This red wheelbarrow, seen on a recent trip to Saskatchewan, begged to be photographed. Now I know why. It had this message for me:
is still dependable though the rain glaze has turned to frosting and the chickens are long in the freezer
© 2011 V.Nesdoly
(with apologies to William Carlos Williams)
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Posted for One Shot Wednesday
Jennifer Jones, team Canada's skip, about to deliver her rock at a 2008 international women's curling tournament in Vernon, B.C.
In the hack and grip your rock crouch and graceful glide precise eyes on broom across the sheet send the stone along the ice. Skip is yelling from the house to the sweepers, “Hurry hard!” Rock is light and slowing fast comes to rest, a perfect guard. Rival stone sits in the rings they would dearly love to steal. “Throw a bullet,” is the call, "sweep it clean, we want to peel.” Now the house is getting full rocks in twelve-foot, four-foot, eight try the double, watch the jam need to throw a lot of weight! It’s our hammer and last rock draw to button a clear shot sweep for line and watch it curl – it looks easy, but it’s not!
© 2011 by V. Nesdoly
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It’s the week of the Scott Tournament of Hearts — a week-long curling bonspiel that pits women’s rinks from Canada’s provinces and territories against each other.
If there’s one game I love to watch it’s curling. I love the fact that there’s athleticism and strategy involved (curling has been called ‘chess on ice’). I love it that ordinary women (moms, teachers, accountants, pharmacists, lawyers) from small-town Canada get to be in the spotlight. I enjoy the pace of the game, and the way it’s televised, so that you can see the look on the players’ faces, watch the progress of the rock along the ice, get to see the great shots replayed. It will take a lot of self-discipline for me to get anything done this week (with three games a day and each several hours long).
I wrote the ditty, above, several years ago while watching a Scotties (women’s competition) or a Brier (men’s tournament). It uses a a bit of the game’s vocabulary, and was fun to write (as rhyming poems usually are).
Roar of the Rings video (below) was the December 2009 Canadian trials to choose the Canadian men’s and women’s teams for the 2010 Olympics. If you’re unfamiliar with curling, it will show you how exciting the game can be when the players make those impossible shots.
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This post is entered in the “On, In, and Around Mondays” blog meme.
On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by…) you. Feel free to write any which way… compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Click on the button below to find other On, In and Around Monday posts, or enter your own.
Purple Sea Urchins, Sand Dollars and Squid
Octopus, Tuna and Sponge
Walrus and Angelfish, Right Whales and Blue
Nurse Sharks and Makos that lunge
Sea horses, Corals, Crustaceans and Krill
Man-of-War, Mollusks — I wish
Dugong my neighbor and Narwhal my friend . . .
Oh, if I only were fish!
© Copyright 2004 – by V. Nesdoly
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cars and vans yield duffle bags
backpacks, rolling luggage while camp butterflies
flutter the stomach
women’s voices chatter excitement
conference room buzzes
the timbre of worker bees
jammies, slippers for movie time
absentmindedly pop another Miss Vicky’s
absorbed in the chase
tables are a gracious-living centrefold of damask and crystal
a cheery good-morning line meanders
by a muffin-sweet, bacon-rich buffet
our hoots at J.J.’s pink wig and suspenders
titters at Megan’s juiced jigging, self-conscious grins
show we recognize their mimed body myths
Bible words burn, slice
hammered with a woman’s touch, still they ring
the bell of truth
we walk out the sitting tightness, clear the head
in the coolmint breeze
lay back and drift hot-tub legs
angelic worship is all in treble clef
we hold sister hands around the table
chew bread dipped in a common cup
we empty rooms back into duffle bags
backpacks, rolling luggage
hug goodbye beside packed vans and cars
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Our church’s ladies spent the weekend at Harrison Hot Springs Spa and Resort. I tried to capture a few parts of it in the lines above. I’m adding it to the collection of “On, In and Around Monday” writings at Seedlings In Stone
On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by…) you. Feel free to write any which way… compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Click on the button below to find other On, In and Around Monday posts, or enter your own.
The diagnosis of brother’s rare cancer
sparks her into a frenzy of research
every cell bent on sleuthing
knowing, understanding the enemy.
The answering machine and no call back
when we ring the farm likely means
more medical trips
(later photos of him
in radioactive quarantine
show her, like a prison wife
on the other side of the window)
or a vacation to the east coast
or a weekend at a folk festival
or in the mountains skiing.
She is behind this compression
of a premature retirement
into the months, weeks, days…
all the while keeping track of his meds
his appointments, his symptoms
his pains, being a pill herself
when the doctors aren’t forthcoming.
We come to visit
when things have progressed suddenly
to a painful stay in palliative care.
She directs the traffic
to and from his room
and when everyone else is seated
and she has given him ice chips
adjusted his nasal tube
and tidied his bedside tray
jumps up to sit beside him
on the hospital bed
but like a bird
soon flits away again
though sometimes her bird-bright
blue eyes are rimmed with red
and swim in teary
beds of their own.
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