An Ode to Purple Days

 Poem #03 for 2024 is due today addressing the prompt "Purple." Here is my entry - a sonnet about those dreary, dark, and cloudy Purple Days. 

On purple days the dawn breaks indigo.

No burning orange glows in the Eastern sky.

No vibrant red or gold engage the eye;

Just mystery clothed in violet manteau.

 

On purple days, the air is heather-hued,

Providing mood for heart and mind to roam,

‘Til calm and wisdom find in us a home,

And souls can rest in royal solitude.

 

The frantic pace brought on by bright displays

Recedes on pure transforming purple days.

Fickle Spring

Today is deadline day for the third poem of the year in the Deadlines for Writers internet group. The assignment was to write a poem using onomatopaeia.  I chose to write about the variable nature of the weather in Spring (at least in GA USA)

Fickle Spring

 All last week we frolicked free,

Warm breezes soughing round our heads.

“I love you, Spring!” I whispered now.

“Come dance with me,” I pled.

 

But Spring, a tease, turned her back,

Kisses frigid now and breezes hard.

Colder partners swing her around

And fill her cold and full dance card.

 

Summer, her sister, overwhelms with heat.

Burns partners like a Latin lover.

Sister Autumn is always much too vain-

Flaunting her shape and her colors.

 

Winter shuns would-be suiters with ice -

The cruelest by far of the sisters.

Hands too cold, she declines to dance -

She’s an icy and bitter spinster.

 

But, Spring, my love, April’s here -

Time to dance with joy and stop teasing.

Bring your sweet warm temperature back

And again be my Favorite Season!

 

“I love you, Spring,” I whispered again

In the rustle of sweet windsong.

Come dance with me, Dearest, and hold me close.

Make all our days be warm and long.

Autumn Trees

 As I admired the glowing-yellow ghinko trees on Broad Street in Rome over the past weekend, a strange thing happened. 

My mind focused on a couple of little three-word phrases that had apparently slept in my mind for years and suddenly awakened at the sight of the brilliant trees. "A solitary maple" kept playing silently in my head.

 "What!? Crazy Lady, that is not a maple. That is a ghinko!" my rational mind scoffed. 

"But it's dressed for the ball" my subconscious mind insisted.  

The phrases kept playing hopscotch, leaping over each other constantly as I went about my tasks

"solitary maple, dressed for the ball..."

I realized that the words were from some long-ago read literature. So, being the me that I am, I took out my laptop when I got home and began to research.(I have found as I've aged that I am becoming more me every day that I live. I am becoming so "me" somedays it's frightening!) And, thanks to DuckDuckGo, I found the source of the voice in my head. 

Apparently at some time in my school years I had read or studied Henry James's writing. DuckDuckGo showed me the quote that was stuck in my head, but life intruded before I found the longer work from which the quote comes. 

"A solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy ball, with the whole family gathered around to admire her before she goes."

Several observations:

1. A classical education, including good literature, is a gift that lasts a lifetime; so children need to read good literature in school instead of (or at least in addition to) the shallow witch/dragon/wizard/babysitter/amateur sleuth stuff around which much reading curriculum of our day is clustered. They need to store words of LIFE in their heads - appreciation of nature and nature's God. 
2. A watered-down general vocabulary leads to a watered-down mundane life. See, think, live, speak in specifics. 
3. I am grateful for the words that other thinkers through the years have passed down to us. 
4. The fear (wonder, amazement) of God is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 9:10) Young people need to be shown the majesty of God's creation and encouraged to absorb and appreciate it. 

100+ Degrees -- WHEW!!

Oh my goodness!!! I came out of school this afternoon at 4:45, and the temperature was 102 degrees! It must have been hotter earlier in the day. Even now after 6:00, the thermometer is showing 99! It is just too hot to function. I'm not usually a 'sweat -er', but today I made an exception! There is hardly a dry thread on my body.

January Blooms

This beautiful bush just outside our sunroom is in almost full bloom today. I don't know what kind of flowers these are - do you? I stood on our back deck to make the picture. The window just above the bush is the window in our master bathroom.