(This is a five sentence story encouraged by the followers of Chuck Wendig.)
Bubbles filled the sink at precisely seven o’clock. The dishes danced a conga line, vying for the first position in line. When the whistle blew, there was a flurry of jostling. Splashing and singing with joy, the coordinated place settings suddenly blushed. A whistle blew at eight o’clock and the cupboards filled with clean, politely stacked dinnerware
Words, light as butterflies,
Will intrigue, tempt,
Illustrate a moment,
Soft as light,
When a buttercup gives
Its first kiss.
Litter dog,
your task of cleanup
is monstous
as we walk the shores
of the river.
You bring your treasures
to the bag of endings
I carry.
I organized my solar system, Milk on the top shelf, Little bottles below Organized by spiciness. It was a clean solar system. Then came life. Someone moved my orange juice. Hidden from me lying sideways on the lowest shelf Means I lost my moon. The rotation of the planets Fruit and Vegetable became skewed, bizarre. The old slipped quietly away, Rotting and needing more Than my old heart could give. Fruit, covered, moonless now and all alone in the world. The clean shelves, blocked by Drips and drabs of unpleasantness. I will reorganize my solar system. I always do. I must live where I am planted.
Tonight is dreamy eyed dogs with heartfelt snores. They burble as they snore and their happy feet thump. Suddenly the sleep bark begins. A squirrels runs before them, rabbit and such joy away they run in their sleep calling to each other, the paws in unison.
Frankie sits on the bed amusedly watching the paws run in tandem. I wiggle my toes near her and she pounces: Once, twice, thrice. Then she sits still and waits for a wiggling toe to twitch again.
I count the hours between now and morning and decided to join the hunt in my sleep. I have no appointments until dawn, when the squirrels will greet my bird feeder with actionable intel and the birds will fly around in circles in protest. I’ve already set the seed by the back door and will wear my rubber boots out into the muddy grass left by warm air today. The dogs will circle and demand breakfast immediately after, Frankie will sit in the window tapping on the sill and we’ll all settle into the day as if our routine was just beginning.
Good morning world.
Ann
I vacuumed through the small dog fronds of fur, compiled it with cat, augmenting it with the dirt of living in a house for 24 years. I moved furniture like the powerful Katrinka from the fjords that I used to be. The room is half together when I call a break for a MacDonald’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I glance about, furious with the amount of work that needs doing. My eyes fall on the mess in one corner.
The tax forms were escaping from a bundle of useless paper, formal documents of every moment of our spending, and pictures from here and there around the world that I still have to edit or delete into a basket that was wider than long. The laptop lay open waiting to tease me into confronting my fear that we would owe, that the government thought us richer than we are.
I let the TV ramble on its own, deciding not to listen to the story but to use it as white noise. As the last number snaps into place and the tax forms grab my credit card and checking account numbers to abscond with them, I find myself being annoyed at the fluff that is chasing itself across the screens.
Trivial is the first thought and then I hear the shot ring out. No, not from the screen, but from memory, a shocking vision of what life was like for me growing up just this side of 31st Avenue. A pregnancy, a terminal illness, a shotgun wound, an abortion, a loss, a hammer through the skull of a child, a foundling, and old men playing with forms of drink, cards and knives, these things were just on the other side of the neighborhood my parents found for us to live. We were on the good side of the street, hell was on the other side.
I’m listening to a recording of Summertime performed by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald this morning. The dogs are walked and fed, the house is emptying as my son and daughter-in-law are heading to work. Frankenstein, my little girl cat, is purring with a happy tummy. My husband will be home in an hour. The night and early morning are my quiet times. There is an air of calm while I am alone with a hint of anticipation of a new day. It feels like a warm blanket, vanilla in the air, and a snuggle with life this morning. I haven’t checked the news yet. I know that today someone somewhere will do something that would qualify as hate or anger and will hurt others, but for now, I’m taking a moment of calm.
The snow and frozen rain of the last few days is melting and the birds are tapping on the window asking me to fill the feeders. They rally and flutter at each other, but they take turns. The squirrels try to eat the plastic feeders. Yesterday they finished feeder number four and five. I have three cages for suet left and two feeders for large seed. The gymnastics are amusing. I think they are trying to answer the eternal question of how many squirrels does it take to take down a feeder. The answer is two. They hang on each side, and shake the Dickens out of the feeder. When it falls I can hear their cheers and the birds disgust.
The sun has a few moments before it disappears into the gray. It beams red, orange, and tinges of tangerine. “I got plenty of nothing.” We have lots of locks on doors. We have plenty of stuff. What we need is the time to watch the sun rise and set. We need to take the time to trace the moon across the sky, seeing it eaten like a pie and reborn again. Simplicity, a lack of unneeded drama, a chance to see a great painting, a chance to make an artistic discovery, that’s what we need. That’s what I need anyway. I want to travel more. Patagonia, Africa, Asia, Europe, Canada, and, yes, more of the United States are on my list. I travel through the books. Conrad’s Out of Africa, Weber’s Honor Harrington series take me far away from our house just south of Washington DC.
I am embarked on a new love affair with my husband. Over time everything has changed but we are calmer when we are together, more than anytime in 35 years of marriage. Marriage isn’t easy, but when the world seems to be gaining up on you, you have little time to fight because you stand back to back to protect each other. We have 21 months before he retires. It seems so far away but the weeks pass so quickly. It will be no time and such a long time passing at the same time. Time is an illusion of what you anticipate happening. Money is an illusion of prosperity, but it is not the valuable substance that people will attain. Family, closeness, laughter, tears, and the rising of the sun, those are the things that are of highest value. The love of my two dogs and silly cat are more important that even my laptop.
Have a good morning and a hug from someone you love. If you are alone, here is a hug from me.
Dear Laureli,
Here on the east coast just south of a small town built on marsh and bog called Washington DC., we’ve seen your love,and I the love I remember from a childhood in the middle of Minnesota. He watches over us, a bit confused at the way we use our cars and not the sleds of noble dogs and proud masters. He doesn’t hurt us, for we do enough of that on our own. But he has brought great beauty to us, and truth to us as well. A small boy had pushed him out of his way, forcing him to wander new paths.
The boy was angry, the child abused by the society that didn’t understand the harm of the warming of the water. He pushed rain and water inland and his temper was so hot, the snow could not find the path home. He melted the ice that the bears depend on for travel and hunting. He gathered islands of plastic that know no master and scatters them along beaches enraged at the waste and harm done to the wild.
Snow, did not know what to do. How could a child be so abused that he and his sister forgot the ways of their people? Having left their homes and trails, how could they find their way back.Had someone forgotten how the people should care for the child, for the environment the children need to grow strong and healthy.
Poor Snow. The ravens tried to guide him, but the snowy owls flew further south than before, stopping on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and waiting. The fish have greater ranges now, and in ranging, stir up the great sharks, the dolphin, the whales, the boats of people whose lives are on the water. Great Bald Eagles call to him, come and sit with us a while.
Our President makes time to play with his children, and sees Snow watching with sad eyes. We know the sea is advancing on you in Alaska. We sent a President whose eyes are opened to see what is being lost. He saw your elders telling of life in the cold, the wind, the snow. He saw the eager eyes of children listening with respect. He saw the wild salmon on their journeys from the sea, to bear their own children.
We have not been fair to Snow’s mother, Lady Nature. She has turned her eyes crossly on us, sending hurricane, sand storm and tropical storm. She has sent tornado after tornado and rains like waterfalls. We poison the air, the land, the sea. Men and woman who falsely worship the lesser God Greed have not done what needs doing to restore our protectors to our land. But these who worship Greed are not the only ones in action. I myself have family and friends who wish to send Snow back to you bearing gifts of climate stabilty. Those of us who believe in Snow, who would protect that mighty creature and your true love, have met around the world. Steps are being made that will hopefully turn back time, so that the weather patterns that push and pull the world against its, will can return to sanity.
I will look after Snow while he resides here in the east and speak to him as a friend of a friend. I will remind him of Artic water, blue ice and glaciers thousands of years old. I will tell him you wait for him, and will be glad when he returns. I will tell him your daughters and your sons understand that troubled world that has turned him astray. I will pass on the stories of my dogs who love to dance on his winds, my children, who like ancient dragons, find themselves both in and on that wind. I will write stories for him to take back to you so that you will know you are not alone, that we need you to have the Snow which helped shape you and encouraged you many times to become more than yourself.
I hope he listens. He is an old love of my childhood. I hope he will return to you soon.
Most sincerely,
Ann WJ White, whiteawj@mac.com,
(writer, poet, photographer from the East Coast and lover of all things Alaskan.)
Posted in response to Loreli in the Alaskandispatch.com
Hello,
There are days when I find so many words, I mix them up, jumble them around and beautiful things happen. Just this morning, I found out that people like my efforts. I mean, I really had some nice responses to things I had written. My mother says that poetry was always a problem for me. I thought in poems. I still do. It makes for crazy days and a way to handle things like an influx of roaches or perhaps a shiba inu doing her crazy shiba shake (not ice cream based). I’ll show you the roaches first.
When I first got married we lived in an area known for muggings and the best country western bar in Alexandria, Virginia. Our apartment was an old building with warped floors from Hurricane Camille. We lived so far from the canal it was hard to believe that the water came up into our apartment on the second floor. Roaches lived everywhere. So did the rats, giant wharf rats with long tails and…..sheesh. I wrote about them too. So, to get my words back together, I needed humor to face these things.
See the roachie on the wall?
See the little roachie fall.
Mommy hit it with a bat.
Now no one knows where roachies at.
I must have written 100 roach poems. The rat poems are darker, and redder.
She saw your shadow in the bush nearby
The door where all entry was given
To humankind and Irish setter and she set her cap at you.
The baby was in my arms, snuggling, loved
And I, poor tired mother, working,
Cleaning, making a home and trying to best the odds.
I saw her leap, snatch, shake, throw and snap your neck.
“There were no rats,” I had been told.
I left you on the steps
Where the access is for people and dogs.
I knew your family would be back.
Those were dark days and light days. My son slept to the theme from MASH, on six times a day and the only channel we could receive. He laughed at the sound of the MASH helicopters, and learned to giggle at the funny faces Alan Alda made. He’s very fond of the reruns now that he is 34 and still brand new, at least in my eyes. He developed that same overdeveloped sense of honor and patriotism that I suffer from. It lead him to many growths, emotional and developmental.
Then I got a cat, she was up a tree with no way down. That’s what we thought anyway. After being tempted with food, Sheba moved in with us and decided that we were on probation. She liked the baby, bringing him cat toys when he cried. We had no insects or rodents in the new apartment. It was a good thing. The rent was four times the old Alexandria apartment’s total. She was black and ferocious. She had panther moves and sidled through the dream world that only she could see. She stayed with us for five years before deciding that my babysitting was too much to be born. I wrote her a poem too.
Dear Queen,
I’m so sorry the boy, with the drunk,
Decided to pull your tail,
Decided to break a window,
Decided to be a menace.
The girl child misses you.
You are invisible in the closet with all of her sorrows.
Life always goes by so quickly. Every time I blinked, another ten years was gone. I tried to slow down the pace, but, with each effort, time sprang forward again and again. I wrote about my students. Each a treasure of light and hope. I hope they all grew up to be political activists. They were so wise back then.
Now time has shifted again, and it’s 2:34 AM. It’s long past my bedtime, so I will leave you with just this tidbit to think about. Have a good morning or evening or day.
Ann
Source: Life’s Tapestry
Ann WJ White 