Category: Miscellanea

Posted in Finding Everyday Inspiration, Life through my Windows, Miscellanea, NaPoWriMo, Nature, Poetry, Writing

April Odds & Ends

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

too many dreams and
so little time to follow
any to its end

if they don’t bathe in sunlight
daffodils will never bloom

Copyright © 2021/04/30, by Liz Bennefeld.

lying on the sand
looking up at Ocean’s mirror
the rain dropping through
brief remnants of the daylight and
their echoes—the stars and the moons

Copyright © 2021/04/30, by Liz Bennefeld.

TV noise …
I saw it before
Star Trek reruns eternally

Copyright © 2021/04/30, by Liz Bennefeld.

Poems in addition to the ones assigned to April days. Still looking through text files for poems I may have missed along the way.

Liz

 

Posted in Life through my Windows, Lifestyle, Miscellanea, Writing

End of the Year

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

It’s been a while since I’ve deliberately set aside “vacation” time over the end-of-year holiday season. With the quiet of the pandemic and the increasing activity online, I think I need to cut back my hours interacting with people. While I was working freelance, especially during the busiest of those thirty years, I set aside the Christmas and New Year’s Day weeks as a quiet space in the midst of all the activity. We cut down holiday visits from two households to one, when my parents no longer wished to entertain, and since, the expanding families in my husband’s line have resulted in his siblings refocusing, also.

Until the pandemic came along and the virtual face-to-face interactions popped up via Meet and Zoom, Discord, and other venues, I felt…safe from disruptions. Now, I need to mark off blocks of solitude, again. Gathering/settling time for us—our family unit of adults and dogs. And space for quiet reengagement with and within my self.

open book
comfort of silence
blank pages

no voices
clamor for our time
but our own

Image by Mariya at Pixabay

Posted in Life through my Windows, Lifestyle, Miscellanea, Photography, Writing

why would you weep?

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld
In Memory

side by side
their urns and ashes
not long parted
they are not in the ground
they’ve moved on to forever

the gravestones
memories of happy times
and also grief
the joy of resurrection
their never–ending love

Copyright © 2020-12-11, by Liz Bennefeld.

Photo © by Liz Bennefeld,

Celebrating the anniversary of Father’s birthday on Saturday. He would have turned 104. He thought that 100 years was overly long. I wonder, you two, if you still do something special together on the Special Days. Dinner and dancing with friends? Just curious…

Posted in Miscellanea, Poetry, Writing

Thursday Notes, 2020-12-03

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld
ice on a cracked window
The Cracked Window
Copyright © 2013-02-03, by Lizl Bennefeld.

I can’t change today by nursing anger
at a world I didn’t make
we won’t redeem tomorrow
without forgiving the past

© 2020-12-03, Liz Bennefeld.

we rejoice in today
while reaching for the stars…
for tomorrows that we’ll never see
but as a far-off view from heaven’s gates

© 2020-12-03, Liz Bennefeld.

Posted in everydayinspiration, Life Happens, Life through my Windows, Miscellanea, Photography, Poetry, Writing

Day 29 – On the occasion | Poem a Day (NaNoWriMo)

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

dragonfly on a Sweet William flower
dragonfly

BIRTHDAYS

measuring time—
twenty-five or thirty-some years
yet to go … or less
looking at past records
of family births and deaths

my dad felt a hundred years
was too long to stick around for
my mother thought that ninety-four
was quite a bit too short
neither was pleased

don’t know what I’ll think
when my world and I transform
when time becomes eternity
maybe I’ll notice, or perhaps I’ll
forget what came before

Copyright © 2019-11-29, by Liz Bennefeld. All rights reserved.

Posted in Miscellanea, Poetry, Writing

Day 17 – Extended Conversations | Poem a Day (NaNoWriMo)

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

Out in the Country

“Catching Up With Mother”

I woke up thinking, “I should call Mom, today”,
forgetting that she died three years ago this week.
Forgetting that she had not taken a call from me
at least half a year before I got called to have
the ambulance tear her from her only home.

I still want to call her and ask about her week
and the previous years since we last caught up.
I don’t know where she’s sitting, or if she wants
to walk with me along a pasture fence
in a place not new to her…or one not new to me.

If I go ahead and start a new conversation,
should I pause between my sentences?
to see if she will answer me or make
a comment of her own? She liked to talk to me
but she didn’t always listen. Now, I wouldn’t care.

I have looked through all the emails. Of course,
none are new, and the last that were coherent
were sent a year before she died. I hadn’t,
really hadn’t noticed how far things had gone.
Or feeling bewildered, I didn’t want to see.

When Mother wasn’t panicking, she took me
as she found me, loving me all the while
she wondered why I wanted to be me
and not the daughter that she’d wanted. But
she still trusted me to do what must be done.

I can feel her arms around me, giving me a hug.
I can’t hear her voice, but she knows when I cry.
She can hear me talk to her and read what I write.
I know that she and God are always present to my life.
The separation that I feel is just an odd notion in my mind.

Copyright © 2019-11-17, by Elizabeth W. Bennefeld.

Posted in Miscellanea, Poetry, Writing

Day 15 – In the Middle | Poem a Day (NaNoWriMo)

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

edge of town, looking south
The Edge of Memories

Recognizing the inevitable loss of friends, family members, and mentors over the years.

mourning once again
the loss of those who loved me
who brightened my life

locked themselves away from me—
walked away . . . I stand alone

Copyright © Liz Bennefeld, 2019-11-16.

Day 15 prompt: a “middle” poem

Edited to add: Another in the previous generation of relatives just died this morning; he was 95 years old. Alert and lucid to the end; a low blood oxygen level for a couple days, and then his heart just stopped beating.

 

Posted in everydayinspiration, Miscellanea, Poetry, Writing

Day 1 – Growing Up, Learning | Poem a Day (NaNoWriMo)

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

View of Village Cemetery
Hawley Cemetery – 2008

what’s the capitol
of the Peace Garden State?
where’s the garden at?

we learned all the answers there
working for Dad, clipping grass

Copyright © 1 November 2019, by Elizabeth Bennefeld.

When we were children (there were seven of us, and I am assuming that others got roped into this, each in their turn), Dad hired us during May and as needed during summer school vacations to maintain the grounds of the village cemetery where he was the groundskeeper and sexton. He didn’t retire until he was in his 90s. There was particular need for us children to prepare the cemetery for Memorial Day and to refurbish things after the influx of visitors during the following months. My brother Tim and I worked together, being close in age, and we would pass the time by challenging each other with such miscellanea as state and country capitols and other interesting trivia.

My mother died three years ago, this month, and my father followed her three-and-a-half months later. Their ashes are buried next to the family monument, near two siblings whose lives were measured in days.

Posted in everydayinspiration, Miscellanea, Poetry, Writing

Warming up for NaNoWriMo, Day 2

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

Cold Beauty

and why would I live
beyond all kin and kindness
absent to their eyes

so, one leaves a friendless warmth,
braving winter’s storms, to die

Copyright © 2019.10.31, by Lizl Bennefeld.

 

The many deaths of those most dear

within the past three years… Suddenly, I’m homesick

for a place I’ve never seen.

 

Mourning seems to come in waves. In the midst of happiness, remembered losses beg not to be forgotten. That’s a trap, I think. The insistence of the mind on revisiting those intense emotions, long after one has moved on. The bittersweet taste of loves and friends and family set aside until time ends, or else, renews all things.

Posted in everydayinspiration, Miscellanea, Poetry, Writing

Warming up for NaNoWriMo

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

I am once again planning to write 30 poems during November (NaNoWriMo)—hopefully, more than one a day, but we’ll see. November and December are cluttered months. Nonetheless…

Today’s and tomorrow’s poems are warm-up exercises. During this poem-a-day exercise, I am hoping not to resort to canned prompts, but to find poems in life as it happens.

P9199208 Waterdrops
Drop of Eternity

the years and the days
ephemeral, but endless…
looking for the end

Copyright © 2019.10.30, by Lizl Bennefeld.

Posted in Life through my Windows, Lifestyle, Miscellanea

More often, more present to my mind

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

As the years go by, I find myself thinking more frequently about staking out more formal times for solitude. Initiating rather than reacting. Turning inward. Perhaps I am more easily distracted, these days, and troubled more by externals that interrupt my thoughts. And then I review the proclivities of my past and recognize that there always has been a struggle for more isolation…for fewer interruptions and broader perspectives. I like the quiet that allows thoughts and images to flow together. The currents and their directions, the coming together and the divergence. Spontaneity, the mind at peace.

Waiting

 

 

Posted in everydayinspiration, Life through my Windows, Miscellanea, Na/GloPoWriMo2019, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Writing

Day 11: Drawn Towards Joy

Posted on by Elizabeth Bennefeld

This poem was posted also on my Quilted Poetry blog.

new, green leaves on a cotoneaster tree in our back yard
New Growth

 

drawn towards joy
changing of the seasons
gentle warmth
quiet melt of winter’s snow
springtime’s gift of sun and rain

Copyright © 2019-04-11, by Lizl Bennefeld.

As I write this poem, I am listening to an ongoing spring blizzard that has delivered over seven inches of snow, so far today. We expect another five to seven inches before the storm ends. The tulips and daffodils long since emerged from the warm, damp grown. I am trusting the new snow to protect them from the wind and icy rains still to come.

I have looked at photos from previous years, and April snows are not that unexpected. Still, it is strange to be confined to house and outbuildings by snow drifts, when at the beginning of the week, I was outside barefoot and without a jacket.

barefoot at the edge of the fading snowdrift in the back yard
Barefoot Weather, 2019-04-08