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Page Under Construction.
© All postings and intellectual materials on this page are property of Jane Shlensky.
POETIC BLOOMINGS 
Levitation for Vacation
No motor home, no blacktopped road,
No bus or train or boat on waves,
No packing, toting, load, unload,
No budgeting or plan that saves
A dollar here a dollar there
To maximize per buck, the rate,
I seek vacations in the air
No plane—I want to levitate.
Perhaps this is the way my mother
Traveled from her rocking chair;
Eyes closed, she’s smiling at another
Destination far from care.
But I don’t want imagination
Storing travels in my mind
No, I want various vacations
Leaving home and work behind.
Imagine floating Poppins-like—
No umbrella we’ll need, of course—
Above it all, like we’re on strike
From people-moving schemes, and worse.
I want that roar of silence and
The joy of momentary flight
That lets me move over sea and land
Like eating life to the last bite
Horizons beckon, shores and reefs,
Exotic rivers, desert scapes,
In comfy shoes or scroungy briefs,
Or evening ware with velvet capes,
It doesn’t matter what I wear
If I light out with sunscreen on
Just think a place and I am there
And leave my worries—and my phone.
Prompt 44: Where the Rubber Meets the Road, March 2, 2012
Trolaan from In-form Poems, February 25, 2012
Soaker
The winds blew in a heavy rain
That thumped the ground like fists on clay
Thick storm clouds rushing past again
To get to somewhere else that may
Have need of purple-clouded skies
Hard down-pours and swift-moving streams
Homes dry as dust who realize
How water figures in their dreams
A drought may last for months and we
Ask daily for a kindred shower
And pray whatever gods there be
Assuage our thirst, if but an hour
Droplets of rain depend upon
Dry earth to hold them for a while
Damp seeds can sprout under the sun
Drenched, quenched, the earth can bloom and smile
MY BEAUTIFUL BLOOMS FROM WALT AND MARIE: Thanks for the posies!
Prompt 39
Marie Elena’s Selection
Even though the field was once again ripe with luscious blooms, I have chosen to return to the same poetic vine as last week: Jane Shlensky. “Gouache” seems to epitomize a color prompt, in my view. We begin by “driving along the coastal highway, Nova Scotia.” This immediately sets a colorful, scenic view in the mind’s eye. Nature’s palette gives way to “village houses painted in screamingly vibrant hues.” The descriptive language throughout is colorful in its own right, and pleasurable to read. The gallery scene intrigues me, as Jane so artfully paints both synthetic and natural; setting and sentiment. She ends with a brilliant reference to American soil, and a “steady diet of red, white, and blue.” Thank you, Jane, for sharing your gift with us, week after week.
Gouache, by Jane Shlensky
Driving along the coastal highway,
Nova Scotia bore no resemblance
to American crowded beaches littered
with the refuse of entertainment.
This pristine stretch reminded me
of Greek islands of my youth, back
when we both believed in getting
away to lands far off, where we could
see our own country more clearly.
Getting away had always spiced our food
and added color and texture to our palette.
Village houses painted in screamingly
vibrant hues were set along that seascape,
all shades of shy and muscular blues,
flecked with whites of cloud, sea foam,
and sand, the road itself trailing lazily
through trees like a black ribbon dropped
by a careless goddess dressing for a party.
There in that small gallery—remember?—
we saw paintings that so reflected the colors outside
that we stood for hours shifting from one foot
to the other, looking first out the window and
then back at the framed work on easels and walls,
the best water-coloring ever was really gouache,
a media I almost wanted to eat just to get it
firmly within me where it could satisfy
a color deficiency, a craving I hadn’t known
I felt until I saw what would relieve it.
That drive should have told us that our lives
had fallen upon a gray patch, a July dry grass
and muddy pond patch, our bodies themselves
yearning for the vitality of a blooming spring—
Kelly green, coral, lilac, saffron, magenta,
indigo, sun flower, scarlet, and umber,
wanting to take that festival of brightness
home with us, so we would not waste away
on a steady diet of red, white, and blue.
Beautiful Bloom from Prompt 38:
My choice this week, Jane Shlensky’s captivating Praying with One Eye Open, was stirred by Mary Mansfield’s Splash from Prompt #37. Both Jane and Mary grace us regularly with the beauty of their words. It gives me pleasure to be able to honor them together with a “Bloom.”
From Mary Mansfield’s “Splash”
PRAYING WITH ONE EYE OPEN By Jane Shlensky
Faith was not as blind as he let on
depending on belief with its eyes closed,
understanding without knowledge,
ears closed with palms
and voices raised
to stifle honest questions that
God can surely see.
Belief for her embodied studying,
asking and seeking,
sometimes finding,
always knocking and waiting,
reaching and waiting,
craving openings, vision and revision,
and praying from the deepest heart
for clear and useful answers,
still with one knee bent,
with one eye open
to see
the world.
Prompt 6: Using color without naming the color. June 12, 2011
As one who still finds a fresh box of sharp crayons one of the joys of life, I chose Jane Shlensky’s “Garden Art” as my pick this week.
Jane’s “friendly acronym” introduces us to color’s energy. After all, “…color did not live in a box of worn wax.” The words that follow conjure vivacious images of nature’s rich diversity of color — complete with taste, scent, and sensation — along with “the promise of rainbows,” and “the magic of mixing life with life to create new hues.”
Now, where did that eighth crayon go? 😉
GARDEN ART by Jane Shlensky
ROYGBIV—
we memorized
this friendly acronym,
pointed toward our crayon
boxes with each wax stick
labeled, but color did not
live in a box of worn wax.
We imagined a kindly man
in overalls, Mother Nature’s
gardener, our Roy, an earthy
dirt-squeezing gentleman,
conversant with leaf shapes
and tints, fruiting vines,
sun-kissed citrus, berries,
tomatoes, radishes, and ripened
squash, their waxy necks entwined.
His middle initial conjured
freshly mowed lawns, string beans
hanging from staked vines, cucumbers,
lettuce, cabbage, jungle-striped
fleshy-hearted melons,
corn stalks and pale ears,
pearly kernels hidden
in layered shucks,
the foliage of all vegetable life.
Mr. Biv, we imagined, had
his grower’s thumb involved
in every step of gardening,
pocketing seed pods, shelling
sunflowers for birds of
every feather—grosbeaks, chickadees,
cardinals, finches—rushing
to feed at his hands,
his head firmly planted
in the overarching depth of sky,
thundering clouds a lullaby
to his ears, piqued for the plunk
of droplets on dry soil, his nose
tweaked for the smell of ripening
and ozone after rain,
his eyes lifted for
the promise of rainbows,
the magic of mixing life
with life to create
new hues.