Coffeeshop Writers' Group - My poems: The Unhurried - I Watch for Meteor Showers on the Back Porch

 I always enjoy chatting with our writers before we get down to business.

We discussed pens. Each one had their favorite. I tested them all out and still like my

Black Bic best of all.

Beatriz wrote one of her fascinating pollinator essays. She gets 2,000 "hits" on her pollinator blog. Today's essay was about the bumble bee and all its imitators. There is one rapacious fly who grabs tasty insects on the fly.

We also discussed carpenter bees who drill perfectly round holes in wood. My colony appeared about five years ago, below my front window. I had no idea they were there until I heard buzzing within my living room walls.

Only the female has the stinger.

Beatriz told an awful story about hummingbirds being eaten by a preying mantis. 

Scott and I each have a hummingbird feeder. The little birds made dozens of appearances today.

The mantis, holding stock-still, suddenly pounces with her serrated arms which pin down the bird so it can't escape. Somehow it gets et, after, ugh, the feathers are pulled off.

Lord have mercy!

Here's Allan sipping his coffee.

 This photo is titled:  Allan with Folded Hands

Allan read two poems: "The Perfect Poem" and "Legacy."

"Legacy" was about the effect of wars on us - we have war heroes, statues, parades, cemeteries, so "Let us be thankful for war and carnage."

Laffin' Carly was dressed in party finery, as she and hubby will attend a party tonite. She wondered what our group would think about her short story "Nails," which she put in the 'bottom drawer' for a few months.

Carly read an obit about a roofer called "Nails" and fashioned a short story around it. I think she was really surprised when I said, "Carly, this is really really good."

Scenes take place in a brownstone mansion where "Nails" fell off a roof and in the waiting room of Abington hospital. Altho it's a complete short story with a fitting conclusion, she may expand it into a novella.

Linda shared a rewrite of Chapter Four of "A Time for Love." Each time it gets better. As Carly said, you got me to like science-fiction, even tho I don't read science-fiction.

Yeah, said Linda, I want it for the general reader.

This general reader is currently reading....

Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald for my library reading group - his odyssey across the UK
The Examined Life by psychoanalyst George Grosz - great stories about very difficult patients
The Charm School by Nelson deMille
and six months of New Yorkers

Last nite I watched "Ferris Buehler's Day Off." And enjoyed it once again. It's a happy, funny movie. The house where Ferris lives is humongous. It's movies with rich people in them that give people the idea we've gotta live in huge houses.

I WATCH FOR METEOR SHOWERS ON THE BACK PORCH

The Perseids I have missed

there was no cloud cover

I simply forgot and was in bed

with a thriller

locked in a POW camp in a forest

in Russia

Every day in August

we’re given a second chance

I stand on my back porch

in the darkness

the hornets are gestating in their nest

in the corner

I am their caretaker

unafraid

as their fetuses form

beneath a cotton-soft quilt

Gazing upward I see something

moving across the sky

it flashes

on and off

on and off

tiny as a poppy seed

A plane or a spy satellite

is not my second chance in August

Defeated, I sit on the stair

and glance at the whiteness

of my arms

my legs

as the moon rises over the house next door

my silver maple

almost a goner from the hurricane

has been resurrected

she smiles at me with a

shake of her leaves, black in the night,

but heard.

The cicadas are loud as the

Philadelphia Orchestra

playing the Ninth

I listen in darkness

in my nightgown

Alone

all alone

a small figure

created for what purpose

six billion years ago?  

My hornet's nest. See the white-cotton batting? It's actually produced by the hornet itself.

We are not like hornets. Our bodies produce nothing like nesting material or spider web material.

The last silver maple in my back yard. Note tiny occupied birdhouse near tree trunk and bird bath.

THE UNHURRIED

The universe expands

with the pace of a marathon runner

we too feel the pull of Hurry

“faster faster” demands our planet

our government

our businesses

our fashion designers

creating next year’s fashion trends

oh, the blousy sleeves,

the loose-fitting grey trousers

that swoosh when you walk

This is the world I was born into.

The world of hurry.

Now I revolt.

Do the poppies hurry?

The petunias or chrysanthemum?
The flowers, flowing from the

gift of the sun,

take their time.

Does the baby in the womb hurry?

The soft grass upon which I lay

to watch for meteor showers in August?

“Change your life!” cried the poet

I have!

I promise!

I’m as obedient

as the Chinese woman with bound feet

When I water the purple verbena

I listen as she gulps in her sustenance

When I drink my Earl Grey

the sweet taste warms the globe of my mouth

Everything we do must be meaningful

Everything we do must count

If I may dare to instruct you:

Read good poetry

and

Remember the tomb.

I picked up Allan from his home at Moreland Towers. The back is beautiful. You can barely see on the right, the tall, striking pink cleomes. When I was 10, I planted them from seed and they grew next to our jalousied back porch in Shaker Heights.

The part in my poem about the hornets reminded Carly about her then-two-yo son getting a painful hornet bite.

Look, Allan, you've got a corn stalk growing in your back yard.

Why do people insist on putting out the American flag?

Theories, anyone?

I think it all stemmed from 9/11, when the world got worse, and people began hating in earnest.

After the Writer's Group, I drove to Mom's, where I gave her back the book I got for her 91st - Love, Laugh and Eat, by an Australian physician.



Pretty darn awful.

She told me to watch a Dr. Nubb (?) on Channel 12. Arthritis advice.