Her thoughts were a slow river, carrying dead memories deep in her bones.
A good poem is like a Japanese garden.
Each phrase is a carefully-placed stepping stone
That invites you to pause and admire
The unexpected words which catch your eye,
Each as breathtaking as an exotic flower.
If you could smell a poem,
It would tickle your nostrils with
Memories of a precious past, as well as
Fantasies of places you’ve never been.
Each time you revisit a good poem,
You notice changes - of season, of sunlight,
Of random breezes. It is the same garden, but
It will continue to reveal more of its vitality
Each time it welcomes your return.
Shelia
Being left-handed,
I’m out in the cold.
A southpaw – and sinister –
So I’ve been told.
A camera, tape measure,
Light-switch or phone
All function best for
Right-handers alone.
Right-handed scissors,
Corkscrews or pliers
Should never be used by
Left-handed outliers.
Violins (by left-handers)
Rarely are played.
Accordions for lefties
Have never been made.
Ink stains on my left hand
Are a pen-writer’s blight
They’d vanish for good
If my left hand wrote right!
Shelia P
I settled into my seat on the A320 plane destined for Fort Lauderdale. I clipped my seat belt and waited for takeoff from LaGuardia Airport! Having an early morning flight we had moved swiftly through the airport security despite all the craziness of the last month and the unfortunate fatal accidental death of two pilots the previous week. I opened my Kindle, which I had stored in the seat pocket before me to The Old Man AND THE Sea by Ernest Hemingway which I had downloaded before leaving home and had not read in many years.
The story was of an old Cuban fisherman, well beyond his prime, struggling to survive while working alone to catch a big- game fish to improve his impoverished life. Hemingway had experienced deep-sea fishing, and therefore the story rang true. The flight time passed quickly and we arrived on time.
The next day at the Port of Fort Lauderdale we boarded THE CELEBRITY REFLECTION and set sail for Key West. Key West is a beautiful town that reminds one of a fusion of the West Village of New York City combined with a New Orleans bohemian flare mixed in, with its artists, beautiful southern architecture and varied culinary cuisine.
Key West’s lifeblood was tourism and in the April of 1982 that tourism had been severely reduced when a blockade had been put up by the Border Patrol on the road leading to the Keys, the southern point of the Florida peninsula in search of illegal drugs. Key West could not stop the blockade in court, so on April 23rd,1982, the mayor Dennis Wardlow staged a mock secession from the union. The mayor became Prime Minister of THE CONCH REPUBLIC a micro- nation, named for the term used by the locals to describe themselves, and declared war on the United States of America, surrendering after one minute and appealed for $1 billion in foreign aid to replace the lost tourism revenue. As a result of all the publicity generated, the blockade was soon removed, increasing the traffic to the Keys. The resolution was a great financial relief for Key West. April 23rd has been celebrated each year since 1982, as a new avenue to attract tourism.
Our destination was the home of Ernest Hemingway which was now a museum. The city center of Key West is very commercialized and filled with bars, souvenir shops and restaurants. Duval Street is the main thoroughfare and as you move away from the center of town there is a gradual transformation to a beautiful tropical residential neighborhood filled with a preponderance of beautiful multicolored roosters crowing at will while hens and chicks roam freely about. Ornate old houses with wonderful wrap-around porches and bright flowering plants bring floral fragrances to your trek and huge, gorgeous, green tropical plants are nestled in among the old Banyan trees that line Duval Street. Birds of every size and description serenade you with your own personal opera as you move along. Finally, after about a mile walk you come to the Ernest Hemingway Home where we paid our admission and wandered the grounds waiting for the tour to start. There were fluffy, pompous well cared for polydactyl cats with six toes everywhere we went. Years before Hemingway had befriended a Captain Dexter who had a polydactyl cat on his ship named Snowball, which Hemingway was fascinated with. When Snowball had kittens, Captain Dexter gave a kitten to the author. Hemingway’s sons named the cat Snow White. Hemingway once wrote about cats” One cat just leads to another”. Hemingway named subsequent cats after his famous friends. They're on now 61 cats who have their own kennel on the grounds, many of which display this trait. There is also a cat cemetery behind the house for those cats that have passed. There is a person dedicated to taking care of the large clowder of cats who does an impeccable job. All of the cats are named after movie stars, friends and acquaintances of Hemingway, a custom started by the author. If you visit, stay away from Betty Grable as she can be very cranky, while Betty Davis and Ava Gardner are absolute sweethearts!
We arrived early at the Hemingway home, and I had finished rereading THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA about 6:00 AM that morning in my cabin, so it was still fresh in my mind.
The grounds of the home were beautiful, lush, tropical gardens with stone pathways. One had to be very careful not to step on any of the 61 polydactyl cats which lived there enjoying the lush, gorgeous gardens. The home was built at 907 Whitehead St., a block from Duval St., in 1851 by Asa Tilt a wealthy marine architect and salvager. The home was designed in a Spanish colonial style using native limestone. Pauline Pfeiffer had fallen in love with the abandoned home and it was purchased as a wedding present for the Hemingways by Pauline’s father Paul Pfeiffer, a wealthy businessman and realtor for the $8,000 of back taxes that was owed to the city. The pre-civil war home is filled with antiques of that period and the walls are covered with pictures of Hemingway’s deep sea fishing trips and safaris as well as posters, paintings, and memorabilia related to his literary works. About seventy percent of his life works were written here in a separate guesthouse originally connected by a bridge to the main structure. The bridge was later destroyed in a hurricane, and the Hemingway study is now reached by an exterior staircase. Also on the property is an in- ground pool colloquially known as the boxing pool which was built by Pauline Pfeiffer, his second wife, after having Hemingway’s boxing ring ripped out of the site subsequent to finding out that while he was away in Europe, he was spending time with Martha Gellhorn, his soon to be third wife. Upon his return from Europe, Hemingway found his boxing ring replaced with a $20,000 in ground pool filled to the brim with water, and their bank account completely drained. To give some perspective $20,000 in 1932 dollars would be worth $477,000. today. After perusing their finances Hemingway handed Pauline a penny from his pocket saying,” Pauline this is my last penny you might as well have it!” Pauline took the penny and promptly had it encased in a glass box and cemented into the freshly poured concrete patio surrounding the pool. The penny although corroded can still be viewed today.
The Hemingway house was enjoyable to visit, and I would recommend it to anyone.
Jim-April-26’
There was this lazy, little town high up on the mountains and in the middle of this town was a very large, oval-shaped pond. The pond was full of many different colored small fish that made them look like little rainbows. They swam happily around the pond from morning till night.
Except for this one fish. He swam sadly around the pond all by himself. This fish was so sad because his body was all brown without any color on it. To make things worse, the other fish would not swim and play with him because he was different. This went on every day, day after day until early one morning, a small boy was playing near the pond and dropped his rainbow ring in it by mistake. Now, the brown fish was swimming by, and the ring got stuck around his body and wouldn’t come off.
As fast as lightning, a large group of colorful fish swam over to the brown fish and couldn’t believe their eyes. There were beautiful, sparkling, rainbow colors on the brown fish’s body. Not one fish realized the colors were coming from the little boy’s rainbow ring.
From that day on, brown fish wasn’t sad anymore. He was colorful, too and all the other fish made sure he was included with them. As happy as the brown fish was now, he told all the colorful fish how sad he was when they excluded him. He told them no fish should be left out because it is different.
Feelings are the same no matter what color you are!
Ellen G.
No one remembered who planted the first forest, not even the oldest animals. The wind blew through the shimmering faint green, rose, and blue trees. The branches chimed in delicate tones. In the center of the forest stood a single ordinary tree, silent. The tree twinkled deep red and green and silver. The tree is the only thing in the world that can keep a secret.
Georgia
The beach was lonely waiting for someone to sit for a while.
Every morning as soon as I wake up, I say, “Thank you God for this day.” I sometimes think, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it, buts thanks.
I’m grateful for my son. He’s all grown up now and as long as he’s in my life, there’s a tremendous amount of gratitude for his existence.
There’s extreme gratitude for my house. Having a roof over my head, water, heat and sunlight coming through the windows means a lot to me.
My family, friends, teachers, and acquaintances; I have gratitude for all of them because they all add a touch of happiness to my life.
I’m grateful for my health. I’ve heard people say when you have your health, you have everything.
Having enough money makes me feel grateful. Being able to pay my bills, buy groceries and have a tv to watch gives me a basic feeling of comfort.
I would be remiss if I didn’t say I was grateful for my bathroom. After all, it’s the first room I use when I get up in the morning. Thoughts like using an outhouse in the freezing cold of winter or digging a hole deep in the woods ran through my mind which gave me tons of bathroom gratitude.
Gratitude is so important because it makes you think more positively about the things you have in your life.
Ellen G.
I woke up to steam hissing in the radiator
Old Man Winter was still trying to be a Dictator Narrator: “Your time has passed old man, make room for spring and stop being so steadfast!”
Old Man Winter: “I am alive and vibrant my Blizzard days may be over, but I am still not ready for a hostile takeover!”
Narrator: “End your annoying meteorological blight!”
Old man winter:” I can still deliver flurries to blur your sight!”
Narrator:” Spring is in the wings, and her beauty grows daily while you increasingly turn gray and scaly!”
Winter knew that he was done and would not win the day, so he stood there and reluctantly withered away.
Jim- March 26’
I read many long and not so long novels, usually just once. However, there are certain children’s books that I have read and love to read over and over again. My four all-time favorites are Pierre, a Cautionary Tale by Maurice Sendak, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff, Oh Were They Ever Happy by Peter Spier and The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka.
In the story of Pierre, all the little boy will say is, “I don’t care” to everything and everyone. When a lion says he will eat Pierre up in one gulp and Pierre answers that he doesn’t care, the lion eats him whole.
In the end, Pierre figures out he’s better off saying he cares which produces a happy ending. This story influenced my family so much that if anybody said, “I don’t care,” the rest of the family would rename that person Pierre.
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie is a humorous and entertaining book about a mouse who requests a cookie and then makes more requests, one after the other as soon as the first one is granted. Boy, I would love that to happen to me one day in the life of….
Oh Were They Ever Happy is a book about parents that go out and leave their three children and their dog at home. The children want to help around the house while their parents are gone so they find a bunch of paint cans and brushes and decide to paint both the inside and outside of the house, including the dog. Needless to say, when the parents get home, they show their reaction to being helped. When the kids were done painting, everything looked bright and colorful. I wish I could have done this to my house and the dog when I was a child.
This fractured fairy tale, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, is hysterical after reading the original The Three Little Pigs. Wolf claims he was framed and he had a bad head cold that made him sneeze so hard, it blew the first two houses down. The book presents Wolf as a very misunderstood character. In the end, Wolf is in jail claiming he’s innocent and all he wanted from Granny was a cup of sugar.
Many of us can recall that at some time in our lives, we have known a “Wolf”, whether it be a family member a neighbor, or a co-worker.
I do enjoy the novels I read just once but I really love to read children’s books over and over again.
Ellen G
My father introduced me to the works of Arthur Conan Doyle when I was about eight years old. He suggested The Red Headed League and I was enthralled. Since then I have sat in the corner of that famous flat in front of the two broad windows at 221B Baker St. waiting for the next desperate character to appear on the carpet and sit by the fireside between Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to relate their bizarre tale of woe with the hope that the world's premier consulting detective can solve their mystery and bring them peace and a satisfying resolution. I am there in spirit and invisible to the residents of that abode, hanging on every word to see what will happen next.
Or I might instead file into the cozy home of Bilbo Baggins lost in a long line of dwarves bearded and hooded in his home, tunneled with great skill into the side of a hill, in the Shire, as the great dwarf Thorin Oakenshield and his band of kin disturb the comfortable retiring lifestyle of one Bilbo Baggins, at this unexpected party and interview him to determine if he has the mettle to steal treasure and pair wits with a Dragon as intelligent as it is merciless.
A wild ride with Toad bouncing up and down on the back seat of his new hot- rod can be joyful as well as thrilling, unseen by the amphibian road-hog, risking life and limb for a thrill. Or witness an exchange between Friday and Robinson Caruso as they try to communicate with each other for the first time.
The magic of the written word masterfully wielded by a writer that we can identify with can take us away from our mundane tribulations or current circumstances whisking us away to a fantasy world or into the past or future or even to an alien planet in our own time to escape a problem , or dream about our circumstances from a refreshing new and novel perspective restored between the pages of a good book.
Jim - March 2026
Teenagers! Teenagers! My girlfriend Cindy and I are both fourteen years old which means it is the first year we can go to The Thanksgiving Day Parade without our parents. They actually gave us permission to go without them. Cindy and I know how to travel the trains to Manhattan so we were all set to go.
The train took an hour, but we talked with each other so much during the ride, it seemed like we were at 34th Street in fifteen minutes. We were so excited, we practically flew up the subway stairs. When we reached the street, our eyes were filled with all the parade sights. The floats were the most fascinating part of the parade and there were so many of them. We saw marching bands, the baton twirlers, and all the spectators lined up against the sidewalks to catch a glimpse. The Thanksgiving Day Parade definitely did not disappoint.
Cindy and I were down in the dumps when the parade was over, and it was time to take the train back home. The train was packed with parade goers. My friend and I had to sit across from this vagrant, older man who had taken his shoe and sock off. Maybe his foot hurt a lot from standing at the parade. In the meantime, Cindy was holding some very long, wispy peacock feathers.
When she saw the old man’s bare foot, she bent over laughing hysterically causing the feathers to reach the old man’s foot. The old man didn’t think it was funny because the feathers were now tickling his foot. The old man started yelling at us. We got scared so we moved to another spot in the train. Once we were safe, we laughed and laughed so hard, our stomachs hurt.
Being at The Thanksgiving Day Parade was amazing but the man’s foot being tickled by the peacock feathers stands out as the most memorable and is still talked and laughed about to this day.
Ellen
In a small community along the Florida coast, there lived a large population of Pelicans along with a large number of Cormorants. Both are water birds and although they get along, they don’t really pay attention to each other. Pelicans are large, brown and have large beaks with throat pouches that can hold up to three gallons of water. Cormorants are medium sized, have dark brown colored bodies and long necks.
One thing these two birds have in common is building their nests on the ground not far from the coast land. The ground is not as safe and secure as other locations to build nests. Unfortunately, they will learn this firsthand when a severe windstorm passes through the coastline one afternoon.
A mother Cormorant had built her nest on the ground but didn’t realize it was too close to the water. When the windstorm arrived, it blew the nest with four eggs into the water.
Mother Cormorant started squawking and shrieking in her loudest distress calls. All the Pelicans and Cormorants saw the nest floating away and they were frantic.
Suddenly, one of the bigger Pelicans flew off in the direction of the nest. He caught up to it, swooped down with his large beak, and scooped the nest with eggs into his large throat pouch. It fit with ease! The Pelican flew back to the Mother Cormorant and placed the nest gently at her feet, not one egg missing.
One thing these two birds have in common is building their nests on the ground not far from the coast land. The ground is not as safe and secure as other locations to build nests. Unfortunately, they will learn this firsthand when a severe windstorm passes through the coastline one afternoon.
A mother Cormorant had built her nest on the ground but didn’t realize it was too close to the water. When the windstorm arrived, it blew the nest with four eggs into the water.
Mother Cormorant started squawking and shrieking in her loudest distress calls. All the Pelicans and Cormorants saw the nest floating away and they were frantic.
Suddenly, one of the bigger Pelicans flew off in the direction of the nest. He caught up to it, swooped down with his large beak, and scooped the nest with eggs into his large throat pouch. It fit with ease! The Pelican flew back to the Mother Cormorant and placed the nest gently at her feet, not one egg missing.
