The Nurse

Her scrubs are three shades lighter
    than inky midnight blue
prepared for an all-nighter
    in a bold and helpful hue.
This evening her breakfast was
    a cold-cut club on rye,
courage for the next lost cause,
    and a sip of questions "Why?"
And in the bleary weary noon
    she smiles and laughs and prays
before a shift that comes too soon
    where she will do the same.

Poem in your Pocket

April 29 is national Poem in your Pocket day!
(and just in time for our thursday meetings, too.)
Take a copy of a poem with you to have, read, and share.

Yellow Blossoms

Narcissus blooms bow to themselves,
  those beauties by the pond,
radiantly rippling
  a lovely watery song.

Daffodils in hosts and crowds
  all nod the elegance
of flowers smiling all around
  and all together dance.

The sunflower looks up instead,
  gazing at the sky
and following the glory of
  the sun as she glides by.

Drawings On Our Fridge (by Sarai)

Erupty Volcano Girl vs. Bumbly Bee

La la la la la

I'm prancing to the park

Where beneath a storming stormcloud

A daisy has the gall to grow

I am Volcanic Dancing Girl

Fresh off the plane from Reykjavik

I love my polka-dotted skirt-slash-cone

I love erupting from its tip

Along the way I spy a bee

Whose stripes and stinger anger me

So that I spew lava right at it --

It flees, and though floods and ash and doom

And clouds of blackness o'er him loom

The bee escapes

Bumbling victoriously away

From me

The supposedly-mighty volcano

The Tale of Princess Dragonbreath

Young Princess D, a little waif,
wandered off where it's not safe.
She chased a kitten, with giggling laughter,
into a cellar where from the rafters
strings and strings of garlic hung.
She blinked at them, then tasted one.
Before you could have blinked once more
she'd eaten clove seventy-four.
Where e're she went the castle knew it
'cause she carried garlic with her--to chew it.
The smell knocked out the Queen's prize goat
and would not wash off in the moat.
The courtiers fainted, the knights were mad
and took her to the King (her dad)
with clothespins clamped about their noses.
The sentence, just as you suppose, is
Princess D must hitch a wagon
and drive to live out with the dragons.
Their breath is just as bad as hers,
or in some cases even worse.
This fate, a life of dread and horror,
had passed on garlic-eaters before her,
and was a law throughout the land
for any whose breath you couldn't stand.
But Princess D, whom I admire,
found that it was not her desire
to trundle off, like so much meat, and
find the dragons, then be eaten.
"I shall not be a meal," she reasoned,
"for dragons, though I am well-seasoned."
She ran away, and before they caught her
she'd found a stream of running water
with which she scrubbed and rinsed and wrung
the garlic smell from off her tongue.
Her sentence was commuted then,
and none were sent to the dragons again,
for the law was changed that very day.
The kingdom's favorite tale, they say,
is this of Princess Dragonbreath
who brushed her teeth and cheated death.

Subtitles

Why doesn't the world come with labels?

They would tell you in convenient closed caption:

"Here is a pinecone,"and

"This is your dog Charlie,"and

"North is that way."

Door hinges would <creak>,

hinting of [ominous music]

to warn of the unexplored, whispering,

"Here there be dragons."