Poetry Jam - Cold Comfort

'Mt. Aoraki With Cherries on Top' - photo by Jim Kilgallon

Cold Comfort

Others may languish with their sundaes

Spooning chocolate ice cream up

Swirling their tongues around the cold

Lapping a buttery feeling from their lips

Dipping again for a hit of warm chocolate

Stringing the cherry along til the last

Then plucking it from the taut stem

Crushing the flesh and spitting the pit

Taking cold comfort in that moment

I instead will sit this blue hour away

Scooping a handful of tall grass

Twirling it about my weary head

Sending the night flies spiraling away

Savoring the quiet cool of evening air

Sweeping the field scents over me

Until the sun is ready to gently settle

A glowing cherry atop yonder mountain

And drop to stillness and a comforting chill

- SM-L 6/30/13

This week's prompt was difficult for me ... a cherry on top ... Knickerbocker Glories ... hmm.  It may be late in the week but at last there is something here that has made its way to paper, keyboard, what ever ... it is shared with others at Poetry Jam. Go see what others are sharing! Join us if you've a mind!

The Storyteller - Jodi Picoult

I have to be in the mood for a Jodi Picoult book. Don't get me wrong, she's an incredibly talented writer and all, but she's just so damn intense. I can always depend on her to hit a hot button issue, twist it, turn it, play total havoc with it and bring out a kickass story. But, my God! By the time I'm half-way through the book, I'm a nervous fucking wreck (pardon the language).

Take The Holocaust for instance. Take the issue of manipulation. Take vulnerability and weakness after a heart-breaking accident. Take human frailty. Take religion. Take time and forgiveness on an individual and global level. Take looking for love in the wrong place. Take it all. Twist it. Turn it. Play havoc with it with several characters. Yup ... it comes out a kickass story.

Jodi Picoult has an almost formulaic way of putting a story together, In fact, in conversations with friends and fam who read her, that is one of the criticisms.  No one can deny, though,  that her stories are put together well and that she always causes a strong reaction to her plots, her characters, and her endings.

Here, in her latest novel, we find an emotionally and physically damaged young woman who befriends an elderly man at a group she attends for the grieving. He shares a dark secret with her and makes a most unconventional request. What's a girl to do? Therein lies the jumping off spot for the story ... Picoult doesn't stop there, however, She weaves in a parallel story that comes to the reader via the young woman's grandmother. Then, there's a side story brought in by the connection the woman makes when she digs into the past history of her elderly friend ... and there's his story. It all gets twisted, turned ...

'Nuff said.

Saturday Snapshot ... Before and During Mountain Laurel Season

At the end of May, my husband and I went on a nice walk out into the woods of southern New Hampshire to look at a trail called the Metacomet. I noticed how prolific the stands of mountain laurel were and told him that we really needed to return and hike the trail again when the laurel came into bloom. Here is a picture along the trail in May .

This is the same trail about twenty paces back from the first photo. It's one month later and you can see just how much laurel grows along the edges of the wetland swamp. It looks like a pinkish white swath from afar, but walking through it as it grows alongside the trail really brings it up close ...

It's just so beautiful.

Here's another May shot further along the trail where the swamp has opened up and is beginning to channel to a brook that drains the area. And below, shows again how much laurel grows along the banks of the water.

I love mountain laurel season ... two weeks of  beautiful color deep in the woods and along the waysides.

This Saturday Snapshot is shared with others at West Metro Mommy Reads. Melinda hosts every week now, while Alyce takes a break from blogging. Check out what everyone else is sharing this week!

The Child Thief - Brom

The cover of this book is arresting enough, never mind the premise ... a side of Peter Pan that exposes a much darker character than H.M Barrie ever dared put to paper. Here is a Peter Pan tale that brings a more sinister and dangerous intent to his spiriting away of children to Neverland. And Neverland is not what we remember either! Yes, there is a pirate-like figure a la Captain Hook, fairy sprites that are full of mischief, dangerous beasts with fangs and slimy skins, but their danger and intent are magnified a hundred-fold. Gone are the strictly good and strictly evil characters of Barrie's story; they are replaced with like characters that are ... complicated, complex, more balanced with light and dark.

Live By Night - Dennis Lehane

He's not a gangster. He's an outlaw. So says Joe Coughlin at different times during conversations with his father, his friend Dion, his lover Gabriela, and in deep conversations with himself, but the reader knows differently. And finally, so does Joe ...

Set against the backdrop of Boston and the Gulf Coast of Florida during the prohibition years, Lehane's most recent novel spins a tale of the youngest son of a Boston cop who has been lost and trying to prove himself since he was a child living in his brother's shadows and craving his mother's love and attention and his father's acknowledgment. Under those pressures, he comes up the loser and instead straggles to the streets and the company of neighborhood toughs. Neighborhood toughs that become his cadre and soon his way of finding a way up and away from anonymity.

Too bad that the recognition he gets leads him to bleeding in an alley, being abandoned to prison by friends and father, losing a lover, being pressed into service by mob leaders and challenged by other mob leaders, gradually facing the fact the he ... is ... a ... gangster.

The question that simmers in the reader of this latest Lehane page-turner is, "Can he be redeemed?"  There are other questions too ... What price will a man's soul pay to prove himself ?  Is revenge ever worth the plotting and execution? Is heaven really here on Earth and have we really blown it? Can a life of crime ever be abandoned for a life of benign goodness or will past crimes always be visited on us? What about friendship and trust between criminal rogues - is it really possible?

Excellent and fast read, Dennis. Keep crankin' em out!

Poetry Jam - Red Rock Nightfall

Red Rock Nightfall

We were warned about scorpions sensing our warmth

But still we headed out to that desert tower.

I could not get over the sense of space as we climbed

Over tables and shelves of red rock around dusty

Columns and up through smooth chimneys until -

We found a large table that faced the western sky.

A sky that stopped my heart for one brief second

That made the world swirl round that sun in a spiral of

Red and purple cloud striations that bled away from the sky

Down through the dusty desert air and into the rocks around us.

Not a soul in sight - the only sound was our breathing.

Our cameras hung idle and we sat down - hard

And just like that the sun, too fell hard behind a line

Of sand and rubble that went grey and then indigo.

The stars blinked on and on and on and as I looked

The sky became the heaviest blanket pressing us

Back, back toward the flat tabletop on which we sat.

I found myself lying there lost in the sheer numbers

Specks of light and bright gleaming dots, constellations

Taking form with such size and definition -

All against this fuzz of light from millions of stars.

We settled flat against the rock and felt the desert dust

Settle over us and the night press down with a weight

That pushed our souls outward and upward.

I thought what a glorious end it would be

To be fossilized like that scorpion I’d seen at the museum

Pressed into the rock by the desert dust, the indigo night

The stars of the ages,  the cold passage of time.

Poetry Jam - this week we think about the word 'rock' ... 

 'Free verse may be written as very beautiful prose; prose may be written as very beautiful free verse. Which is which ?'  

- John Livingston Lowes

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

The Mag #173 - Fair Warning

The Promenade - Marc Chagall

Fair Warning

When we walk out in the morning air,

My thoughts soar high and away.

I watch the breeze lift up your hair,

Send collar and coat tails astray.

You always tether me close to you,

A soft hand to stroke and hold.

At first it comforted, now I rue,

For your clutch seems far too bold.

I am my own blithe spirit, sir !

You may not hold me too close !

For if my soul becomes a blur,

Or reflection of yours, at most,

I’ll soar away, reclaim what’s mine

And leave this love that’s heady wine.

A weekly pilgrimage to see what others post at Magpie Tales - this week is Mag #173 ... check it out.