Month: July 2020

It was one of those clear, cool, clean-air early mornings perfect for walking and getting my energy level up before I began my work day.

The sky was Carolina blue with clouds straight off a Monet painting just drifting by with ease.

As I moved along about a mile from home I looked up and noticed clouds moving along at a quicker pace than when I began.

Uh, oh, I see the one little cloud hanging with its big brothers, it’s dove grey color darkened, beginning to look threatening.

No worries, it’s just a wee cloud in the middle of big, snowy, candy cotton clouds.

I may as well turn back anyway I think as I cross the street to turn toward home still believing that wee cloud was of no consequence until I reached 50 feet from my front door when that wee cloud burst overhead giving me a shower soaking through and through.

abundance of birds fly in, nibble, fly out again

between gossiping together now and then

last week the feeder was completely nil

I watched, I waited, a fat squirrel came to fill

at the feeder one morning, I was at brunch

uh, oh unhappily it was exactly like my hunch

Hunched over my computer, fingers flying faster than thoughts and words came to me, yet up in the corner behind me I see and hear his words, “loosen up, let’ go, get zany, for Pete’s sake!”

Instinctively I knew he was right about my work schedule being way past what someone might call normal except that I loved my work knowing that it fulfilled and defined me!

Why should I give this up when I have waited impatiently for so many years to fulfill my duties to everyone else in my life before starting the life I’ve always wanted and now you whisper in my ear that I should give it up?

No way would I consider changing what I do because I love it and will continue to write until the last breath leaves my body to turn cold.

It is the words I leave behind that will last long after my name has been the answer to someone’s question asking “who is she?”

Besides all that let me tell you that even in my childhood,  even in my teens, even on the nights that I had too many cocktails to behave in a normal fashion, I was never ZANY!

This week let’s write a molting poem. Have you ever wanted to shed your skin like a snake or slough off your exoskeleton like an insect? Would it hurt or be cathartic or both? 

Molting arlene s bice

so i shed my skin that i wore at the time

when i realized it was not the real me

picked up my house and left that unhealthy corner

to find where i belonged, who my people were

would i recognize them just by looking

how to know i asked myself

but i didn’t answer me

the search began, my eyes peered into windows

looked down every alley, talk, talk, talk

until there was nothing left to say

so i began to listen while my mind opened

little by little, expanding, filling

without my notice an outer layer had formed

it looked quite alike with a tinge of difference

then the call came inviting me to lunch

“of course,” i replied, “i’d love to” i said

the inner glow showed through

matching one that blossomed within me

as i listened, as i talked i knew

no more searching needed

i had molted and found home.

1.  Peppermint oil wiped on my countertops to keep the ants away.
2. Abundance.
3. Earlier travels that exposed me to different cultures and people.
4. Teachers who encouraged my writing. Not all did.
5. To be born a woman.

1. To be able to help other writers.
2. Lisa B.’s weekly yoga class, now zoomed.
3. For the women who trusted me and submitted their stories “What it is to be a Woman”.
4. For the friend who remembers me when she is baking zucchini bread.
5. For Johannes Gutenberg’s inventions.

She sat at her loom guiding one strand at a time to form the pattern she had designed bursting of color and bold splashes to create a worthy work of art, like pulling a friend back into the fold when she strayed like a thread slipping out and getting lost, dropped to the floor over a careless comment made.

Extending her hand for the thread that slipped its knot, just as reaching for her friend’s hand, turning her face toward the light knowing it would open her heart to understand, have compassion and allow love back into her life the same as the fabric accepted the new strands to complete its desirable end arrangement.

Thoughts ran through her mind as her hands automatically, but carefully, braided her way as she navigated through sharp turns and detours in life to lessen the betrayals that came unexpectedly.

Also a weaver of words, combined with the thinking process that would sustain her strength as the diversity of people filled her life constructing a strong fabric she could rely on to smooth the bumps in the road no matter how disastrous.

A good life was like this tapestry full of brilliant complexities, a stain or two in odd places uncovering the few knots that became entangled along the way, too minor to bother trying to correct what is better to just note and keep on going.

Yes, the full fabric unabridged while giving the weaver hours of joy to create would bring a lifetime of pleasure to any seeking to absorb the trials, challenges, imperfections, and genius of it all including the life it represented, fulfilled with the same energy and skill the novice brought to the canvas.

TTOT 2020.07.03.

1. A cool July morning for walking.
2. Artist in Elements-the new gallery in the Lizard Creek area of Warren County that carries books of local authors, including mine. It’s a beautiful gallery & a grand opening today!
3. Numerous birds at my feeder now offering hours of 7 am to 9 am when the fat squirrel doesn’t come looking to ravage the feeder. I remove it when I’m not there to watch over.
4. The gardenia bush I found tucked into an outside corner of the house that reminded me of

my first corsage at 12 years old given to me by my older brother Albert at Easter.

• Flowers bursting from every pot on my front porch and sunporch bringing instant joy when I water them first thing in the morning.
• The mammoth stones of Avebury, England, older than Stonehenge and whatever they instilled in me when I melded with them on my first visit.
• People who connect with me through TTOT and Six Sentence Stories. I love the conversations that come from them.
• The 8 feet tall butterfly bush that lines my sunporch sweetening the air and calling bees, butterflies and dragonflies.
• The book Sacred Signs by Adrian Calabrese that reaffirms my belief in the afterlife.
• To help others as I have been helped along the way.