Opening this book
and coming up on the author's advice to the reader
and seeing the original reader (a child, her name is June, last name faded, circa 1930's) perhaps response to this challenge -- below is my "finishing" of it...
(Joseph MacRae, August 28, 2024, feast day of the Dormition of the Mother of God (old calendar) and Our Lady of Kiev. Image from here.)
Standing Helm Watch Today
Standing Helm watch today
one hand on a tiny joystick
watching a Dell computer screen.
See a red line scrolling through a digital map.
No need for a compass.
Just like a computer game, just like a computer game.
Not many of us remember
running on dead Reckoning.
I long to be back on an old wooden vessel
standing my watch as the propeller turns.
Thrusting water against the rudder, can feel it against the wheel.
Gently rocking in your hands, gently rocking in your hands.
Steering by a compass
Reading your charts
Using the aid of lighthouses, landmarks
Reading the buoys
Using radio direction to find beacons
No need for them today, no need for them today.
Now we have GPS
Global repositioning system.
A plotter on our onboard screen.
So with the passing of time
is the passing of a romantic era
In an old Sailor's life, in an old sailor's life.
*From prompt: Write of something longed for, past, present, or future (in this case the longing for miracles). Daisy Barrett-Nash’s Legacy Lines (Writers at Play), August 28, 2024.
(Joseph MacRae, July 6, 2022. Image is of The Merc, from Joseph MacRae.)
I: I Could Write About
I (pronoun): …12th century, a shortening of Old English ic, the first person singular nominative
I could write about living in our tiny rural town, Alsea, Oregon–-just 234 souls. Unincorporated, and like being in the 50’s. There’s John Boy’s Mercantile (the Merc), an old timey general store. History murals fill the outer walls, inside there’s fishing and hunting gear, fresh local meats at the deli. Though remote, we’re on a big cycle route. Sometimes the Merc’s little parking lot near bursts with Harleys, their riders scoring coffee for the road. Or there's Deb’s Cafe (true confession can’t get enough of the biscuits and gravy). There’s a library, out its window can see cows a stone’s throw away–- if you stare they’ll stare back! There’s the Church, school, medical clinic, post office, fire station, grange, organic farm, park, mountains round, birds roaming about--otherwise a whole lot of quiet--and the Alsea river running through it all. And that’s about it. But then, what more do you need?
*From Prompt: Create a “Telling Trails” piece (basically to take a letter/a word beginning with that letter/a definition of that word/a picture drawn to/maybe a song drawn to--and write what comes); from Iris Jackson’s Finding Your Storyteller’s Voice with Telling Trails (Pat Conroy Literary Center, Beaufort, SC), June/July 2022.
Carnations from our garden, for Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Her feast day, July 16, 2024. Image is my own.
When the gutter fills with falling rain
stream’s flow lets the flowers grow.
Sense the cooling of a spring storm
pulse of life newly bestowed.
Such beauty I must admire
pale green leaves, sky rimmed with gold.
Heads up from the sands, open your
eyes. What was hidden — unfolds!
*From prompt: Freewrite as inspired by Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall’s quote “The world hid its head in the sands of convention so that by seeing nothing it might avoid truth”, then format after Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall’s “Tramping Poem”, with an eye to using the comfort of rhyme scheme to make the expression of charged issues easier for readers to receive. From Daisy Barrett Nash's Writers at Play, Legacy Lines series, June 3, 2024.
Opening this book and coming up on the author's advice to the reader and seeing the original reader (a child, her name is June, last ...
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