Layered deconstruction

First of all, HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all my American friends!

On December 11th last year, an apartment complex that I pass on one of my walking routes burned.

Apartment fire – December 11, 2016 (Photo © 2016 by V. Nesdoly)

It wasn’t totally destroyed but has been unliveable these many months as it’s being repaired.

Though it’s not the most beautiful subject, there is something compelling about repairs going on behind curtains month after month and  so it has been my photo / poem subject several times in the last while. On July 25th, in response to the photo prompt “Layered,” I took the photo below and wrote about it (in a shadorma):

Apartment repairs – July 2017 (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)

Layered

 

One afternoon
massive fire engulfed
water wrecked
smoke sullied.
Months later still rebuilding
layer by layer.

© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

On October 16th in response to the photo challenge “Deconstruction.” I photographed and wrote about it again (this time in a senryu):

Apartment sheers – October 2017 (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)

Deconstruction

Construction gauze—
band-aids for fire-singed rooms
healing their scars

© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

It will be a happy day when all that reconstruction is done and its people can move back in. (And so I’ll probably write about it again.)

I’m adding that last ditty to Michelle Heidenrich Barnes’ November Padlet, where this month’s challenge is to “write a poem that finds beauty in something that is not usually considered beautiful.”

Oh, and speaking of Michelle, she’s just completed the publication of The Best of Today’s Little Ditty 2016. I’m pretty stoked to have a couple of poems in that volume. What a great collection of poems from all the lovely Poetry Friday peeps! Congratulations, Michelle (and committee) for another great book!

(To add icing to that ditty cake–between when I posted this and now, my physical copy of the book arrived! It’s so cool to hold it in my hands!)

***********

This poem is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Carol, at Carol’s Corner.

 

Fleeting

Magic morning light
paints me Yellow Submarine
bell bottoms

© 2017 by V. Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

***************
This is my Summer Shorts poem for July 30th, when the Capture Your 365 (#CY365) photo prompt was Fleetiing.

For those who don’t remember those wonderful Beatles days and the art style that was all the rage, here’s the album cover this photo reminded me of.

This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Margaret Simon, who is celebrating a birthday today! So are Linda Mitchell and Julieanne Harmatz.  Couldn’t help but post a greeting from the band themselves!

 

Ghostly visible

August 6, 2016 Photo (Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly)

Ghostly visible
as winter’s “Fresh Blueberries”
summer’s Christmas scene

© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly

***********

I photographed the Christmas scene above last August when we were visiting the kids up north. I wondered how many times I had passed it and not even seen it. It made me think of other things we see and subconsciously ignore because we know they just aren’t relevant. Is there some psychological phenomena behind that? Probably!
This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted this week by Carol at Carol’s Corner.

 

 

Parade!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Parade—band, balloons
horses, bulls, flags, floats, tractors
and candy vultures!

© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

***********

It’s parade season! These photos were taken last year when we were visiting the kids/grandkids in Dawson Creek. The Friday noon parade introduced a weekend of rodeo fun!

For more poetry fun, visit Poetry Friday, hosted this week by Mary Lee Hahn at her blog A Year of Reading.

 

Rodeo Senryu

One of the things we did on our holiday was go to the Dawson Creek Rodeo. What a fun afternoon and evening in a stadium that looked out on picturesque prairie. It was like being on the set of Heartland!

Scene from the rodeo bleachers. Event: Tie-down roping  – Dawson Creek, B.C.  (Photo © 2016 by V. Nesdoly)

What I love to do at rodeos is to challenge myself with getting shots of the action. Rodeos are full of action!

Today I’m posting three senryu (human haiku) based on a few of my rodeo shots. (Be assured, no animals were injured in the process of these events.)

Event: Barrel Racing – Photos © 2016 by V. Nesdoly.

Event:  Saddle Bronc Riding – Photo © 2016 by V. Nesdoly

 

Event: Chuckwagon Race – Photos © 2016 by V. Nesdoly

(All poems © 2016 by Violet Nesdoly – All rights reserved)

**************

This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted this week by Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe.

Save

 

On the Threshold

I seem to have impatience in my DNA. WAIT—Holly Mueller‘s one-little-word for 2016—would probably be a good choice of a word for me one of these years.

In the spiritual realm we’ve been told quite plainly to wait for God—to reveal the next step, to act on our behalf, to bring about His desired result, to reveal His goodness, etc.:

“Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD” – Psalm 27:14 NIV.

“Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him…” – Psalm 37:7 NKJV.

“I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope” – Psalm 130:5 NIV.

“The Lord is good to those who wait for Him…” – Lamentations 3:25 NKJV.

We’ve also been told that God’s concept of time is not ours—as Moses reminds us in his psalm:

“For a thousand years in Your sight / Are like yesterday when it is past” (Psalm 90:4)

and Peter in his letter:

“But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).

For us it’s hard to comprehend those 1000-year days!

We’re not the only ones to chafe at the need to wait. Old Testament characters Abraham and Sarah, for example, when promised a nation from their offspring (non-existent at the time: Sarah was barren) and after years of waiting, despaired of the promise ever coming true. They decided to substitute their own plan and Ishmael, son of Abraham and Sarah’s maid Hagar, was the result. What a lot of heartache that produced!

Personally, no matter how much I know the value of waiting for God’s timing, it’s something that continues to be a challenge for me live. I wrote about the subject of waiting a few weeks ago in response to a booklet I’m working through (“Illuminating the Threshold,” Jan Richardson’s 2015 Woman’s Christmas Retreat). I suppose you could call it me giving some advice to myself about waiting.

The Waiting Room   (Image by gerait / pixabay.com)

I enter the house
automatically step up
over the threshold

You invite me in
as a polite host should
offer water, tea

Life’s transitions not
so accommodating, I’m
left on the threshold

Or in the foyer
anteroom-sitting, waiting
indeterminate

Time to prepare
but for what, whom, when?—Relax
doors will open soon

It will come to pass
when time has reached its fullness
don’t twist the locked knob

Live the interlude
overture between movements
be fully here, now

Don’t chafe inaction
uncertainty of between
chat with others here

They may be angels
prologue emissaries sent
for your next chapter

© 2016 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

***********

Join us each week at Spiritual Journey Thursday

This post is linked to Spiritual Journey Thursday, hosted by Holly Mueller at Reading, Teaching, Learning.

Scripture quotations marked NKJVV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

The grandma poet

The toys love it when the grand-kids come to visit.

The last few weeks have felt unusually busy. When that happens, I find it hard to get in the poem-writing zone.

Last weekend was a case in point. It was Canadian Thanksgiving. We had the kids and grandkids here for a visit. It was such fun, but there was hardly a minute left over for reflection! Then, after they went home, I had to get ready to teach my weekly class (Wednesday a.m.).

This morning I told myself, This has to stop. And I wrote some senryu.

Sit down. Put feet up.
Relax. Breathe in your busy life.
Exhale a poem.

One of the things my 5-year-old grandson loves to do is watch spider videos. “I just love spiders. They’re my favorite insects!” We found a wonderful series called Monster Bug Wars.  I figure one of the reasons he likes these videos so much is that the conflict is a lot like superhero conflict.

spider videos
transfixed by eight-legged titans
insect supermen

The five- and four-year-old are beginning to play with real Lego. We have a box of it from when our kids were little so I brought it up. “Grandma, can you make a helicopter?” (This after seeing one pictured in the instruction book.) So this grandma spent an entire morning, searching through Lego for tiny wee pieces to build a picture-perfect flying machine.

wrist-deep in Lego
hands sore from sharp-edged comb-through
helicopter search

I think if our old toys could talk, I would discover they live for the all-too-short weekends when the grand-kids visit.

Duplo, Lego, bus
dollhouse, xylophone, happy
when kids come to play

This post is submitted to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Cathy at Merely Day By Day.