Redden, then blacken,
then become any color
in a bird’s feathers.
double or single
“Rose of Sharon” or “Althea”
sunny or cloudy
Stoneware bowl
imagines being …
balsa bird.
When they bloom,
each day is sunny.
Food’s good too.
I glanced down and broke stride just in time to avoid stepping on this snake, then took some photos. I was briefly puzzled that the snake seemed to have chosen dappled sun for basking when full sun was available, but the whole driveway may well have been in dappled sun when the snake chose a spot earlier in the morning. It’s more fun to imagine that the snake had to rethink choosing looks over practicality.
While shoehorns with short handles make me bend over too much, those with long handles slip off my heel prematurely. The intermediate length of a big serving spoon’s handle works well. The bowl of the spoon cradles my heel and stays there until I want it to move. Shoehorns are too flat for cradling.
Tho slow at learning physical skills, I got the hang of using the spoon as a shoehorn quickly. The trick is to tilt the handle forward while lifting the spoon out from between heel and shoe. (Pulling straight up would scrap the edge of the bowl along the Achilles tendon.) The lower leg is in the way, so a slight tilt to the side is needed along with the forward tilt. This is simpler than it sounds. If I can do it easily, so can most people w/o specific disabilities.
Does the spoon really need to be brushed stainless steel like mine? No, but it does need a thin bowl that is smooth on the outside as well as the inside. Go for metal to be sure. The spoon will last forever and be seen often, so it’s worthwhile to get one that’s eye-friendly.
« There is a crack in everything. »
« That’s how the light gets in. »
~ Anthem by Leonard Cohen ~
I quoted from the song the way I and some others remember it. The phrase “a crack” is repeated in some transcriptions of the first quoted line, but the line scans better w/o the repetition.
Cracks ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #341
Lifeless? No, leafless.
They hold their breath all winter,
exhale leaves in spring.
Learn from the past and
be ready for the future.
Live in the present.
Choosing images to go with the lines of my aphoristic haiku was easy (for the past), serendipitous (for the present), and beset with false starts (for the future).
I remembered one of the photos I took among the ruins of ancient Greek temples at Paestum in the 1970-s. So stark, so sad, so in the past. Dwelling on the past would rot the mind. Learn from it and move on.
The future is fluid, unpredictable, possibly dystopian. Plan and prepare, but be ready to change plans if an unlikely future unfolds. (It will.) I wanted an image that was noncommital but not just blurry. After several false starts, I took a tight closeup of swirling brushwork in a small painting by an unknown artist, bought decades ago at a charity sale.
Wanting something joyful and ephemeral for the present, I culled some photos of flowering trees taken in 2020. One jumped out. The camera catches a bee hovering for a moment where it enhances a larger overall composition. The admonition to “be in the moment” is like the haiku’s final line and could be tweaked to give this post a title that winks at the final image.
Simple shapes
sing silent songs
for those who listen.
Best known today for his theorem about right triangles, the ancient mystic Pythagoras was also big on numbers. How do they relate to each other in pure math? How might they help explain the natural world? How does changing the length of a lyre string affect its pitch? Pythagoras and friends took the first tentative steps toward understanding the physics of music.
While many haiku poets don’t count syllables, those that do often abide by rules that Pythagoras would have liked. In the traditional 5-7-5 form, the total number of syllables is prime (as are 5 and 7). Likewise in the shorter 3-5-3 form. Prime numbers were a big deal to ancient mathematicians. They are still a big deal for encrypting credit card numbers in e-commerce.
Pythagoras would have liked the syllable counts 3-4-5 in this post’s haiku for a different reason. They form the smallest Pythagorean triple. (A right triangle could have sides that are 3, 4, and 5 units long.) While most triples like this are too big or lopsided for 3-line poems, somebody might use 6-8-10.
No longer pretty,
potted tulips catch my eye
until petals fall.
Planted crocus long ago,
only in their beds, U know.
Staying there was such a yawn,
some went forth to grace the lawn.
Call this doggerel if U must,
but I hold a sacred trust.
I will seize each fleeting chance
to be as cheeky as my plants.
Mellow Curmudgeon 