Photo: Amitai Asif
There is water
For the thirsty
Even
In the desert,
Where heart and hand
Were put to work
With foresight of what
Must be done,
To hold
What would otherwise
Be lost
To shifting sands
And blazing sun.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Manmade
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
Undulating trip
On triangular
Height
Soon reaching top speed
In centrifugal
Flight.
For One Word Sunday: Triangles
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
This little light
That shines
This little light
So fine
This little hand
Aglow:
May your wonder
In wonder
Grow.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Lights
Photo: Amitai Asif
There is sludge
That won’t budge
There is gumming of parts
So the muck
Becomes stuck
As so many now fudge
And prefer to hold grudge
‘Stead of clearing the gunk
Of those who claim truth is junk
Who treat lies
As their prize
And demise
As new highs.
For The Daily Post
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
If the distance’s too far
And the winning too tempting
There is always the tummy
To improve odds
Of aiming.
Photo: Atara Katz
Even in the blackest night
There’s hope
In sight,
There’s light.
As addendum to this prompt I want to add news of amazing breakthrough research that is offering tangible hope to people with spinal cord injuries, who till now may have had little light at the end of their dark tunnels. Who knows — soon they may be able to get up again and walk!
Scientists use stem-cells to make paralyzed rats walk again!
(I’m doubly excited for this remarkable news because the co-leader scientist in this research, Professor Shulamit Levenberg, is my sister!)
For The Daily Post
Photo: Amitai Asif
The tender bloom stays but few days
Yet made of atoms forged
In times
Before eons,
And will remain
As it transforms
To almond, seed, tree, earth, person:
All life’s
Ions.
Photo: Amitai Asif
Beware the prod
When arrows nod.
Their seeming prompt
May in fact be
The footprints stomped
To show the real way
Out the swamp.
For The Daily Post
“How will I know?” the girl hung spectacled green eyes on me. Teeth aglitter with pastel-colored braces bit her lower lip. “What if I wait till it’s too late?”
It was decision time for Summer Camp and she was fretting.
Should she go to the same camp she’d gone to twice already, the camp her cousin goes to, and where several of her classmates will be? She loved it there. It was familiar. It was only three hours away from home. There was a lake and zip-lines and horseback riding. She was going to choose her best friend from last summer as a bunk-mate. It felt like another home.
Or … should she go to the other camp … the one she’d heard of last year but by then already had no openings? The science camp sounded like everything she’d ever want … but now the choice – and possible consequences – became real. That camp was half-way across the continent. It was on a campus, not in a forest. There’d be no one there she knows.
“My friends say I’m crazy because who wants school when there’s finally no school,” she sighed. Her finger twirled the edge of an auburn lock. Twist, hold, release; twist, hold, release. I thought of how the movement mirrored her dilemma … To hold on or to let go, to keep close or to let loose.
A difficult concept at any age, let alone at eleven.
“Hmm …” I noted. It wasn’t my input this child needed, just my ear.
“It’s not like school!” she stressed, a bit defensively. “It’s interesting! Also, they have summer camp activities. A pool, and trips, even arts and crafts. … Well, the crafts are more like, robotics and such, but that’s still crafting stuff, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
She took a deeper breath. “And I like science … They have a whole week about space. We’ll even get to visit a real observatory!” Her eyes shone as if they were already reflecting several constellations, and she sat straighter. Then she sagged. “But I don’t know anyone.”
“Not yet,” I noted. “I gather this won’t last.”
The auburn curl twirled, corked, released. “Yeah … There were a lot of kids I didn’t know in the other camp, especially the first time. But …” the big green eyes widened as the core of doubt unmasked. “What if everyone there is, you know, dorks and nerds and such?”
My eyebrows rose, amused. “And if they are? …”
She frowned but then a pastel-braces grin appeared. “Well … then I’ll fit right in…”
For The Daily Post
The boy, five years old, had his hands deep in soft dough. “What do butterflies eat?” There was a butterfly cutter among the shapes on the table, likely the inspiration.
“Nectar.”
“From the flowers?”
“Yep!”
Silence, a bit more kneading, pulling, twisting and squeezing. This kid has such high sensitivity to textures that it took three months of work with an excellent occupational therapist before he was willing to touch the dough, let alone let it squirt between his fingers. My work with him was reinforcing the OT work in the speech-and-language contexts. Children learn much better when their body is engaged.
“What do frogs eat?” He fingered the frog cutter, put it next to the butterfly one, compared their sizes, lightly pressed the edge of the frog shape into his ball of dough.
“Frogs eat mosquitos as well as other kinds of insects: flies and gnats and such.”
“Good.”
“How come?” I smiled.
“Because mosquitos eat people alive.” His big eyes hang on me, suddenly a little scared by his own repetition of words he’d heard, “but do they really eat people?”
“Not exactly, no. The female mosquito drinks blood for her food, but only a very little bit. It is very small and it doesn’t actually eat you.”
“Oh. Yucky.”
“Yeah, I would not want to be a mosquito.”
“Me neither!” Pause. “Frogs don’t mind, right?”
“Yep.” I can see another question coming.
“Who eats frogs?”
“Snakes do. Some other animals eat frogs, too, even some people eat frogs.”
“People!?” The munchkin was simultaneously impressed and repelled. “People don’t eat frogs, do they?” he turned to his mommy. Usually, I’m an acceptable source for information, but some things require a higher authority.
The mother nodded, amused. “In France they do. Maybe in some other countries.”
“Yuck.” he relished the word. “Yucky, yucky.” He twisted his lips in contemplation, and you could see the wheels turning in the little brain behind the hazel eyes and summer freckles. “But … frogs eat the mosquitos and the mosquito eat blood from people …” he let the question dangle.
I raised my eyebrows, waited.
“It’s like a circle.” He breathed. “It is everything connected!”
From the mouths of babes.
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