Author Archives: serendippitysays

Daylight Saving Time

We turn the hands ahead one hour
Like clockwork every spring
And call it Daylight Saving Time,
Which is a most peculiar thing.

Daylight doesn’t come in coins
As dimes and pennies do.
You can’t put it in a piggy bank
And hear a clink as it drops through.

Still, I’ve always wished that I
Could stay up half the night—
If I had some daylight savings,
That’s how I’d spend the light.

This past Sunday daylight saving time took effect in the U.S. Peace to your ♥!

No Buddy

The floor's cat-less, 
The couch is bare.
There's no Buddy, 
Only Buddy hair.

There's no need now
To block the stairs,
And still I step
Over empty air.

And every hour
And everywhere,
I look around
And no Buddy's there.

We had to put Buddy to sleep two days ago. He was a wonderfully low-key cat, perfect for our low-key family. He inspired a number of poems (see my Nobody like Buddy collection). Peace to our ♥s!

In the Dumps

What did you do all day?
Chased the doldrums away.

And nothing more?
Even that was a chore.

Your plans for tomorrow?
Fending off sorrow.

Is it really that bad?
Now you’re making me mad.

I don’t know what to say.
Just please go away.

Written last year when I was in a trough of despond, though I wasn’t as down as the poem would make you think. Once the first lines came to me, the poem itself took over. Peace to your ♥!

Snow Bother / Speaking of Snow

I’m not sure I was ever passionately in love with snow, even as a child. But I certainly loved piles of snow when it meant getting a day off school. The school district here no longer has snow days. When the weather is bad, students have a Flexible Instruction Day, which means spending the day learning online. I feel bad for the elementary-age children especially. Peace to your ♥! 

Snow Bother

Don’t you wish the piles of snow
Would never ever ever go?
Or are you like my father,
Who considers snow a bother,
And always while he’s shoveling
Is wishing it were spring?

Speaking of Snow

“No more snow,” says Mama.
She’s had enough.
“No! MORE SNOW!” we cry.
We like the stuff.

We wake to white,
a wintry delight.

Mama groans.
“No, more snow,” she moans.
We bundle up, go out to play.
Only then do we shout “HOORAY!”

$urprises / Legacy

$urprises

I
find
nine bucks 
tucked inside 
a pocket folder, 
twenty-five more stuck in a bag
of wooden hearts, and
six gift cards
for meals,
none
used.

I 
find 
the key
to the bank
that looks like a book
and rattles most intriguingly.
Behold! Another
thirty-five
in bills
and
coins.

Small
change 
compared
to my share
of bank accounts, bonds,
IRAs and more—my parents
generous in death
just as they
were in
life.
 
Legacy

I
am
grateful
for the chance
to make a difference, 
to fund a well that will provide
three hundred people
water that’s
safe and
close
by,

a
well
that could
last more than
forty years, beyond
my lifetime even. Imagine!
Life-giving for them—
for me, too.
All is
well.
💧

I’ve been tithing my share of the money from my parents’ estate and feel incredibly blessed to be able to help so many people and organizations. There were several Christmases when I made small donations in my parents’ name to clean water efforts, so when I came across Thirst Project, I knew I wanted to fund a well in their memory. Thank you, Dad and Mom! Peace to our ♥s!

Tribute to Walt Whitman / caterpillar poets

Another Walt Whitman poem I wrote can be found here. I’ve read very little of Leaves of Grass but am inspired by Whitman nonetheless! Peace to your ♥! 

Tribute to Walt Whitman
who revised Leaves of Grass repeatedly until he died

Sculptors of marble chip and chip away.
Potters knead and shape their lumps of clay.
Poets create, through words alone,
What never cracks, is never set in stone.

caterpillar poets

Oh, to be a Whitman!
   They digest Leaves of Grass.

Living day by daydreams…
   these, too, shall pass.

Eating, dreaming, dying—
   without flying.

Poem title from chapter 58 of poemcrazy by Susan G. Wooldridge.

Just Saying

What I felt in each instance [when her parents died] was…regret for time gone by, for things unsaid, for my inability to share or even in any real way to acknowledge, at the end, the pain and helplessness and humiliation they each endured.

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

How easy
it came to us—why
doesn’t Dad
just [insert
action here]: call the doctor,
or get off his butt

and go up
and sit with Mom, or
say something,
or agree
to wearing Depends. Perhaps
it depends on who

is doing
the asking and who
the doing.
This saying
is also true: you don’t know
until you’ve been tried.

The one-year anniversary of my dad’s death is coming up this Monday. He was (not) dealing with his own cancer throughout my mom’s time on hospice. Peace to our ♥s!