Sheila was blowsy, frowsy, frumpish, dowdy.
matching her unkempt messy, sloppy abode.
gone to seed, meanies said in a nasty way.
we kids saw through Sheila’s shabby drabness.
she was entertaining and fun, and she liked children.
best of all, she had a good heart and terrific stories.
meanies could not even dream of this personality for themselves.
late summers here
days draw long
not long now
til winters song
balmy days
evenings mild
flowers blowsy
grasses wild
warm rain falls
hot days fade
cooling breezes
harvests made
so share a meal
drink good wine
this time of year
is a vintage fine
For the child in us all. . .
Sea, sea can't catch me,
All the waves that I can see,
Would like to carry me away
Swallow my blue-eyed day
Swell up and float away wee, me.
That I respect my blowsy ocean
You cannot be a sea without motion,
Nor I a child without fear of your tides,
But oh they so give such fabulous rides,
When from you I teasingly run.
The tulips know.
Put them in a vase.
Observe myopic stems
heavy with thirst.
Observe choreography
that lifts lion heads
again and again in
different calisthenics
until blowsy with life,
no petal left unfolding,
they seek beneath bowl
and table the steady
pulse of life
NATIVE AMERICAN MAN in Alaska
Love Tribute to a ship’s captain
By Victoria Anderson –Throop
In early May
Black rough seas
Fought stormy skies
The North Sea
Battled the blowsy gusts
Like an angry lover
In early May
My Norwegian madness
Attacked me like a dog
I yearned to feel
The wild motion under my feet
The spray screaming ice on my face
Ships were moored
Or
Dry docked until June
My crazy man
A ship's captain
Loved the stormy sea
Shared Viking blood
His father,
A Norwegian ship’s captain
In Alaskan waters
Went adrift in a storm
And never left a sweet
Inuit's bed.
My man felt it too,
The thrill of the wind and sea.
Doubtless foolhardy
Certainly risky
The smell of rain
And the thirty kinds of snow
We tossed the lines
And let the
Raging rig
Celebrate our
pleasure
As the sky
Made passionate love to the sea.
As he stood paper cup in hand by the drinking fountain on a train
somewhere south of Kankakee, miles from Chicago,
a quiet, pensive, older man was getting harangued by a loudmouthed,
blowsy, beer drinking, inconsiderate, disheveled and overweight woman.
Aka, his wife.
She finally shut her mouth after he exploded with,
“get your face out of mine, yo breath smells like
you been eatin camel dookey for a week!”
The laughter from the old men in the club car was deafening,
so she just sat down and cried all the way to New Orleans.
This narrative for the comma contest is a childhood memory I observed riding the Illinois Central’s “City of New Orleans.” Circa 1955.
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