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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3793 Posts |
 Posted - 06/25/2017 : 20:06:48
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Summer storms off the gulf bring thunder throughout the night. A gentle, soothing rain accompanies.
Cleansing.
Welcomed.
Comforting.
A break from the hot sweltering heat and humidity of summer.
Conjures up memories of my youth.
Sleeping under the window fan on the screened in back porch.
Street lights eerily shine through the bottles filled with colored water. Many colored shadows.
The gentle rain starts to play rhythmically on the tin roof.
I drift back off to sleep...easily.
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Joey L.
Swinger
USA
1383 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2017 : 11:44:17
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If it's
a heavy rain,
flashes of lightening and
cracking thunder
windshield and crop-splitting hail
you dream of,
we have it all here in South Dakota.
Plenty to spare, with an
occasional 92 mph straight line wind
(whenever we don't see the funnel).
Time to reset the clocks (again).
Inquiring minds knead da dough, y'know! cuz ... 'the Future's Not' ... |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2017 : 16:43:24
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Craig and Joey,  . |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2017 : 16:46:54
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| She knows the man who is sleeping. His copious notes on the bedside table. His dreaming that leans on invention. The flash of his brush in the morning. His paintings that leave smoke on the walls. In a saucer on the kitchen table... All those delicate washers and springs. History's tokens. Flint-edged and raw. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2017 : 16:58:45
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| In the beginning all their photographs were blurred. "Counterfeit history," he said, "mystery of time and remembrance." "Well, now..." she said in the darkroom's safelight, "...there's that image of you glancing right... Red as Snow White's bright apple." "Dream logic..." he said. "A ghost singin' in the trees. Blues-moanin' wind through the eaves, baby." Outside, grass char. Sparks on the air. Palms shaking their brittle crowns soon to be wind-broken. The year-round creek turning to a trickle of dust. The rock-rooted cedar anchored to earth. Everything else flying off to OZ. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2017 : 18:40:57
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| "Start here..." he says, "...start now." "I loved the lurch when the train pulled away. The power of acceleration. I never sat. I liked riding holding onto the pole watching the stations fly by. The melancholy tenements leaving the 125th Street platform. So close you could reach out and touch the geranium-stained window sills blossoming hope. Caffeine-fueled when I was eleven," she says. It's a smoggy evening in a sepia-colored western town where the mountains indiscriminately move. ("Don't worry. It doesn't happen that often," the counterman says.) The night avenue's neon allure is so reminiscent. "The deli's were open all night long. No clash of cultures. The cops and the working girls just trying to make a living..." she says. "The mayor sending his driver for pastrami on rye..." "Keep talkin'," he says, "I'm holding your heart out of harm's way." |
Edited by - Ailinn on 10/16/2017 08:36:58 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 07/09/2017 : 20:00:09
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| -from Signal Flags. A winter story. Faded denim sky one stormed-stained month. Down the beach the cliffs were eroding. The grotto caves hollowing out under the bluffs. The lifeguard's chairs stacked like grocery carts in the Cardiff parking lot. Slurry of clouds overhead when a king tide undercut the Coast Highway. They watched the lagoon inlet rise and breach the tracks with foam. "...the whole ocean..." he said, "...the ship-full seas...all that water out there..." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 07/09/2017 : 20:02:32
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| The days flow of color. Celestial sometimes. Or achingly stark. How could you expect them to keep track of time when they kept a clock that chimed only the odd hours. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2017 : 20:30:58
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| Each night he pulled the sun down from the treetops. Each morning he flung it back up again. |
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Joe Z
Windchimer
USA
1819 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2017 : 06:50:44
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Ten years ago, when my daughter turned 18, I gave her the following note. She is a registered nurse now, serving in a coronary unit in the top heart hospital in Indiana. How fitting.
On Megan Turning 18
I’m not sure where to start because we will never end. We have been and always will be a part of each other. Therefore, I know your strengths and understand your weaknesses. We are blessed and cursed with a different way of looking at the world. It will burden you and carry you.
I carried you until you started kindergarten. At malls, festivals and fairs, you would ride atop my shoulders. You would fall asleep up there, and after 3 hours, my upper body would be numb. I never wanted to put you down.
Born on my 40th birthday, you are the best present I ever received. God and your Mom delivered on time, right on schedule.
We have done our best to show you what is right and what is wrong. Along the way, we made mistakes. But we were always there. We were there when you were a princess, and should you fall from grace, we will still be there beside you.
The most important thing a parent can give a child is independence. And Megan, that is the hardest thing for a loving parent to do. We want you to be able to stand on your own, but we do not want you to ever go away.
And soon you will go away… to college and beyond. You will come to know yourself through hard work and failure and success. Pick your friends carefully. Always give them more than you take. When the world turns cold, true friends will keep you warm.
And remember… you can always come home.
Love,
Dad
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3793 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2017 : 18:42:55
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quote:
Originally posted by Joe Z
Ten years ago, when my daughter turned 18, I gave her the following note. She is a registered nurse now, serving in a coronary unit in the top heart hospital in Indiana. How fitting.
On Megan Turning 18
I’m not sure where to start because we will never end. We have been and always will be a part of each other. Therefore, I know your strengths and understand your weaknesses. We are blessed and cursed with a different way of looking at the world. It will burden you and carry you.
I carried you until you started kindergarten. At malls, festivals and fairs, you would ride atop my shoulders. You would fall asleep up there, and after 3 hours, my upper body would be numb. I never wanted to put you down.
Born on my 40th birthday, you are the best present I ever received. God and your Mom delivered on time, right on schedule.
We have done our best to show you what is right and what is wrong. Along the way, we made mistakes. But we were always there. We were there when you were a princess, and should you fall from grace, we will still be there beside you.
The most important thing a parent can give a child is independence. And Megan, that is the hardest thing for a loving parent to do. We want you to be able to stand on your own, but we do not want you to ever go away.
And soon you will go away… to college and beyond. You will come to know yourself through hard work and failure and success. Pick your friends carefully. Always give them more than you take. When the world turns cold, true friends will keep you warm.
And remember… you can always come home.
Love,
Dad
:) |
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San Diego
Swinger
509 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2017 : 09:27:59
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Wonderful! This makes me so happy to see. I've followed Megan's story over the years and know what an accomplishment this is for her. And a sky-high dream come true for her daddy. "...a registered nurse in a coronary unit in a top hospital..." Perfectly fitting.
"I'm not sure where to start because we will never end." Says it all, Joe.
Love you,
Ro |
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Joe Z
Windchimer
USA
1819 Posts |
Posted - 07/26/2017 : 16:07:45
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| Thanks, Craig and RoRo. You guys help keep me warm. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2017 : 19:21:48
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| He's leaning over the precipice. No bluff in his game. Nor hers when she stands beside him ready to fall. Their bodies swaying in a last dance or prayer. Shadows on the cliffside eye-level with sparrows. The imperial sky's high-watt blue. The ocean so clear below. |
Edited by - Ailinn on 04/09/2019 18:04:27 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2017 : 19:26:38
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| Moonless night in the Badlands under the constellations implacable stare. A flash of banded marble caught her attention and threw her to the desert floor. She leaned on him all the way back to the road limping with a knee full of cinders. He set her up on the counter beside the sink. A needle. A pair of tweezers. A bottle of tequila. A towel. His glasses fogging over with steam. |
Edited by - Ailinn on 11/16/2019 16:39:36 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2017 : 18:05:54
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Perfect timing. Fish highways in the whitewash or edge of the sandbar. Set the hook where the current shifts. Dawn or one hour before dusk on an incoming tide. Like the bakery counter where you wait in line with a late number and pray the praline croissants don't run out. "Next!" And a new checkstand opens and you're first in line. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 08/16/2017 : 19:25:12
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| Nantucket Library when I was a child. My father, historically sentimental singing, "...wheeled her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow..." down cobbled Easy Street to Steamboat Wharf. Widow's Walks. Front stoops that opened onto the curb. The hardware store with the barrows he wanted to show me tipped up against a shingled wall. So big they looked like hard work. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 08/16/2017 : 20:02:58
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| "Are you allergic to anything?" she asked him in the evening jasmine. Bee-studded in daylight. Narcotic at night. Questions like that amused him. His quicksilver mind. His uncomplicated goodness. His shine and blue heart way. |
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3793 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2017 : 04:32:54
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An invitation to a stranger in a foreign land, he was greeted with open arms and welcomed into their home. It was small talk as they got to know him and then they all sat at the long table...
“Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.” |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2017 : 18:41:03
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| -from Signal Flags. Strobe-lit sky. Moon in its tide-rising cycle. Low storm honeycombing the cliff side. Beach full of sea wrack. Water all the way home. Rain determined to take the door down. Breaching the threshold. Our Lady of the West floating in pieces on the saltillo floor. Ink stains on every flat surface. "...an' all those red telephones..." |
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The Nightly Vigil