In front of the house 
South Side Garden 
A closer view
Republishing the poem and photos without the coffee-share blog post. —ewb
Tulip garden
writing
Shuffling life
I have been sorting through my digital and paper files, this spring, as part of our plan to evaluate, sort, and organize/toss what has been accumulating since my health hit a bad spot and I had to put aside my freelance writing, editing, and photo art activities.
I have started typing the poems from the mid-fifties through the end of the nineties that I want to keep. Basically, so that they will be available for me to read and possibly also for friends and family to choose from as keepsakes. In case I become incapacitated or die before I can go back to make up a chapbook or two of my favorites to give to extended family in remembrance. Many of the poems that I love the most are not those that have been published or reprinted. I want to read and remember and put safely aside the poems that have so much meaning to me. Those that I want to keep close to hand.
So many people…so much love…so many now gone. I want to remember.
Raindrops, Cotoneaster Twig 
Blue Wild Flax, Rain and Leaves 
Blue Wild Flax in Raindrops
The Process : Weekly Photo Challenge
The Final Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge: All-Time Favorites
After the Storm
Cotoneaster fruit after yesterday’s winter storm, the bush to the east of the garden shed. We got quite a lot of snow, here. March typically has more snowfall than February. Because it’s warmer, I think.
old memories
surface when the silent snow falls
voices…music…wind
Copyright © 2018-03-05
Lizl Bennefeld
Fargo, N.D. USA
Fallen leaves
Filtered Light
Leaf Pile
Color and Light
Against the Fence
Their Texture
Light and Shadow
The day was cold, dry and windy, although warmer and calmer than the day before. Most of the snow has melted away, and precipitation does not figure into the weather forecast before Wednesday.
I have bought a paper journal, after all these years. Now, to overcome the hesitation to fill the pages with less than brilliance, ending up with a book of pristine pages and my thoughts and poetry scattered in text files throughout six computers and blog posts on the Internet. Actually, I am finding that my skin sensitivities are lessening, and I think the archival-quality paper may not irritate my hands. I’ve also bought colored pens.
I enjoy writing. It’s okay to “ruin” good paper when playing with words and sketches. (And, no, I have no talent for drawing. Whatsoever!)
Too early for coffee
I am hidden away in my bed-sitting room with the lights off, hoping that the puppies will quit whining and go back to sleep…Ah! Quiet, again! {I do so love back-lit laptop computer keyboards!}
I am having a fun time, so far, with the poem-a-day national poetry-writing month activity (NaPoWriMo), having been invited to join a small group of friends in the event, all but one, a new acquaintance. [An introduction and my poems are here, at one of my first domains, which I’ve started over with my original host since retirement.]
Yesterday, as I discovered on Monday—must keep calendar up to date!—I had an appointment with the dentist in my home town for another filling. Should not have been a big deal, except that that tooth was the one next to the tooth that I’d had pulled last month. Needed more numbing than I’d expected. All is well, however.
With so many friends and acquaintances leaving/having left LiveJournal over the years, and with my sister and recently deceased mother no longer active on the site, I find that I have been spending less and less time there. Thinking seriously of sticking with DW and dropping LJ, even though I have a permanent account there.
Too many transitions right now, though, with SFF Net having shut down at the end of March. Will think about it, though.
Puppies are AWAKE, now. Another day begins. At least I can make some Toddy coffee while they’re outside. 😀
Happy Domesticity
Enjoyed cooking, this morning, and then taking a nap with the Scampers.
Leftovers for Breakfast
Snack Time
Omelet-Waffle Sandwich
This photo, however, was taken a couple of nights ago, when the Scampers fell asleep next to Al. That brown board to the right is the edge of his computer lapdesk.
Still low key around here, adjusting to my parents’ deaths and the activity and people exposure involved with funerals and two “meetings of the clan” within such a short period of time. Avoiding activity in general except as amusement. I’ve started doing some exercising again, and I haven’t quite gotten back on my diet, but it’s pulling together. I’ll know that’s working when I actually start writing down the foods with their calorie and carbohydrate counts.
In the meanwhile I am continuing to think about what I want to do with the resurrection of two of my discontinued domains. I had thought to construct a writing/photo collection to complement the blogs where I put up anything and everything. I’m still too much in slow motion to make that practical. It will go faster when I dig out my old website backups and use some of the pages as templates.
What I Enjoy | Everyday Inspiration Day 2
Write a List
- I love the sound of rain spattering against my window in the middle of the night as the winds come up and then die away again as the storm moves on.
- I loved the night when gale-force winds bent our old, tall poplar tree nearly to the ground as my husband and I (and the dogs) sat in the garden shed, plywood board across the open door acting as a splash board to protect us from the muddy rainwater raining on us from below. I loved the poplar, branches bending, flashing in and out of view as the lightning strikes revealed them to us.
- I loved coming out from work at midnight to find a massive rainstorm…and standing beneath the column of water pouring through the pipes from the high rooftops of the commercial buildings all around me. The alley and streets nearly empty and myself screened by falling water.
- I love swimming in lake, river or creek in the nighttime, on a whim, all alone. The sounds of the loons calling across the lake, the frogs singing on river banks or in the nearby slough.
- I love the sound of water pouring over the small dam across the river, where, when the river’s running shallow, one can sit in a crevice hidden by the falling water and watch the lights from up above and across the fields. It seems as though one could breathe water, the mist from the splashing fall rising up again.
- I love looking out of the airplane, visioning not cold and fragile, but soft, supportive clouds, and wishing to open the door and walk outside, the cumulus become a gigantic, billowing trampoline just for me.
- I love standing along the road as evening turns to night, the sky high overcast, watching tall storm cells march across the fields and hilltops many miles away. The cloud-to-cloud lightning illuminates the cell in slices, and the clouds become grey backdrops for the dance of lightning bolts, the music too far away to be heard.
- I love the mysteries and beauty of life.
Lizl Bennefeld
Copyright © 2016-05-19.
Day Two in Writing: Finding Everyday Inspiration, Blogging University.
I write because…because I write | Everyday Inspiration Day 1
Why I Write
I am a life-long writer/journaler. I write to objectivize the world outside of me; that is, the reality that is independent of my mind, which I intuit through the senses. I write to know and understand what I truly see and to determine what I feel about that reality, its physical shape, its human and other inhabitants, and the interactions among the not-living world, the combination of forces and elements, and the cause and effect of both that and the living things that depend upon God and the seemingly not-aware stage within which they live out countless generations in peace, avoidance, violence, altruism and self-destruction as species.
I write. I objectivize. I freak out a lot. And then I turn inwards and write some more. “I am not responsible in total or part for the path the future takes,” I write; “I am responsible for recognizing truth and doing what is right.”
Self-aware individuals have a great capacity for rationalization. They seek personal survival, personal gain. Few recognize the necessity for an all-encompassing altruism in order that somethings—someones—should survive to witness the end of all things. The Universe should not die alone.
Lizl Bennefeld
Copyright © 2016-05-17.
Day One in Writing: Finding Everyday Inspiration, Blogging University.
End of January
Moon in the Trees
Willow Branches
Weeds in the Fence
Our weather, this week, was nicely warm. Today, however, was more chilly and crust formed over the remaining snow (which still is more than ankle deep). I made a gesture toward firming a path from the back door to the gazebo. If the week is sunny, I will take the laptop to the gazebo for a while each sunny afternoon to be able to spend my writing time out of doors.
I am quite tired of being ill, and I am sure that being out of doors will help me to regain my equilibrium and blow away some of the clouds in my brain.
In fun news, a friend thearanartisan.com and I enjoyed tossing haiku back and forth on her FB page, Friday night. I have consolidated our haiku in order here with a link to her WordPress site. And also to RonovanWrites, whose haiku challenge #81 got us started.
Beginning the third week, this week, of the Prose Poetry workshop under the guidance of Pam Casto. Fascinating stuff. I find that there are genre as well as literary pieces within prose poetry and that my interest in them divides along genre lines as well as (my perceived) quality of the writing.
I realize that some of the books I most enjoy are prose poems, almost front end to back. For example, William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth: A Deep Map, a favorite of mine. I think also of the introductory chapter of Ivanhoe, which I admit to not having reread since shortly after college. (I first read it in late grade school or junior high, either before or just after Quentin Durward). Helen Saunders, my English instructor for the class on that particular period of English literature, was aghast at my statement that I did truly enjoy the writing style.
It seems fortunate, here in my 70th year, that I read nearly all of the “great literature” that was assigned in college before I turned 18. The older I get, the less time I am likely to allot to any one piece of literature, and the shorter the reading segments for nonfiction (e.g., Francis Fukuyama’s “Political Order” books). Forty-five minutes or an hour here and there to read a cozy mystery or historical romance just for fun is not a great amount of time lost. I’ve become a lot more choosy about speculative fiction, quite often choosing to reread favorite series rather than spend time with new books that are not quite at the highest level of gratification. Often I find myself writing, instead. Or thinking…while petting the puppy dog in my lap.
The Moments Between 