We are again waiting for a rainstorm. Things did dry off a bit during the afternoon. I was able to get some photographs of water drops. The leaves have opened and are spreading out on the cotoneaster twigs. Lovely!
I have developed a stye on my left eyelid, which may slow down both writing and taking photos for a while,
time flies ahead
— Lizl Bennefeld
leaving everything behind
never catching up
2022-03-12
I am trying something different, this time change. I have set my alarm clock to send me to sleep an hour early (my sleep app) and wake me an hour early. That should minimize sleep patterns, since we seldom have to be precise in timing activities on a daily basis.
Getting to bed and falling asleep almost immediately results in waking up after the requisite number of hours, rather than sleeping longer. I awakened at 0330 or so. It’s now 0510 and one of the Scampers is lying across my ankles.
wide awake . . .
hours till sunrise and
second sleep
The past week and more, I have been spending less time both on the computer and taking photographs. I have been reading a lot, and also tackling more of the sorting-and-tossing to clear out junk and organize the space into usable segments.
It is late enough that I can start the decanting of the new batch of Toddy coffee concentrate before I settle in, again.
Pull up a chair and help yourself to a hot drink! The temperature outside is 6°F/-14°C with a chance of snow flurries. (I won’t mention the wind chill temperature.) I have closed all the curtains, and it’s tolerable warm inside the house. During this past week, anticipating the activities of February, National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo), I have been wandering through poems from previous years. Looking at where my mind was in earlier times.
While I do gravitate toward the shorter (mostly Japanese) poetic forms, there are poems I have written that “return to haunt me” (?). Moments versus lifetimes. Eleven syllables or however many stanzas sketch out recognizable (or unfamiliar) pictures of shadowed realities. A brief overview (I did not include, for example, song lyrics) of some of the longer (but not long-long) poems within my immediate reach are below. While I have been writing poetry since elementary school, I have saved only one poem that I wrote before I started college in 1964. And not many from my college years, either.
You will find our host’s Weekend Coffee Share blog and InLinkz app at January 2022 Reflections. Retrospection is a useful tool, I think.
Best wishes to you! I hope that the week to come will be enjoyable and quite satisfactory.
Hugs & much love,
Lizl
"Nighttime Reassurances"
I will not be remembered
no one will know my face
or hear echoes of my voice
my words will not live on
and so, with every gesture
written words of mine, read,
inspired…thoughtful…
full of fun or joy or love
my legacy will be reflected
in the here and now
gently leading, pushing
guiding those who will
in turn go on to shape
tomorrows that I will not see
nor they, who will themselves
become the ripples in the stream
Copyright © 2018-08-29, by Lizl Bennefeld.
"Tempted to Silence"
as the years move on
as I move with them
or we go separate ways
I have less to say
there is less to hear
around me that inspires…
I don’t know what I miss—
words of kindness, uplifting
without self-serving thoughts
a different world, perhaps,
outside the door…with hope
for more than me and mine and yours
If I were alone, again
if there were no one to care
if I were there or here
I would take a lease
on a cabin in the woods
for enough years to die
listening to rain and bird calls
wind and ice and hearth fire
pencil scratching paper
the opening of a door
Copyright © 2018-04-18, by Liz Bennefeld.
RESILIENCE
remembering at the far
end of eternity
shadowed by
images of what came before
looking for lost pathways
in a web of visions
enmeshed in beauty
naming those who
came here, then vanished again
ethereal … dissolving … gonefading colors
butterfly dust on dew
stuff of dreams
Copyright © 2021-07-03, by Liz Bennefeld.
"Mother’s Cookbook”
Look through tabs of Mother’s cookbook
for french toast with cinnamon
which we were used to devour
when children on a rainy Sunday
after church
Only recipes, now, and memories
of sticky hugs
laughter
warmth
Search among the tabs
just one more time
for Mother’s recipe
for love
– Elizabeth Bennefeld, Sept. 2005.
Reprinted in the December/January (2011?) print edition of ARTSpulse, The Arts Partnership, Fargo, North Dakota.
“Going Home”* In the next yard, swings for children born, grown and gone while we were away. Where the ponies grazed– came to the fence for nose rubs– houses row on row. There, Squirrel parents told stories of an old man who hand-fed pancakes to them all. We sit, the old man’s children, waiting on the porch as squirrels climb down from their trees to greet long-lost friends. Copyright © 2000 (rev. 2015), by Elizabeth W. Bennefeld. All Rights Reserved.
A poetic fantasy in response to a poetic prompt during a Poetry Heals online workshop (poetryheals.org).
charting my unpath
soaring in the air as it thins
diving ocean’s depths
measuring life’s infinities
through death to forever dreams
Copyright © 2022-01-19, Liz Bennefeld
different shades and shapes
shallow waters and broad banks
ripples and bird song
ice and winds—summer’s warmth
ever changing…but the same
© Lizl Bennefeld, 2022-01-15
“Birds near a Mountain Stream by Herman Henstenburgh (c.1683-c.1726). Original from the Rijks Museum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.” by Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Looking back over the past few years — the suffocating wildfires and the Covid-19 pandemic — I marvel at the difference that has taken place in terms of my involvement in and passion for seeking out my feelings and creating poetry that might express what I think and feel. Concentrating on seeing the world from my own viewpoint, rather than leaning perhaps too often on the opinions of others.
clouds wander
pulled and pushed by random winds
sun and shadows
I think that I am changing. Finding a different focus? Feeling less threatened, perhaps, by the thought of running out of time to do what I have thought was important. But life isn’t like that. It ends when it ends, and what I have done is what I have accomplished. What I have not accomplished, no longer relevant. The world goes on without me, and my “space” fades and disappears as people whose lives I have shared adapt and continue…and the same for each of us in turn. I am not at the center of my world.
spring rill flows
rearrange pebbles and
carry them away
The ripples that are now in the stream fade away as the water flows on and mingles with other ripples and currents. Made by Nature or Other or competing forces. The present and the future make their own realities as they travel their own paths. And those paths will end. And it will not be because of anything I have said or done…or because of who or what I am, whoever that might have been or as perceived through others’ senses and minds.
The future will create itself. And I will be…whoever or whatever one becomes as the materials that now constitute myself become other and are remade into many other shapes and forms, living things or inert. Detached and reused in their turn. Erosion, regrowth, or nothing at all. Or from stardust to stardust once again.
I think I will take some photographs, tomorrow, and write more poems. A warm-up for National Haiku Writing Month, come February.
I have enjoyed these holiday weeks. The absence of structure. Meeting up on Zoom with folks from the Artist’s Way group we started in the ’90s. Sleeping late. Going to bed late or early or not until just before sunrise. Feeling more in touch with myself and the world around me. Made lovely vegetable salads with eggs and carrots and a bit of chopped ham. Played with the Scampers a lot. Even stay-at-home vacations can be renewing.
Next weekend, Natalie will return from her time away from hosting the #weekendcoffeeshare. Looking forward to the regathering and sharing stories and thoughts. I understand that after a brief break, the middle of the week, we will be back to below-zero temperatures and perhaps gale-force winds outside once again.
Hugs & much love,
Lizl
Photo by David Kopacz on Pexels.com
the days and the years
the seconds and the lives
the birth of stars ... the depth of night
looking back through years of joy and sorrow... always loved
— lizl, 2021/12/30
family from birth, family of the heart
For many years, while I was an copy/style editor and writer, I made a practice of setting aside the weeks containing the Christmas and New Year holidays as vacation days for myself. When I retired, I let that go. However, I found that I missed those unstructured weeks that were interrupted only by the Christmas family gathering in the town just across the river from ours.
Continue reading “Late at night, early morning #weekendcoffeeshare”
Welcome to my blog! I have just made more hot tea and am fixing lunch—Greek yogurt with thawed mango chunks and blueberries. There’s a fresh batch of homemade coffee concentrate in the refrigerator. Help yourself or bring your own munchies and brew!
Another week almost finished up! I have been taking time off from things this week, again. I have been sleeping more, exercising, rereading some favorite novels, and making some progress on cleaning and redoing the books on the front-room shelves. In my room, I still have boxes of books and electronics that we hauled out of the basement, a few summers.ago, when we got water seepage from heavy rains. I am now ruthlessly tossing things. Also, I need to get some of the picture frames back on the walls and out of harm’s way. I have one (framed) embroidery sampler from the late 1800s that I need to unframe and send to a relative on the east coast; her first name is the same the girl, a direct ancestor, who embroidered the sampler. I think that it should not have been kept under glass. My sister will know what to do with it to preserve it without more damage.
My last Artist’s Way session (13-week course through the U of Wisconsin-Platteville with Prof. Sean Shannon) was last weekend. To maintain the framework somewhat, I decided to continue on my own by rereading Julia Cameron’s book It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again. I also have on hand Naomi Wakan’s Write Away (prompts for a healthy life). (I ordered two copies , which are available from a business near her home, and both were autographed, which I had not expected, but much appreciate.) Naomi’s book is much more utilitarian, coming from experience without extraneous sidetracks. I may intersperse the exercises. I may find that I want to stick with Naomi’s. I logged onto B&N’s site and found three more books (available only as paperbacks) that I can add to my library. They should be arriving two and three weeks from now.
My mother left many completed quilt tops in her fabric arts room when she died. One of my sisters-in-law took them, along with the many shelves of Mother’s materials stash, to put to use as she could for various and worthwhile projects. I hope that much of it is donated to charities, whether as quilt tops or finished quilts. Before they left with the items that fell to them to distribute, I chose two quilt tops, which my sister-in-law has quilted for me. Finally, in the midst of the pandemic, she and my brother made the long drive to bring them to me/us, this week. They felt that shipping was too uncertain to trust them to. My sister-in-law does exquisite quilting, finishing them almost as fine as Mother would have.
The four of us enjoyed supper together at the local Denny’s Restaurant. It was interesting, being out and around people talking and enjoying one another’s company. I had missed fried eggs with hash browns and bacon. Something I do not make for myself. (That would be the potatoes, which I do not keep in the house. I do, however, have a frozen veggie pasta meal in the freezer. The stuff with the cheese sauce.) We three oldest siblings have gotten together on Zoom a few times, these past two years, but being together in one place is something we have not done for a very long time, other than the parents’ funerals, the winter of 2016-17.
when leaves fall
[tanka.] lizl bennefeld, © 2021-12-17
they give themselves back to earth
to rise again
transfigured into flowers
clothed in butterflies
and dreams
Although I have been writing some poems in December, I am not focusing on writing. I very much enjoyed joining with other participants during February 2021 for the February National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo). I plan to write more haiku, tanka, and other (in English) Japanese poetic forms during January, leading up to the poem-a-day activities in February 2022. My reading has been mostly rereading favorite books. I found a number of them lost among the volumes that had accumulated on the front-room bookshelves. Found a favorite ebook that I had thought lost; a science fiction book by my friend Melisa Michaels, now deceased. Had a good cry. Missing her a lot. I am happy that she and her husband bought property and lived for a while in the same state we do, so we were able to get together more than once during that all too brief time.
Time has passed so quickly, and I must tend to the Scamper dogs and start in on the laundry, once Al is out of the shower. I am grateful that you have stopped by for a while.
If you visit the blog (link below) of Natalie the Explorer, you will find her weekly Weekend Coffee Share post and a Links app with links to the other Weekend Coffee Share participants. Enjoy! Natalie is taking a two-week break from the Weekend Coffee Share feature on her blog, and so the next will be on 7 January 2022.
Best wishes for the coming week and the new year!
Lizl
The Moments Between 