Through the blinds I used to see a tall Norwegian maple with leaves the color of tanned leather bigger than my outspread hand. It had a scar along the trunk, a long vertical burn where lightning struck one afternoon without rain or storm.   We…

Probably I could have done something differently. Can’t we always find a way to blame ourselves? It’s hard to reconcile when one person is finished but one is still bound in place by the memories. They were good memories. Full of life and joy. Perhaps…

Madame X, an oil portrait by American artist John Singer Sargent, portrays the cool, patrician hauteur of a wife of a wealthy man who herself came up from nothing. Her face reflects uncertainty as if she can only spare but moment for the portrait and…

I’m not my mother’s daughter, I am my own machine. I stand tall, I walk proud, and I know how to act mean.   I’m the funniest person you’ve ever met. Most interesting, too. There’s absolutely nothing I’ve ever tried that I can’t do.  …

A collection of plastic and string and wings; part stick insect, part sailboat, walking kinetic sculptures from the realm of fantasy moving up and down the beaches unsupervised and avoiding the water with no technology at all.   Just stored energy applied to actions, like…

Physicists believe that the universe is shaped like the inside of a soccer ball, with holograms projecting all possible angles of view like Indra’s net; that black holes extrude through the walls of space-time like scattered spikes that can suck us out of this world…

In the movie the girl stands On a bridge over infinite clouds. Below, a vast chasm. The stones are cold Under her hands, but there is sun On her face and she closes her eyes. A memory slides into focus. Grandmother telling a story, A…

I wanted to try a Golden Shovel poem from an earlier prompt tonight. I happened to do this one, also on loss. From W.B. Yeats – When You Are Old “But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you”     The weather was always…

Oh, for a jug and my Robin beside. Astride his horse, together we’d ride Along the dray road to the village of Quay And we’d sing jolly-lolly-o-lay, o-lay, We’d sing jolly-lolly-o-lay.   He left me to rot in this castle so grey With the nuns…

(according to myth, Ife is the place where the Yoruban people believe the gods first came down to earth and founded the world)   When Oludmare the supreme deity founded the world, all glory, all glory, He sent two brothers to do the work. Praise…