View from Banff Springs Hotel

Craft note: Hand written using my newest pen given to me by my eldest daughter on the occasion of my 61st birthday. Super fine tip, smooth action on contact, delightful fantasy figure cap. Wishing you all a year of unicorns and rainbows.

 

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For sale: red dress

Vintage. Size 8. Worn three times in 1992.

The reason
I wore the dress for the first time at a Meeting Planners International (Ottawa Chapter) Gala. I won “Planner of the Year”, for which I received a plaque. Now when I hear the word plaque I think gum disease and heart attack but back then it meant achievement. I was good at a job that, among other things, demanded good feet. Back then when scouting a location for a 1200 delegate conference and 200,000 square feet of exhibit space, I walked every inch of too many hotel function rooms and concrete floored trade show halls – in stilettos. I tromped service corridors and loading bays. I hoofed the cobblestone streets of old Montreal surrounding the Montreal Convention Centre. I pounded the paved cruise ship docks beside the Vancouver Convention Centre and marched up and down Halifax’s hills to and from the harbour and up to the Citadel because back then there was no Google Earth or Mapquest to help situate the convention site within a city. I had to see it for myself. In stilletos. Because. Fashion.

A good morning

Sun engorged buds
engorge cherry tree

Games I don’t play

It is a few evenings before Christmas and we’re in the living room of my brother’s house in St. John’s, Newfoundland.  A low fire winks behind the screen of the small coal burning fireplace and undernotes of coffee mixed with alcohol intermittently finds my nose.

Mothers, daughters, and guilt

Its a universal topic and you won’t find it explored any better than in this non-fiction story by my friend, Melissa Ballard.

http://fullgrownpeople.com/2017/10/12/crosswords/

For Cynthia*

Cynthia Jobin, a blogging friend, passed away last month. I knew her voice through her poetry and generous, insightful comments on my blog and many others. Her comments bit sometimes too, and made me mad but those comments got me to look at my writing from a different viewpoint. She was honest – unreservedly so. I miss her presence.

At 7:00 this morning, as black turned to grey the colour of old long johns, a trio of

“Doubt truth to be a liar”*

Part II (The first part can be found here.)

The scrap of paper browned and curled at the edges and a faint blue flame ringed the words “I don’t want starbursts and marble halls. I just want you.”

The legs of love

chair legs sound as anchors below our
wobbly as a New Year’s Eve sky table top

it’s elbowed down wood hides a mess of
knocked crossed knees and bunched sock toes

bound like thumbless mittened fists
recoiling at an accidental bump

but not in bed where I seek and find
entwine your thighs close tight and sleep

_______

This is a response to a prompt given on a free (free!) on-line poetry mini-course which I learned about through Trish Hopkinson. Unlike my truly poetic friends, Luanne Castle, John Dofflemyer, and Cynthia Jobin, I am new at this poetry business and have been working at it without much knowledge other than that acquired as an occasional reader of poetry and a lapsed student of English Literature. The course is helpful and in short modules with exercises you can do if you are inclined. It is basic stuff but I’m finding it instructive. 

50 shades of pink

I imagined Valentine sex would be different than regular Sunday morning sex. Spunky, fragrant as plumaris, a dianthus supurbus experience.

 

Three weeks ago, I made a date with Vee and insisted she block time for us in her calendar. She agreed only when I promised to stick to the schedule.

Bum to bum

This is how a marriage ends – hip pain,
knee pain, cracked rib, bulging disc,
raging Piriformis, TMJ, insane
ibuprofen promises, hernia  dismissed.