Missing a loved one?
A special place?
A special object that you once held dear?
No matter what has transpired …
All things beloved can be seen in the mind’s eye.
-CD-W
via Beloved
The Hidden to Light
Entertain me with your laughter
not your bravado
dance for me a jig
and smile when I join you
Extend your hand
and walk me across the water
into a field of wild flowers
Run without thought
to catch my hat from the breeze
Talk to me of topics peaceful
and fill me with stories of compassion
Take me to your favorite place
and share with me the secrets inside
Remove the metal around your chest
to show me the softness within.
And I will shelter you from the storm.
photo credit
via Entertain
Just Gimme Some Truth
The plainest coat
of thinnest twine
divinest in
these troubled times.
The finest suit
on vainest man
with meanest tone
once business man.
The sanest folk
with honest speech
truthful, earnest
are best to teach
via Nest
Damn Straight!
I don’t ride a horse
I don’t shoot a gun
I eat Mexican food and barbecue
and bask in Texas sun
I don’t say “ain’t”
I don’t chew or spit
I can put on a Texas drawl, y’all
but only when it fits
I don’t own an oil gusher
Still, I’ve got my Texas roots
I can play blackjack, kick back
sportin’ western boots.
First rate?
Damn straight!
painting by CD-W
The View from a Gutter Isn’t Always Bad
We didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t planned. But it happened.
On the walk home from our second grade class, my best friend, Vanita, and I took a wee bit of a detour. We walked down the creek bed and into the drainage tunnel. After an immediate right, we discovered a new way of looking at things.
The sight (and site) was pure magic! Whoever thought to build this foxhole was a pure genius!
From inside the gutter, at ants view, car tires whizzed past, feet with voices attached walked above us. Yes, we would be late coming home from school. But the newness, the discovery, the giggles, made it worthwhile.
I’m not sure how much time passed before we saw the car pull in front of us. We recognized the shoes. We definitely recognized the angry voice.
Can you imagine this mother’s horror at seeing our heads in the gutter?
A silent car ride later, Vanita’s mother pulled into my driveway, spoke a few words to my mother, and drove away with my best friend in tow.
Over fifty years later, this brief moment in my life still makes me smile. The world, I’d learned, was not mundane after all. It was filled with shared bonds no one could ever take away and discoveries waiting to be found.
As the world turned, the small heads of two young girls were filled with a new perspective on life.
Vanita and me – obviously photoshopped. Her mother wasn’t packing a Polaroid at the time.
Daily Word prompt: Genius
A Power Punch of Memories
Some say it’s peculiar that I remember so much of my first few years of life. But things like the burning of a hand, or the birth of a little sister, stay with you forever. I remember helping to pin Delma’s cloth diapers around her butt, and, later, pulling her toes to make them pop. I’d smile and say, “They ain’t long enough yet, Sis. I’m gonna he’p ’em grow.”
I remember putting a pot on my head to make Delma laugh when I thought she was dying.
And that pocket knife Ike gave me when I was two? It came in real handy in first grade.
This train has its rhythm going now and the passengers have settled in. Most are trying to sleep just to make the time pass. I lay my head up against the hard window and watch as San Antone starts to slowly slip by. I close my eyes to see if I can nod off like everybody else, but it’s only an idea. Sleep is knocked out by that presence in the seat next to me. More memories keep nudging me, crowding me up against the ropes, where none of my boxing defense skills seem to work. No, these are stronger opponents. They jab my chin, then power punch me in the gut. It’s more painful than a broken nose. They make me remember.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C. Dennis-Willingham
Daily word prompt: Peculiar
Ike’s Spicy Tongue
(pictures of my great-grandfather, Ike “Isaac Newton” Dennis)
Ike mounts his beans on top of his cornbread, takes a bite, then chomps off the end of his jalapeno. Sweat is just pouring off his forehead and tears have started to roll down his cheeks.
“Damn, that’s good,” he says, “A good go for short dough.”
We all laugh, even Ike, about how something that hurts so bad can also be so good at the same time.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper by C.Dennis-Willingham (my father’s story)
daily word prompt: Spicy
Can’t beat it with an ugly stick
At least we are together, Delma and me. It’s just another place that I plan to watch over her. I want to keep her close by, so nobody can snatch her away again. As long as I can do that, it doesn’t make no difference where we are.
The car keeps humming slowly down the highway. I try to sleep but I can’t. Instead, I think about Mr. Ed Rotan and decide right then and there that “Cono, Texas” has a real good ring to it. Cono, Texas won’t just have snow gypsum under the ground and a railroad on top of it. It’ll have oil underground and derricks on the top, pumping night and day. I call them jacks “grasshoppers” because that’s just what they look like when they’re pumping up and down. They’re grasshoppers trying to hop away, but they’re stuck and have to settle for hopping up and down in the same place.
My town will have at least two good cafés that serve T-bone steaks and tea iced in clean tin jars, free to me since it’s my town. I don’t know much about T-bone steaks since one’s never been in my mouth, but I do know about cold iced Tea. A while back, Pa and I went from farmhouse to farmhouse following the thrasher and it was the first time I ever got a swaller of iced tea out of a fruit jar. A couple of them farm ladies knew how to make it real good. But the best was when one of them lady’s had cleaned up an oil can good and shiny. She poured the tea in the can with a bunch of ice and sugar and when I tasted it, it was the coldest and best drink I ever had. Ice is few and far between, sometimes as scarce as food. So when Pa took a sip he said, “Aye God, ye can’t beat that with an ugly stick.”
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper
Daily word prompt: Tea
Forgivenss: NOW OPEN!!
Grandma parked her Ferrari
and rushed through the door
of the Moxie Courageous Everything Store.
“I need one sturdy jump rope,
two twenty-pound weights,
elbow and knee pads
and blue roller skates.”
“Will that be all?” the salesman said.
Grandma looked at the ceiling
and then shook her head.
“I need a large sack of forgiveness,
‘No cost,’ I was told,
‘If you give it out freely,
it will lighten your load.'”
He pulled down the sack
from the highest of shelves
and smiled when he said,
“I might give some myself.”
She lifted her items
and knew who she’d call
for the bag wasn’t heavy,
not heavy at all.
Daily word prompt: Moxie
Shootin’ Sunshine
Here I go again, on the way back to Sweetwater. Not to get a donkey but to shoot Sunshine, My Only Sunshine.
Driving down the highway, Aunt Nolie doesn’t talk much, at least not with her mouth. She clutches that steering wheel like she’s about to squeeze all the Texas sand and Grit out of it and that’s a whole conversation in itself.
We finally get to Sweetwater and park in front of the Lucky Star Bar.
“Cono, ye wait right here.”
“OK,” I say, since I’ve already met the woman, who’s about to be shot anyway.
I sit in the car, again. I watch the people come and go, again, except this time, the ones that had been going were coming and the ones that had been coming were now going. I wait for the sound of a gunshot, the sound I’ve become familiar with when I hunt with my dad. I wait alright ‘cause there’s nothing else for me to do.
Excerpt from No Hill for a Stepper
daily word prompt: Grit
