Deep blue water, clear enough to see silhouettes of fish hundreds of feet below, cold water lapping into your kayak

Gold leaf pressed to the face of a figure of Buddha, flakes overlapping on his forehead.

Chubby little legs, wobbling and then plopping over on the bed, a slight ache in your arms as small fingers wrap around your thumbs, and you pull him back up.

Ears throbbing as your heartbeat speeds up to match the pace of Keep Breathing at an Ingred Michaelson Concert

An agoraphobic woman, hunched over her clunky walker, wide eyes searching as she shuffles into a crowded chapel to take her sacraments

Walker's shortbread cookies, to be precise; then memories of the Scottich cookbook my parents had resurfaced, whose recipe for shortbread sported a long essay the upshot of which ****** me as "...only a BAD COOK will add things: shortbread ONLY HAS 3 INGREDIENTS." or somesuch. And I used to make that recipe way too many years ago.

(sonnet #MMMMMMMMMLIV)

Mull groc'ry shopping til I'm wanting thence
Lo, Sco'ish shortbread.  Craft it to avail
Me, all myself?! The antique cookbook, frail
As dreams, is not mine to use 'gin fr'intents,
So Google rec'pes with the ling'ring sense
Of that page whose keen warning yet'd detail
Aught finds: "...bad cooks will add stuff." t'will derail
Some, but I know where I am headed hence.
I knew twas only three ingred'ents fer
All that, or maybe four, no more, else rue
Thy folly, "bad" cook.  I'll need butter.  Were
There else, I have't.  "Have with tea," is that true?
Me wants to try that.  Sco'ish, known as poor
Back in the day, what's new? LORD, save me too.

27Dec24b