Virginia Breeze

Mother

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They left you on a shelf

Beneath the bricks and a cloudy sky

As we waited for your date with a field of grass.

The gentleman who dressed you was nice enough

And he rolled you out when I arrived to say “Good-bye”.

You rested in the center of the room

As I recalled the plastic flowers

On our dining room table years ago.

All of us plus Pops and Nana too

Thanking God for all His gifts

And the Sunday meals you made.

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And this as well.

On a beautiful summer day

You put on a white blouse and skirt

And took me to the blueberry fields.

You laughed as I pretended to take a broken drum

Out the door for the berries.

Then you sang a song just for us

As cool breezes charmed my senses

While goodness found mercy

Next to a stream and gave a little boy

A picture that would last until now.

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This morning I went to Starbucks

After watching the river at dawn,

Immersed in making photos with pastel shades of sky

And bushes that seemed blue in the early morning air.

I ordered coffee

To awaken my frozen limbs

And a blueberry scone.

The berries are sweet.

I find them more delicious

Than chocolate

Or wine.

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This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

-William Carlos Williams

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My good friend Robin at Naked In Eden : Ancient Memories in the Australian Rainforest wrote this about Virginia Breeze and its disorganized captain:

VIRGINIA BREEZE: http://davidnotes.com David’s blog has some of the most beautiful and cherished poetry I’ve read in a long time. It has moved me to tears on more than one occasion. If you enjoy heartfelt honest sentiments that speak of the core issues of our lives then grab a cup of tea, slow down and read some of David’s poems. They are written by someone who feels deeply and has an open heart. You will go away feeling like you know him. They are easy to understand and are mated with beautiful photos. My post this month was inspired by David’s poetry. His writing sets me free and encourages me to be authentic. He also writes about a variety of topics I find interesting, warm, real (and sometimes funny).

You can’t ask for anything better than this in the way of endorsements or morale building moments can you?

Robin is a treasure. Every once in a long while you meet somebody who you feel close to immediately and Robin is one of those people. There is a long list of readers who have fallen under her spell and I am one of them. Her writing is irresistible and she is funny, entertaining and brave.

That last quality I find very admirable. This fine lady lived in a rain forest and wrote a book about her life. Doing those kind of things requires courage.

If we are all unique then Robin is not afraid to share that uniqueness with the world. Why write a personal blog if you are not going to share something that your reader will not be able to read anywhere else? That’s my opinion about blogging and I find that Robin is the perfect example of somebody who does this extremely well.

I hope and pray she will always have time to stop by here for a few moments because I have grown very attached to her in a very short time. She motivates me to continue trying to become a better writer.

I hope you will take time to get to know her too. You won’t be sorry. I promise.

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Have you met someone while blogging you made you feel this way?

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OOoooops. I left my PlugonHogDetector on for a few hours while I was off getting lost in my bookmarks. That’s not good. It leaves all these funny numbers on your blog and on top of other stuff. But all it is really doing is discovering how fast your blog is loading. So you don’t use too much CPU.

So your host doesn’t shut you down in the middle of writing a post…

Here is where it lives in case anybody would like to try it. Just please remember to turn it off after you are done using it so it doesn’t make your blog look like it was hacked.

Nobody has commented on my new poem I see. And probably NOBODY EVER WILL. Why?

I wonder. . .could it be the subject matter? No. Not possible. I see this stuff every day all over the television. Maybe it’s just a lousy poem. Or maybe everybody is outside doing fun things like I should be doing.

Are you having any trouble with plugins lately?  Do you ever feel like you have too many?

I rewrote an older poem today and posted it earlier. I had actually been working on another poem but it wasn’t going anywhere fast so I took a look at this one again.

The one that won’t allow itself to be written quickly is about a more serious subject. It’s about why we allow ourselves to be born. Because I think we do. I think we have a choice and we decide to come here for various reasons. The poem goes into some of those reasons.

It’s really about reincarnation.

I happen to believe in this cycle of births and deaths. But the poem is going to take some real work. Maybe this weekend i can clear the desk and do it.

Today I was distracted by this other poem that I hid in my first blog Shooting The Virginia Breeze (a Wordpress dot com blog I don’t really know what to do with it so I hide things in it.)

I rewrote a bunch of lines in this poem and posted it here.

It’s an orphan poem. It never has received any comments. But I like some of the imagery. And we like to go out on a limb here at VB every once in awhile.

This poem originally came about because we often have dinner with the television on. We like to watch The Andy Griffith Show. I had never seen any of the episodes before and they are actually pretty good. There’s a reason this show is still on the air after forty years.

At some point during dinner a commercial comes on about Cialis and impotence. I am sitting there with my wife and often her parents when this thing comes on and they start talking about erectile dysfunction. I find it very strange to be listening to this over dinner with my mother-in-law.

But everybody seems to think it’s pretty funny. There’s a couple in the kitchen and all of a sudden the faucet explodes and water starts geysering towards the ceiling. What’s that all about?

That doesn’t sound like impotence to me. Maybe something else but not that. And then the couple start laughing.

I can just see my wife and i sharing a laugh if our kitchen sink exploded. “HAHAHAH look at that honey! The faucet is sticking in the ceiling and the water’s a foot deep on the floor. I bet there’s a waterfall over by the stairs there. HAHAHAHA.”

What do they put in this medicine. . . . some sort of hallucinogenic? But then I realized that I liked this couple. Because they were happy together and they wanted to work out all their problems together. It wasn’t just about sex. It was about home maintenance and probably a lot of other stuff.

They were not going off looking for thrills with other partners. They were not trying to escape the challenges they faced. They were going to work things out and get old together. And they were going to do it with a sense of humor.

I liked that a lot. So I wrote this poem.

I am also hoping the Cialis people will see it one day and decide they need it for one of their ads.

That way I won’t ever have to worry about home maintenance again. I will have my own live in maintenance guy plus a cook and a cleaning staff.

I really do have this whole thing worked out. And I am a very patient guy sometimes.

You can ask my wife.

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Do you believe in reincarnation?  Have you ever felt like you knew someone from a past life or were in a place that maybe you knew from a past life?

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