Here is only so much room for noise,
only so much room for pain,
only so much room for wrong place
at the wrong time once again.
There is really so much room for joy
really so much room to move
really so much room to grow
and learn and try and improve.
only so much room here,
really so much room there,
choose,
choose now.
#256
Frost, geese in a vee,
September is here again.
Where did summer go?
Time to start the drift
into winter denial.
There is no escape.
The darkness that falls
too early and leaves too late
is the hardest part.
Frost, geese in a vee.
Take me with you when you go.
Just this once, just once.
#255
That’s when the chickadee landed on my shoulder
and I handed my camera to my mother
to take a picture and realized
that my mother had been dead for years,
but she took the picture anyway.
I would have liked to see how that picture turned out.
#254
On Arbour Day you work at planting trees.
On Valentine’s you work at being sweet.
On Christmas Day you work at being festive
On Easter eggs you work you tract digestive.
On Halloween you work at spooky lurking
But on Labour Day you work at not working.
#253
Look in, look inside
Something hides behind the pain
Perhaps it is joy.
Stand up, stand up straight
Something new is beginning
That makes life worthwhile.
Step out, step away
Something is coming closer
Every moment.
Run, run to meet life
Embrace newness each morning
Your heart is beating.
#252
(note: try reading only the first lines of each haiku, then only the second, and, finally, only the third. The meanings reveal themselves differently this way) 🙂
The grass is greener,
at least it’s greener longer,
on some other sides.
Is it wrong to crave
greener pastures, kinder skies,
a gentle lifestyle?
It can’t hurt to look
and if looking turns to change –
the grass is still green.
#251
Good intentions don’t pave roads
going to Hell or anywhere else.
they just hang in the air for a moment,
like smoke, then they’re gone.
Where there’s smoke there isn’t
necessarily any fire.
Smoke can linger a long time
after the fire’s dead and cold.
Sometimes burning bridges
keeps you moving forward
instead of running back to
what is already over.
And quite often it’s over
before anyone sings.
Fat, thin, or otherwise;
no matter what their intentions.
#250
Blue moons are few and far between
hardly ever seen
generally mean
it’s time to do something rare.
I’m writing this early to give you a chance
to plan in advance
so that, perchance,
you can do something on a dare.
The trick is finding something to do
beneath the blue moon
that’s completely new
but you never want to do again.
Like bungee jumping or herding cats
or wearing silly hats,
kooky actions that
make people think you’ve gone insane.
I haven’t quite decided what I’ll do
when the moon turns blue
but I know that you
can’t be included in what’s done
’cause if I’m not allowed to re-do
until that silly moon
turns that shade of blue
It’s better if it isn’t too much fun.
#249
The scarlet letter of shame today
is not an “A”.
It’s the “S” painted on the shaker of salt
that’s at fault.
The salt shaker top is littered with holes,
it’s hard to control
the amount of salt that hits your food
and you overdo
because salt is teeny and hard to see,
it’s pale and wee.
Not like pepper that is easy to see
and makes you sneeze.
Though pepper lives in a shaker too
the holes are few.
And though pepper is safer than salt they say
this is the way
we traditionally think our seasonings should be
but it seems
pepper should be in the shaker marked “S”
(for ‘Safe’, I guess.)
And salt should be kept in the one marked “P”
’cause it seems to me,
since we know too much salt is bad for us –
“P” for ‘Perilous’.
#248
The slippery slope, diet-arily,
is greased with butter apparently
so now we’ve switched to tubs of some kind of margarine
something that isn’t really butter at all
it’s got no trans-fats or cholesterol
but it comes in a round plastic tub, to my chagrin.
‘cause in every fridge with their racks and drawers
there’s a wee compartment with a flippy door
where you keep your block of butter all cool and sweet
but the tub won’t fit where the butter once dwelt
and if you leave it on the counter it kinda melts
into separate unappetizing puddles of muck and grease.
So I keep it in the fridge, with the low fat cheese
and the fruits and veggies and all that wheeze
that’ll make me live longer and enjoy life more
but as full as my refrigerator every gets
There’s just one space where nothing sets
‘cause nothing but butter fits behind a flippy-door.
#247
Linda Studley 