The Art of the Moment

This is the version that I meant to post on the site as an entry. Grabbed the wrong file, again. Humph.

The challenge for Week Zero (a warm-up week) was two write up to five stanzas describing oneself, using the haiku syllable pattern of 5|7|5.

Tissues in one hand,
tree pollen gold in sunlight–
a new season falls.

Who would have thought it…
that such a large sneeze could come
from such a small girl?

In her father’s broad
footsteps, she walks the river
bank…Look! Wild grape vines!

Long, black-grey hair blows
loose in the icy cold wind.
She outruns the years.

The challenge, then, for Week One was to write about a moment that changed one’s life forever. The art, then, of the moment? Only two of us took up the challenge.

Do I say “I do”?
Or stop to think this all through
one very last time?

Twenty years later,
in retrospect: ‘I do’ was
the perfect answer.

There has been some mention at LJ Haiku Idol of a new beginning. I rather hope there is, because I like fooling around with the 5|7|5 format.

Al and I stopped at the hospital for a nice visit with his mother before heading back home for lunch and nap. We had the closing shift at the range, and so were a bit late to the family supper. It was a good evening, but I’m happy to be home once more.

The LJ Haiku group did not revive after all, it seems, and so I will be posting the topics and my haiku entries, once all wraps up.

I made yogurt last night, and it is very good…although not as “set” as I imagined it would be. I suspect that is because I used whole milk and did not add extra powdered milk. (I believe that’s what I used to do.)  I am guessing, based on vague memories of material filed under yogurt on wikipedia.

Instead of finishing the links page for my online Halloween poetry reading entries, I wrote a haiku entry for the LJ Haiku Idol group, a new-to-me enterprise that looks rather like fun. I joined up just in time to take part in Week 0, and this evening entered a piece for Week 1.

My Artist Date for this week was lunch, shopping, and Starbucks coffee with my mother, partly in celebration of her 90th birthday, which was this past Monday.  I realize that the Artist Date is to be a solitary occurrence, but so much of my life is solitary that going out with my mother is a real break from routine.

A small amount of therapeutic shopping took place: 1 jar of WildMoon corn salsa, 1 jar of wild Saskatoon Berry jam, and one (plastic) espresso maker that makes one to four cups of American espresso coffee. That should be interesting. My mother, having sworn off dairy products, brought for my use her large Salton yogurt/yogurt cheese maker. So after Al and I picked up vitamins for the dogs, this evening, we stopped by the grocery for milk…and bought much more than that. ::sigh::

I am now too tired and too full. But it was a good Thursday. I am content.

I think it will take a while to put back together the pieces that I want to keep on this web site. I have added A short story to the Prose section, which still includes “The Stories We Tell.” I think that next I should add the links to the MP3s of some of my poetry.

I’ve made a good start at discarding blog posts and pages, here, but I still have to go through the pages of the main site: to remove everything, and then decide what I want to add in, again, if anything. I’ve felt weighted down by the accumulated materials of decade and a half. To quote from an old poem of mine,

“I may not want, tomorrow, still to be
the person that I am, today.

But written words create a mold
I’m trapped into
without a choice.”

And so it goes! Housecleaning!