Contributor Posts

"Good grief"
said he,
as he knocked
on the door.
"I had no
idea, you were,
on the 30th floor.

Buy me a drink
the next time we meet
and I'll tell you a story,
which will be my treat.

My eyes lit up
when I espied,
these local beauties,
said the ubiquitous fellow.

Most of us red blooded freedom loving Americans hate to take a vacation, not because we are fun-averse, but because when we come back to the Job, we have to work doubly hard to catch up with all the unfinished bizness we left behind.  I should know, having just returned from a three week road trip cross country to find all the backlog waiting open jawed. Read more 

High was the flame,
as it leapt through the grill.
I sucked on a beer
and guzzled it like swill

Up the old river,
aboard a canoe.
Don't just sit there
you must paddle too.

When it is time.
there are no more rays,
nor will it matter,
the number of days,
left in this sad life, ours.
Should have spent more money
on the flashiest of cars.

I turned on the faucet
until the water was hot,
soaking my hands,
for arthritis I've got.

Puzzles puzzle me,
no matter the type,
to answer questions,
to fill in the blanks.
We do all of this
with no gratitude or thanks.

A Lack of truth,
in our World today,
brings on the need
to begin the play
of words and acts
to set the stage
for one another.
Don't ask.me
I'm not your Mother

Some years ago I had a new neighbor and her husband buy the old schoolhouse next to the fire station up the road. Cute place, nicely restored by a glass artist friend who wanted to move to Portland to seek fame and fortune in the big city. Not that we’re the official Welcome Wagon of the South End, but we invited our newcomers over for dinner, got to know them over the following year and were surprised when we saw the For Sale sign on the front yard and their furniture gone. They had had grand plans for establishing a Tea Shop for her and a furniture shop for him on the island.

Okay, people come and go on the turbulent South End, for various reasons ranging from lack of health care in their proximity to the long and dreary winters. The grass is definitely greener here but folks get tired of mowing it. I get that. But what I didn’t get was these new found friends picking up and leaving without a fare thee well or a wave goodbye. Kind of makes a guy like me wonder if my judgement of folks is a waffle or two shy of breakfast.

Jump forward a couple of years and we’re on Orcas Island, wandering the tourist town of Eastsound when we pass by a little tea shop called, interestingly enough, Schoohouse Tea, a little too coincidental for my place in the cosmos, so naturally I want to go inside and see who’s behind the register. And yeah, it’s our old neighbor, more than a little embarrassed to be ‘discovered’ but after a few hems and haws and muted apologies over their fast escape velocity from the South End, she tells us the island just wasn’t spiritual enough for her tastes. Orcas, well, they’re basically refugees from the 60’s and she felt a kinship there she never got from us back on Camano, the island without a soul.

All righty, I guess the South End wasn’t her cuppa tea. We said good to see ya, good luck with the shop and your life, we got to catch the ferry back to perdition. Now the story might have ended here … except … a year later who should roll back into our little hellhole, the one without spirituality, but m’lady from the Age of Aquarius, building a house half a mile south of us. And better yet, she’d become a real estate broker!

I don’t pretend to be a guru of South End spirituality but c’mon, selling off our Paradise parcel by parcel, helping to clog our neighborhood with new traffic, cutting down the forest for McMansions, earning a living this way, trust me, that is not on the roadmap to Nirvana. And if we lacked soul before, I doubt selling used cars or real estate is going to bring us any closer to Shangri-La-La land. Money talks, they tell me, but not as loud here on the South End. That, I think, might be the key to our spirituality, what little we still have.

Visit the Skeeter Daddle Site

What light gleams
on a cloudy day?
Oh, it's the Sun,
hip, hip, hooray.