BLOGETRESSA: March 2025

Friday, March 14, 2025

SPRING EQUINOX IN 2025

(Thursday, March 20, 2025, 5:01 A.M.)

Wrens fly inside my home

Landing on a newly laundered sheet

Searching for a carnivorous breakfast

Nothing will satisfy—not even a fruity treat--only meat

On this morning of the Spring Equinox

I direct them to the compost pile

Full of rich earth and worms weaving in and out

Of little cities unaware the Sun is granting

Equal rights to both day and night

So shooing out protesting wrens

Closing my sliding glass door

Opening a burgeoning drawer of seed packets

I select some to celebrate the imminent arrival of Spring

Even though here in Florida we have year-round planting

Red is my favorite color so I choose cayenne peppers

They do well out in the rain and sun

Pot on the deck nitrogen-rich

Next I open an orange pack of gourds

And then yellow sunflowers because the squirrels

Seem too lazy to plant anymore

Selecting some green herbs reminds me

I've now done the first four chakras

Also the first four colors of the rainbow, fitting for Spring

Moving to turquoise I find one of my own envelopes

Some seeds I once found in the swamp

Labeled Nigella Damascena

Kinda turquoise-y called Blue Love in a Mist

For a moment I wander in a daydream but

Pull myself into reality

Fantasy is for maidens, not wise crones

The next color is indigo but sort of thought

I could stop now and look on the internet

But the beautiful weather is tempting and

As I move on to the final color, violet

I see lavender and laurel and almost all set

Outside once again, I begin to dig the earth

But OCD calls to me sometimes and there is now an empty space

Where the indigo should be and

Just can't make myself plant right now

In fact, despite horoscopishly moving into Aries

My birthday sign, a time of strength,

Suddenly resist celebrating today

What can I say?

We all have bad days but I never like to feel down

During the wonderful solar year celebrations due to my mood

So decide what’s needed is some food

And I hear an oven ding and here it is

Forgot I baked a banana walnut bread

Don't like to depend on food for my mood

Food disgraces how efficacious it is when using it for comfort

Shrugging, pour my third cup of rich, black espresso

And very soon I find myself looking for an indigo flower

Discovering Blue Wild Indigo (Baptisia Australis)

Ordering online, happy knowing the empty earth will soon be

Overflowing with vibrant colors to commemorate this day

With multiple names including Ostara, Tavasi Suvo, or

Just plain

Spring Equinox…

IMAGE Spring Equinox 2025

PI DAY HAIKU STACK

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN 3-14-15

It’s Irrational

Circumference divided

By diameter

Whether large or small

Circle growing or shrinking

Numbers stay the same

Flunked many a test

Not knowing the laws of Pi

Ugh, Geometry!

Yet, it’s pretty cool

A three point fourteen fifteen

Constant in our lives

Not much stays the same

Except dependable Math

Rational, to me…

IMAGE: Pi Symbol, Creative Commons

Thursday, March 6, 2025

IN HONOR OF WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

A TRIBUTE TO SOME STUDENTS WHO ARE MY HEROES

(and still my Face Book friends!)

There are some people who feel college graduates are all wealthy and elitist, but this just is not true! I was 37 years old when I finally received my B.A. Degree (took me 8 years instead of 4). I started with a community college and seamlessly transferred into a university, meaning the education was as good in a county school as in any other university.

Eventually, I worked in Financial Aid (at another community college) and want to honor those students whose struggle was also mine. They have become my friends these unknown heroines: women like me who raised children, worked, and attended classes because of a dream for a more rewarding life.

I am privileged to know them and thrilled that they all graduated and went on to better jobs and/or higher degrees despite the stress from exhaustion, worry about our children, and often no support from family members or friends.

I had one professor when I finally made it to the university. He disliked women like me, claiming we “dumped” our children in day care and took up space in classrooms. In those days, being autistic, I had problems speaking up, so before his class, twice a week, I would enter a stall in the lavatory and hyperventilate in fear, breathing into a paper bag, until I could force myself to enter his classroom. The professor’s behavior is a classic abuse found in advocates of elitist education.

Anyway, here is a poem about me in the early days of community college, and believe me, it wasn’t just one bad day, every day seemed to be a Murphy’s Law. I salute the students I knew, especially at the Brooksville Campus. So proud of you!

IN HONOR OF WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

Dedicated to all us working-poor students (we rock!)

I know the pain of a

Rotting car in the rain

Buckets of rain

Wipers refusing to work

Abandoning the car off the road

Running for the bus

The one that only comes

Every two hours

Trying to get to the

Community College

To take my last final exam

After attending four years

To get an Associate’s Degree

Working, mothering, studying

Running for the bus

No umbrella

Bringing the boys to daycare

Dragging an autistic six-year-old

In the middle of a melt-down

While carrying a three-year-old

Trying to make that bus

Trying to get that degree

Trying to get a better paying job

Running for the bus

All the while whispering

“Please, please, please, please…”

IMAGE: City Bus to Nowhere (Philly legend)

Saturday, March 1, 2025

LUCKY SEVEN

No nice straight line of seven planets

Two invisibles need binoculars and the rest

Are scattered around like billiard balls

On a green baize table

Is it some type of sci-fi horror?

Is there some kind of meaning to it?

Like seven planets can mean seven bad years

Of unaffordable prices while banks fail

And unemployment causes mass starvation?

Or can we positively see there is

Always a yin and yang for interpretation?

But gazing at those big bright planets in the night sky

Are a welcome treat no matter the symbolism

And I choose to accept

Choose to believe

It is all good...

IMAGE: CNET Parade of Planets