sons

TANKA (Our Children Do Learn)

 

Sustainably cool

Bamboo Beatles drinking cups

From son Paladin

So glad he learned “green” from me

Earth’s renewability…

 

© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Bamboo gift from son Paladin

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ELIXIR OF FAMILY BONDING

 

Flanked by big, brash progeny

The plucky baritone ukulele

Holds her own

Amid clamorous sons

Sensing no time elapsed

Between early motherhood and retirement

Removing their eyeglasses

Myopically peering at each other

It is 1989

All is fine

As life-long love

Picks up at the point

It left off

Long ago and far away…

 

© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGES: My baritone ukulele and their guitars/Halloween in the 1980s

 

(I’m back, WordPress!  Will check out your stuff this coming week)

B, C & M 80s Halloween cropped

WAR NEVER FAR

flower-top-cannon-symbolizing-peace-hope-38473809

When sons were young

Sibling competition getting ugly

Decided to spend a separate hour with each

Worked well, they got to choose what to do

One day my youngest

Wanted to draw

He drew a cannon

I covered it with flowers

He drew a ball shooting out

A few lines by me made a peace sign

In frustration he cried,

“You’re ruining everything!”

***

Shocked, I stopped the politics

Didn’t do pregnancy and labor

So my sons would one day go off to war

In the too-near future

Although their grandpas, cousins, uncles

Fought in Germany, Vietnam and the Gulf

Yet such an innocent game

As drawing together

Turned into a 6-year-old’s anger

***

Tucked away that picture

Still have it in my book of memories

Placed a blank piece of paper between us

Drew a cannon with balls shooting out

Into the infinite

(Resisted adding a rainbow and stars)

He was happy, I was happy that he was happy

Someday he would make a personal decision

I would support whatever it would be

But will never forget my 60s bumper sticker:

“War is not good for children and other living things…”

© 2015 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: CANNON OF PEACE, royalty free