Haiku - Quiet Waters

Troubled thoughts
washed in
quiet waters

Poetry Thursday - Mary Oliver

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
--- Mary Oliver

I found this poem today - it is new to me and I simply had to share.

Poetry Thursday

Quick Intelligence Test

Quick Intelligence Test borrowed from chancy at Driftwood Inspiration
How smart are you?
Read the following sentence:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

Now count aloud the F's in that sentence.
Count them only once. Do not go back and count them again. Ready?

Look here for the answer
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Answer to Quick Intelligence Test
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

Did you find 3 F's in this sentence?


Wrong, there are 6 F's in the sentence.

Read it again!
The brain cannot process the "F" in "OF."
Incredible or what?
Anyone who counts all 6 "F's" on the first go is a genius. Three is normal, four is quite rare.

Poetry Thursday - The Pink Rose

The serene philosophy of the pink rose is steadying.

Its fragrant, delicate petals
open fully and are ready to fall,

without regret or disillusion,

after only a day in the sun.

It is so every summer.

One can almost hear

their pink, fragrant murmur

as they settle down upon the grass:
'Summer, summer,

it will always be summer.'
- Rachel Peden

Poetry Thursday

Book of Dreams

Harmony asked me to post the cover I just finished for my "Book of Dreams" so here it is.
If you want to know more about the project you can go to Harmony in Line or to Artsy Mama

Abort, Retry, Ignore?

Once upon a midnight dreary,

fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high

and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets,

still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
Having reached the bottom line

I took a floppy from the drawer,
I then invoked the SAVE command

and waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering,

long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning,

turning yet to churn some more.
But the silence was unbroken,

and the stillness gave no token.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother!

Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer,

only this and nothing more,
Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion,

some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired,

ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully I weighed the choices

as the disk made impish noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent,

waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key,

choosing one and nothing more,
From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With fingers pale and trembling,

slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending,

hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee,

timidly, I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted

words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted,

haunted, as my patience wore,
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off guard,

and pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine:

I begged and cried and then I swore.
Now in mighty desperation,

trying random combinations,
Still there came the incantation,

just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, angrily winking,

blinking nonsense as before.
Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted,

by my own machine accosted.
Getting up I turned away

and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight:

a lightning bolt cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me,

shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous data,

lost and gone forevermore.
Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I do not know

the place to which lost data go.
What demonic nether world us wrought

where lost data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls,

beyond the ether, into black holes?
But sure as there's

C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
You will one day be left to wander,

lost on some Plutonian shore,

Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

by Anonymous Works

Living

I have lived on a razors edge.

So what if you fall off,
I'd rather be doing something I really wanted to do.

I'd walk it again."

He vivido en un borde de las maquinillas de afeitar.

Qué si usted se cae,
yo estaría haciendo algo algo realmente deseé tan hacer.

Recorrería él otra vez."
Georgia O'Keefe

thought for the day

"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority,

it's time to reform."
~Mark Twain