Mainely Write

As promised yesterday, when I shared pictures from Memorial Day at the ocean side, here are Wednesday's pictures taken on my way home from tutoring.  Actually, I kept driving just a little bit, past my house, in order to get to the beach.  I'm so grateful for the phone's camera.  It really does do a good job with photos and video.

It was a gorgeous spring day with very few other humans out there.  I love coming out here between seasons: when the snow has left and the tourists have not yet arrived, and when the tourists have left but the snow has not yet arrived.  They are both times when the wind is very present though.  I'm posting a video also, but the wind was pretty wild up on the ledge.  So good luck hearing the crash of waves!  It was hard to record wave noises, I could barely hear the waves and gulls myself!

Speaking of gulls, I tried unsuccessfully to get a video of some soaring.  They seem to enjoy gliding on the wind currents.  One looked like it was tr…

My slice of life today is from yesterday - Memorial Day - spent in our old childhood stomping grounds...

A place where we played as kids...

Jagged rocks
Seaweed
Hiding shy baby crabs
Between tides
On our playground
Periwinkles getting
Free rides
Tossed skyward
To the deep
Cold pool
Mussels clinging
Tightly, shutting out
The chatter of
Those who wondered
At the darkness of a life
Encased in
Such a purple
Shell.

Yesterday, with one of my brothers, my sister, my husband, sister-in-law and son, we ate lobster and fish at the restaurant across the road, then took a stroll on the beach that we used to roam on our own for hours.  No one drowned.  The water is too cold for that.  No one kidnapped us.  No one wanted us.
Upon closer inspection of this clam shell....
there was a snail living inside quite happily (I'm assuming), though he was pretty well stuck in there.  I think if he just kept walking he could push the two halves apart and get out really.
I loved this piece of root that …

It's Poetry Friday - like you didn't know! And all things poetical are being hosted at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme by Matt Forrest Esenwine.  Go there for more links to some super poetry and poetry related posts!  And while you are there, congratulate Matt on signing a book contract for Flashlight Night!

Wow!  The end of the school year is careening towards us!  The one thing I really don't miss about teaching, is the packing of the room at the end of the year!  The one thing I loved about teaching was working with kids, especially in reading and writing.  Now I get to do the reading and writing and no packing or unpacking!  I read and write with a number of second graders on Mondays, and enjoy this time, helping out even if only once a week for an hour and a half.  Sometimes I read with students and sometimes we work on writing (my favorite!).

I've had the privilege of working with one second grader a few times, and always at writing time.  While there, we focus on ge…

No Longer Will I Take For Granted

No longer will I take for granted
The sparkling of the seas,
The faces of my grandchildren,
The shivering of leaves;
No longer will I look at them
And not quiver at their worth;
I will not take for granted
Any thing upon this earth.
Green shard of unmown grass,
Brittle crooked branch of tree,
Spun words woven into story
Read with child upon my knee;
I will not skim through my days
Just seeing only parts;
I hope to peer more deeply
Into all life's inner hearts.
I will not lightly just assume
All things will still be there
So surely I will someday
Have some time to think and stare
At all the beauty, all the bold,
All the colors wrapping;
Now's the hour to take it in,
No life should be spent napping.
Awake and take no thing for granted -
To stay this way forever -
For in a twinkling things can change
And always becomes never.

©Donna JT Smith, 2015


Oooh, I almost forgot - my scissors poem is on Michelle H. Barnes' Today's Little Ditty, w…

What would I do without all the challenges and commenters and opportunities to comment on writing?  I was so busy the past two months, it struck me that the only thing that kept me writing poetry for that many days straight, was this awesome group of people that I have never even met.

Now, I know I haven't mentioned commenters by name.  That would be toooo difficult, though there are a few very regular commenters that I've come to look for - like talking on the phone and though there's a lull while you are speaking, you know there's someone on the other end of the line listening (or reading in this case).

But here is a list of some important "players" out there that I want to thank - some colleagues and fellow bloggers and poets who kept me going in March and April!

Two Writing Teachers hosting the Slice of Life Challenge and all the teachers who contributed and commented were an immense motivator to "just keep swimming!"  What a month of March!

Be…

It's Poetry Friday at Random Noodling with Diane Mayer.  Join everyone there in reading more wonderful poetry!

Jone MacCulloch at Check it Out had students write "what it knows" poems and put them on postcards to send out to other poets.  I received this wonderful poem about the Titanic and what it knows.  I love "it knows the taste of the salty ocean".  Thanks, Malachai, for this marvelously sensory rich poem.
My comment to Malachai on Jone's site:
"Today I received Malachai’s postcard poem about the Titanic! Thank you so much, Malachai. You had to do some research to do this one! I learned that the Titanic was built in Ireland. I didn’t know that! I thought it had been built in England.
I have actually been to Halifax, Nova Scotia, visiting the cemetery where many of the people who died on the Titanic are buried. And I’ve been to Newfoundland where there are memorials and remembrances of the lives lost in their area of icebergs. My grandp…

Made fish chowder this morning.  I bought a nice piece of haddock yesterday morning and decided I'd have some good hot chowder for lunch today.  The sun is out but it's a bit breezy and cool, so the chowder feels and tastes good on a day like today!


I had a call in to my doctor this morning, but no one has returned it yet.  I guess they are not too concerned anyway.  So I spent some time doing my own research online (insert doctor's wince and eye roll here - but it's their own fault for not calling me back).  What is happening appears to be fairly normal perhaps...or not - but I'm leaning toward the normal.  And with that, I will cautiously wait for the eyelid twitches, the light glare and the plopping rainsplots moving across my eye "windshield" to diminish over time.

I had eyelid twitches for quite a while after the original surgery, and they went away - the twitches, not the eyelids.  Evidently my eyelids don't like people touching them.  I am thin…

*The following post was half way done on Monday.  I planned on finishing the poem when I got home, but couldn't quite do it, so it is for today's Slice of Life instead.

It's a muggy Monday* in Maine.  And today I get my right eye "lasered" and hopefully fixed so that I can again see the world clearly.

Eyesight is a wonderful thing when it works well, and I have been blessed to have eyesight that was perfect for most of my life.  Aging has caused cataracts to form, but new surgery methods have made it less of an ordeal than it was in the "olden" days.

As this secondary cataract formed, I wondered if this is what the lawyer ads were about when I saw them years ago.  "Were you dissatisfied with your cataract surgery?"  "Problems after cataract surgery?"  I always wondered what that meant.  What would happen?  I now wonder if it was the secondary cataract forming on the membrane in the eye.  If so, I would have been one of those who was …

It's a muggy Monday morning in Maine.  And today I get my right eye "lasered" and hopefully fixed so that I can again see the world clearly.

Had it done, will write tomorrow...  Too hard to see tonight.  Wait until tomorrow.

I'm in experimental mode here this morning.  I just got a new Lytro camera that does a variable focus.  Photos have to be uploaded to their site for sharing the link to it or embedding it in Facebook or on my blog, but still pretty neat for a photo presentation.  I do have the flat .jpg stored also,  It's kind of a neat looking camera, too.


Ginger here is looking at a ball my husband is holding, because every time I wanted her to be cute, she put her ears back and jumped anticipating that I'd throw the camera to her!


Click on the play button and you will move around in the photo some.  If you stop it and click on the ball in the background, Ginger's face will be out of focus and the ball will be in focus.  If you then click on her nose, the background will be out of focus and her face will be in focus.  You can make it full screen by clicking on the box at the lower right, and then you can see the effects better! Try it and let me know what you think.

It's Poetry Friday, and though I am cutting back on posting poems, today, in honor of one of the first tulips I've come across in three seasons, I am posting an acrostic to a tulip.

I wish tulips were longer-lasting and had more flowers per plant, but then I guess they'd be a rose...and a rose by any other name - well, obviously would be just as sweet.  But a tulip by any other name -  actually a tulip by any other name would still not smell that sweet.  Because no matter what you call it, it is still what it is...not the most fragrant posy on the block.  And when a tulip is done being a tulip, it is really quite ugly.  It is however, quite lovely for a while.

So, that said, here's an acrostic to a tulip that is being pretty for the time being, even if it doesn't smell much like anything but wet dirt.

(Onelip)
Tulip

Two green leaves
Underneath a
Living goblet of
Intensely red
Portly petals.

I'm so sorry.   I thought I was going to stop after onelip, but I've dec…

We have a wonderful place in our little town transfer station.  Maybe everyone has one, I just haven't visited any other transfer stations.  At any rate, we have a wonderful section called "The Mall" where you can drop off good used items that other people may come and take home.  Like a giant (well, not so giant maybe) yard sale only free.

I have gotten some unique and wonderful items at "The Mall" over the years.  I found some nice Pyrex custard cups; some Melamine dishes my cat eats from; two clear glass punch cups for fancy grandchild dining times; some small, cute, old juice glasses; a tricycle; a child's wooden bench; two Little Tykes chairs; a collapsible play tunnel...and last week I hit the jackpot!  I found some books for beginning readers that must have been just dropped off.  I picked up 50 books!  There were a couple of Biscuit books, a series of animal non-fiction beginning readers, Jan Brett's The Mitten...just so many.

I am working with…

Remember my cataracts and my new, improved, wonderful sight? In October, a year after my initial cataract surgery, my sight in my right eye began to deteriorate. I found myself staring at, or "looking through" things and creating two images, instead of focusing.  I didn't know why that seemed easier than looking at something and focusing my eyes on it, but it kept happening. 

Now it has progressed from a minor focusing issue to not being able to see anything but blurry shapes out of my right eye. That one was the more difficult surgery of the two.  I am getting a secondary cataract in it, and most likely the other one is also developing a cataract.  It is a fairly common malady. 

My sight in the right eye is akin to applying Vaseline to the eye and trying to see out of it.   I find it difficult to drive and read, as the two eyes just don't play well together!  Fortunately, if I really need to see well, I can close that eye and use my left eye.

On Monday, …

Today is Poetry Friday hosted at Elementary Dear Reader.

Spring is arriving slowly, but it is happening in some places, as we discovered on a recent visit to see my daughter's family!
(As a Monday, May 4, note: We are back in Maine and it did not follow us.)


Welcome Spring

Sweet Spring had not shown up here yet,
And so we took a drive
To find out just where Spring had stopped
And unpacked when it arrived.

We had to drive 400 miles
To see Spring's satchel spewed -
And if they weren't such splendid things
We'd call this littering rude!

Forsythia and daffodil
And cherry blossoms scattered
Well cushioned in the fields of green
Replaced all worn and tattered.

Today we drove to greet the Spring
And met it face to face,
And told Spring it was welcome north
To unpack and warm our place!

Donna JTSmith, 2015 copyright