Tag Archives: weekend-wordsmith

Local

Local

Prompt from @WkendWordsmith

delicious, menus, employee

You order the clams
because they are local.
Also because they are delicious,
you say.

She and I enjoy the crab,
from far, far away,
also delicious.

The menu says “market price”
and we don’t ask the employees
how much, because we know
we will order it anyway.

The tradition fulfilled for
another year.

Scree

Scree

Mt. Longonot, 1987

Pebbles, clattering
into the crater.
We, laughing, sliding,
generating avalanches
beyond our ken,
beyond our influence.

We had climbed all morning,
now were running ahead,
our friends taking the more leisurely
way around
watching the clouds from above.

Not for us, this introspection.
We dashed on
leaving the rockslides
to do what they would.

(For the weekend wordsmith.)

Descant

Very belated, for the Weekend Wordsmith

Descant
April 8, 2010

I imagined that one day,
when I was one of the big kids,
I would get to sing the descant
in the Christmas service.

The titchies would sing the easy bits,
then the elevated Older Children
would burst out with the canticle of the angels,
towering above our mortal efforts.

And then, we were far away from home,
where nobody sang descants,
there weren’t any student Christmas services,
and Africa was an epithet
used to deride our lack of culture,
our ignorance of the things that
really mattered.

And all these years later,
at the last lingering notes
of every Christmas melody or Easter hymn,
my heart lifts on the wings of an ibis,
cries out the eucalyptus-scented descant
and longs to return home.

Sixes

Sixes

February 12, 2010

I would never choose
a pastime that involves ice.
Hard, unforgiving stuff,
and, what’s more, cold.

She dances out there,
a swan among ravens,
flowing gracefully over ice
not quite as smooth as the glass
she imagines.

She imagines being Sasha Cohen,
even as girls in my generation
imagined being Michelle Kwan
beaming from the Kiss-and-Cry
as the judges unveil
their perfect sixes.

For the Weekend Wordsmith – Skates

Whale

Whale

February 12, 2010

Did you know
that a whale’s aorta is so big that a baby
can crawl through it?
And did you know that a diplodocus
weighed 17 tons, but had a brain
the size of a small lemon?
And did you know that Star Wars
was filmed in Tunisia,
and the Jawas spoke Swahili and Zulu?
And did you know, Daddy, Daddy,
did you know? Did you know
that I love you, and that the tallest building
in the whole world is in Dubai?
Did you know?

For the Weekend Wordsmith – Whale.