prodigal

She leaves me the season’s gifts

crimson tallow leaves

a thousand-petaled camellia

pert johnny-jump-up faces

I like to imagine her in a green silk slip

hazelnuts for eyes

hair corn husks dried and whispering

barefoot, winged, dazzling, elusive

Houston’s winter, subtle until late December

littering her bounty on my sidewalk like some prodigal daughter

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Snow on Wednesday

Christmas sights this week:

6 members of the Salvation Army choir singing their hearts out at the entrance to Walgreen’s, their voices carrying through the air to my car as I drive by…..

Great Christmas lights in River Oaks where enormous oaks dangle long strands of light from limb to ground…..

Snow, last snow 2004, next snow who knows, snow on Wednesday evening, swirling down fast enough to stick. I have to take a walk in it, stand under street lights where I can see it best. Its beauty shakes my heart. Who knows when I’ll see it again. And sure enough, by the next afternoon, it’s almost temperate. Houston in winter….

Out to Mom’s to make empanadillas, Puerto Rican meat pies, once a family tradition. We’ve upgraded. My daughter found a meat pie dough, already cut in circles. Still, it’s a lot of work, cooking pork, the smell of onion, garlic, capers, everywhere, adding a little olive, a bit of hard-boiled egg in the filling. Mom dozes in a rocking chair as we fold and fry. The meat pies are good, but not as good as memory. Isn’t that true about everything…?

haiku practice

Sometimes I play at loose haiku, the way others do sudoku. I find the necessity for precision fun even though I usually fail at it. Here are some flailings….

on finding a bird’s feathers on the sidewalk:

at my feet feathers

spill across broken sidewalk

is it a crime if no one sees it

OR

I’d dust for prints

but a cat’s small smile tells all

OR

feathers spill across sidewalk

dove grey black tipped

a meow hangs in the air

Houston’s mild winters bring so many birds.

At the sight of hundreds on the electric lines:

 

sullen overcast skies

are broken by a hundred dark wings beating

against a grey wool twilight

OR

they dip and dive against

grey wool skies and settle on the

lines….winter’s begun