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Slowly slips the light of day
Across the rim of ridge, at play.

Golden in its cadenced glow
Deep ochre 'neath the bridge, below.

A fillagree of forfeiture when misting intervenes
Alas, the frolic interplay deploys her in the in-betweens.

Shadows cut by sunlight in a deftly hewn montage
Where the heft becomes the hewn and the hewn the **** fromage?

Interspersed, a flicker in the foliage on the mound
As to toy with the gestation of illumination's sound.....

A devastating show on the rim of ridge at play,
With the sinking of the sunlight in the orchestra of day.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
A thematic interplay of permanence and transience...an orchestral metaphor which elevates landscape to a stage where the magnificence of the light conducts its final act, a weight beyond the visual, a reckoning, a farewell
A screen awaits,
blue‑white and plain,
a single box
that knows my name.

I type, I tap,
a code arrives,
a tiny bridge
to guarded lives.

Behind this gate:
my records breathe,
the dates, the scans,
the truths they weave.

Prescriptions wait
like folded notes,
appointments hum
in patient throats.

No marble halls,
no paper queue,
just keystrokes,
proof, and passing through.

And in this space
of click and care,
the NHS
is everywhere.
NHS Portal app
One of my classes has theater seating with little desks that two people share. I’m sitting by this huge man, who really should have a little desk all to himself. I don’t want to seem ungenerous but he just sprawls out like I’m not there.

So in a profoundly machismo gesture, this morning, I marked my territory with a pencil. It was carnal, feral, aggressive, and distinctly unfeminine gesture - more than a mere assertion of "First come, first serve" etiquette.

I’m familiar with life’s overlapping territories, like sidewalks, movie armrests and overhead bins and the subtle, shared space social negotiations when someone, say, introduces a laptop to a crowded library table and we all must  shuffle our stuff around or when someone desperately needs the only charger.

THEN, Friday morning big-guy starts this SUPER awkward conversation. To be clear - up until then - our ‘relationship’ had been blessedly non-verbal.

Let me tell it poetically..

He said he saw me signing in and timed it so I sat by him
he hoped to get to know me, and perhaps to ask me out.
They pass around these student info sheets, so we can form study cliques
and after a little bit, he smirkingly mentioned that he’d memorized my number.

Now, I’d barely even noticed him, I thought seating was left up to whim
before he could ask me out - I pointedly told him all about my boyfriend.
Now I’m sitting by a refrigerator-size guy who’s subtly giving me the eye
and as for his excessive use of space, I think he’s being passive possessive.

Monday morning before class, I’m going to catch the TA with her coffee and ask,
to change my seat to somewhere, anywhere, with someone, less transgressive.
I’ve been in classes, for years on end, I’ve been hit on and I’m not against making friends
but you have to know how to begin and not be so open, sneaky and aggressive.

I feel no enmity, just an awful awkward-ity and I don’t want him next to me.
Like the air-head I can pretend to be, I took a pic of him, disguised as a selfie of me.
If I’m ever concerned or slightly alarmed, I always manage to send a selfie to Charles.

.
.
Songs for this:
Messy by Lola Young
Every Breath You Take by Committed
Walk Like an Egyptian by Awaken A Cappella
.
.
Charles, a 55-year-old 6'4" retired NYC cop, has been my escort, driver, security and surrogate parent since I was 9 years old.
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 09/20/25:
Enmity =  a very deep unfriendly feeling
I swallowed my saliva.
I closed my eyes
to say what had followed me
and walked before me
for many years.

Did you know those thin twigs
pierced the cells of my skin?
It didn’t hurt.
A miracle of creation,
a tree is growing inside me.

It sent out shoots into the blue above
and roots deep into the earth.
So many times I awakened to life.
Even more often,
I lost leaves, leaving them behind
like worn-out words
and sweet pauses of silence,
the calm after inconsolable sobbing.

Living tissue,
swollen with anger, burst again.
Oceans spilled.
Fire tried to burn joy and hope.
Watching as sensitivity curled,
like a frightened puppy.

I remember the child
and the grown woman.
I remember everything
except the words.

When the artificial lights go out,
you will see
how much strength you still carry,
how many living suns burn within you,
waiting to give warmth.

Even when everything screams
and your tissues pulse with fear,
still, you live
with your voice,
with your thoughts.
It is not the end.
It is night coming.
I do not say goodbye.
I say good night.
~for the inestimable and yet,
so oft underestimated,
Lori Jones McCaffery ~
*"That was beautiful and I lived it with you." ^


tell-me, tell-me,
he whispers so only he/she can hear:

is there anything more,
a simple poet could ask for,
but an admission of someone revealing that
your words,
inculcated, enwrapped, flowered within,
then carried them to you,
and you to them?

to sit beside me, on my unpillowed weathered throne,
and imagine them imagining through eyes that read, shared
your overflowing joyous insights of the outside domain,
your sadness glorious at the end of a summer
where you rediscovered, un~purposed,
a mindfulness,
from the early morning sun beams stinging you alive

that together ***** the air from lungs exhaling,
and this very breathe
is the synapse of an actual consummation,
transmigrating, transmuting, transforming
a kindred soul
to kin

how glorious!
no, there is nothing greater,
but to ask:

my dear,
can you feel, ******* salted tears, Lori,
as I kiss each of your hands for becoming/making/cresting & creating
a bond of us?
she inquires why I write so many poems,
easy comes reply:
It gives me a fantastic living,
it makes and gives, each poem,
a calculation, a reconciliation
of who I am...a miner of the
mineral wealth in my veins
Oliver Sacks passed away today, August 30, 2015
He asked the best questions
and never stopped seeking ever better answers.
Perhaps now, richer, he has them,
but this world is surely a poorer place indeed.

by N. Lipstadt
~~~

"And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest."

Oliver Sacks


I hope you read the entire essay at the URL below.

~~~
humble humble,
mine own own muse~jester
self-mocking, calling me out,
giving oneself the *******,
who you?

indeed,
you, the greater fool,
utilizing, thriving on self-contemptuous thoughts,
you are no Oliver Sacks,
what are you doing
messing with his essaying?

go back to being
a standardized human,
spilling the detritus of thine mortal coil,
that employs you as a full time slave,
a scab-working seven day affair,
is that not sufficient?

you,
in your sixth
decaying-decades-day,
forsook the ancient Sabbath long ago,
keeping it for ****** rest,
cheaply tired from the liturgy of
straitjacketing of do's and dont's
of excruciating detail,
that put only distance tween
you and your
essential spiritual oils

Sacks invades directly my eye's clouded storage,
now, two brains cross-wired,
histories,
his story, my story,
all too familiar,
almost indecently similar

here I am,
nearer my god than thee,
on this Sabbath day
of my ancestors,
(a hand-me-down gift to the world's conceptual heritage sites)
working hard,
as an everyday day laborer,
looking for work on street corners,
busy busy searching my conscience,
angel wrestling,
sacked
by questions -

when is
one’s work done,
and when,
when may one,
in good conscience,
rest?


this poetry writing, is it not work too?

work,
a violation of the Sabbath commandment,^
even if it is of no great matter,
for by now,
this lifelong dialogue internal
this contradictory poetic dialectic
which has yet to justify the emotive words
final or finished,
is a seven days of the week affair,
undeserving of a day of rest

~~~

as I essay out this Sabbath working poem,
in a place of beauteous, natural calm,
it's so easy to agree with the
passing schooners,
all whispering,
via genteel southern breezes,

later, not sooner,

no need to decide, let it ride,
answers will come,
perhaps, all on their own,
perhaps, all on that day
when you're within
hailing distance,
in a flailing,
failing-voice-recognition way,
of the shores of the
Isle of Surcease

the answers will come
contemporaneously,
when you have leave to
exorcise from your calendar,
Siri's spouting, inexorable,
pop-up perpetual reminder
that today's first thing
on your
to do list is:

"live a life  of
good and worthwhile"**

for then,
you will have all the answers
for the Oliver questions
that need perpetual asking



Finis
~~~

^ "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates."
~~~

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/ol­iver-sacks-sabbath.html

~~~
Aug. 15, 2015
Shelter Island
for Ursula,
who I think of whenever
I read this
The difference between smite and smitten is only a couple of letters,
But the sentiment is worlds apart.
One harm,
The other love.
One lacks charm,
And the other is a healing balm --

What does it take to be
overflowing with warmth
for another?
That your mind doesn't make sense,
And yet it is above common sense.

Is it the same
Between bite and bitten,
The intent or effect?
Prey, it is somewhat better when it is enlarged and written --
 Jul 10 Poetoftheway
Caits
I fell in love with pink again
the creases at my eyes and
freckles on my cheeks

the way clean smells
and feels against moisturized skin

the second glass of red
and bites of cherries
mixed with gin

I fell in love with all of the curves
and the curls in my hair

I fell in love with breathing
and romanticizing each breath

after feeling like each should be my last
Every tear
is a precious treasure,
each drop carrying
a moment of pain
life hands over.
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