnerable but it was the risk you had to take
then your wings took shape
aloft aloft into the breeze you teased me as I leapt to reach you.

I saw you on many days after that
You fluttered about the bushes and the flowers
alighting on the branch of the Jacaranda tree
You smiled down at me
from your high place.

I must say that I was a little sad when frog ate you.




Tara Strohmeier copyright June 2012

Possible Space Rock Found in Beach Town Backyard

Space rock, 1" in length, 1/2" wide, narrowing to 1/4"wide at tip.

The eminent scientist, Dr. C.  Barthalomew.

Dr. Barthalomew does the edible matter test.

Dr. Barthalomew checking the weight.

Dr. Barthalomew testing  the velocity.

An event with possibly humongous ramifications transpired today in a sleepy California seaside hamlet.  Absolutely no one is sure just how far this will go. What was once considered an impossibility has likely happened and one can’t be sure that it will not change the course of history on this planet forever.  It is probable that it will, somehow.

What will very likely be hailed as the discovery of the millennium,  may have taken place today,  when a woman bent over to pick up what she thought was but a slightly unusual rock. Immediately upon holding the rock in her hand, she noticed the fact that it was oddly shaped and weighted.
She observed the elongated and slanted shape, somewhat like a rocket ship.

It was also evident that although the rock was dark, like a hidden dell in the late afternoon,  it had some very slight tinges of orange,  like the edge of the sun just before it disappears from a Texas horizon. The woman mused to herself, “have I found something special?...One never knows...” she continued thinking “...what one might find in one’s own backyard.”

She immediately contacted  family friend, Dr. C. Barthalomew,  a renowned scientist and the family cat.  (As a point of reference, it was he who first suggested the famous Schrodinger’s Cat theory to that thief, Schrodinger, who immediately took the idea and published it.  And it made Schrodinger rich and  famous, while Barthalomew still makes do with Purina,)

Dr. Barthalomew ran some experiments and determined that, indeed it may very well be a space rock, which holds the secrets to the universe. Not only is the G-d particle possibly lodged within the body of the space rock. Probably the fundamental truth about what it is that makes things ....well, things....probably that secret is there, as well. Or somewhere in the vicinity.

The rock is now being carefully stored on a shelf,  in a dark back room of the woman’s house.  It is available for study by any other renowned scientists who have a true interest in the fundamental nature of things,  reality,  and what have you.

Weary Cake Baker Making Do

Today I am making a cake. It is from a Martha Stewart recipe that I found on the internet. When the recipe called for buttermilk, I panicked. I immediately thought...perhaps I can put  little chunks of butter in milk.  It would at least look like buttermilk.  But then I knew it wouldn’t have that rich, sourish taste.

Luckily, upon further study of the recipe, I found that Martha had suggested possible substitute ingredients: One could choose between  sour cream or yogurt.  I have both, but chose the sour cream, knowing I probably would have no other use for the tub of sour cream I had. (I had purchased the sour cream when my eldest son was having some guests over for the evening, a few days prior to this one,  thinking I might use it for a dip and didn’t.)  But I digress.

I don’t usually have sour cream.

The recipe also called for three egg yolks, as well as two whole eggs. It suggested I keep the egg whites to use in the frosting.  However, I won’t be using them in the frosting. My son prefers  a concoction of butter and powdered sugar with vanilla or the other equally loved  cream cheese frosting. Now I have three egg whites stashed in the refrigerator and I wonder where they will end up.

 I have lately taken a keener interest in not wasting...food, time, arcane phraseology.  Actually, I have always had an interest. My good character perching like an angel on my shoudler, holds on for dear life, as I rush through my many tasks. It is because I am so overburdened that I  rush and forget and things lie forgotten and go to waste. I don’t have time to pay attention to that old “haste makes waste,” truism.

Why am I so overburdened the observer might ask?  Are you or were you a wanton lifer? Why all this burden?  Any human with a shred of intelligence would not choose to carry such a burden....Oh, you have set yourself up, have you?  You took on too much, took on too many commitments...that then is your problem. Fool. 

There you go.

Suffice it to say that I messed a little with the recipe.  I may have added too much or not enough salt. That is a story in itself.  And then there was my confusion about spooning flour, as opposed to sifting?  Oh dear. And I ended up adding just a little milk, because the batter looked a little too much like cookie dough and not enough like batter. And my aforementioned  son really likes vanilla. Therefore, I may have added just a little too much vanilla.

Very recently, I took the cake from the oven.  It may be due to the fact that I only slept five or so hours last night and  so I am very tired. So,  when I took one of the pans from the oven, it slipped a little. It kind of banged  on the oven door and a good two table spoons of the cake popped out onto the open oven door. That part was good. The inner oven door was immaculate, as your’s truly had washed it very very well.  And it caught that escaped crumbly like a mother catching her airborne child.  YEA! I grabbed a spoon and stuck it right back where it belonged.

The cake cooled on the rack for a good ten minutes and lo and behold, I was able to get it out of the pans and onto  plates with no further mishap. As I backed away from the cooling cake layers I noticed they were a  little short.  They did rise, but they won’t be basketball players, if you know what I mean.  Now it will cool for several  hours, while I gather ingredients for icing and purchase  candles. Oh, did I forget to mention that it is eldest son’s birthday cake?  Yes, he is but  24.

....said the Beggar to the Thief

This is really really easy. First I start with the hairpins and then pretty soon I will have gotten to the socks. Let us hope the socks don't stink. Let us talk. What I mean is, let me talk.
I've always wanted to start a blog in the rain. And so this is perfect. Here it is raining. It just happens to be my birthday. And here you are with your eyes peeled. How good can it get? It can get really good, if the rest of this goes the way it has been going so far.
Some folks like to start with a joke or something shocking, something that will keep you reading in any event. I think I am not that good with punchlines, I'm always tipping you off, so to speak. So, I will go for a shock. The truth of the matter is I am waiting for inspiration to strike me. I would like it to follow with something meaningful, but that is always a matter of perception.
The thing is (and this is very embarrassing), I am happy.
Long ago in a high-school creative writing class--lemmee see, that must have been about five years or so ago-- there was a discussion amongst the members of the class on the merits of happiness as an inspiration to writing. The idea that one could be happy and well balanced and yet still be an interesting writer was doubted high and low. The predominant idea was in fact, one must starve and suffer and exhibit signs of craziness before one would be even mildly interesting.
So, I went off to seek my opposite fortune. I went off to fail and be crazy and starve and suffer, as I knew--because, of the aforesaid discussion, that it must be so if I wished to be a great writer. Unfortunately, in all my starving and craziness and failure and suffering, I had no time to write. Though I did make a fool out of myself, many times over.
Some would dispute that, saying" ahhh , she was one of my favorite B-movie actresses. She was okay with me." (Yes,I've heard them.) But that's where we don't jibe. I was kind of cute. I even had good timing on a few of the lines I delivered. But I failed myself. I failed the artist in me. I did not hold out for something with nutritional value. I know in my heart of hearts, I was a fool plain and simple.
Fortunately for me (diametrically opposed to conventional wisdom), being a fool is often just as good or better for getting there as any other route. Getting there? Getting where? Okay, we are going to have to continue this one-way discussion on another occasion. The rain is having a soporific effect on me and I want to take advantage.