Category Archives: Essays

day 226

Dog Days of Summer a la Gabby
dog days

a few months from now
I’ll be thinking of summer
these long hot days…and spring,
the warmth that it brings

when the trees are stripped bare
I’ll be longing for green, with dreams
of cool rain, and flower dense plains

from beneath woolen layers
of long-johns and sweaters
I’ll peer out my window to bleak,
with little to do but drift off to sleep

the heat swelt of summer
is making me wonder when
this fierce inferno will end…

come brief autumn respite,
though lovely you’ll exit
too soon for my liking
for now temps are spiking

I shouldn’t complain
there’s nothing to gain
by wishing away
these hot humid days

with hummingbirds chirping
and spring babies growing
the Tom’s, Jennie’s, deer and the crows

though summer drags on
winter, likewise will tarry
each extreme has its cons and its pros

I would miss each one’s splendor
might as well just surrender
to sweat and to shiver
with grace through it all

~kat

The summer heat has been exhausting. I sometimes wonder if it is my advancing age which makes me less tolerant, but I have never been a summer girl. Give me a cool dark corner, a fan and a good book and I am quite content to wile the hours away until dusk comes with a blessed relief to the heat of the sun. 

Contrarily, in winter after the first snow, hopefully on a weekend when I have nowhere to go and can view the wonderland through the window…I’m not a real fan of long winters either. 

I prefer the in between seasons. But it occurs to me as I get older that wishing away one extreme season for the other is actually wishing precious time away.

How many seasons more do I have? Definitely less than I have drudged through up to now. It has caused me to have a new appreciation for the wonders of each, however small. With little time to spare I am determined to savor every moment. But can I at least say…it is a blasted inferno out there!!! Followed by a deeply felt uggghhhh!?!!!!

Summer and I have moved on in our love-hate relationship to a mutual place of respect I think. I promise to stop saying I hate summer, and summer for its part will do its best not to give me heat stroke…at least that’s my spin on our negotiation. 

Much love, peace, and cool glimmers to you. 

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨


day 225

A few thoughts on flowering violets

from one bloom,
two.
soon buds will burst

patience is
key
with violets

purple pops
‘midst
leaves, velvet green

watched pots don’t
bloom
nor do they boil

and changing gears, this is happening as I write…

deals for dictators

dictators
meet
to make deals

the people
hope
to be heeded

destruction
looms
in the fine print

~kat

I am a patience person. But having the capacity for patience can wear thin when the waiting drags on; when a particular scenario repeats itself, over and over with the expectation of different outcome. I am of the opinion that no good thing can come out of the unholy meeting happening in Alaska. We’ve seen this show before when Trump was out-witted by this war criminal in the first term. This time, portends a similar endgame. It felt surreal to watch a smug dictator basking in the red carpet welcome afforded him. Trump was clearly out of his league then and he is woefully naive of who he’s dealing with now. 

I hope I’m wrong. Hanging in the balance are lives and the sovereign autonomy of a democratic nation. Hanging in the balance is the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, which is the primary concern of our hapless president. I only have so much patience for the grotesque theatrics being played out. 

So, it’s lovely to have my little African Violet plant rewarding me for weeks of loving care with clusters of buds and 2-1/2 beautiful purple blooms. It was a  practice in patience waiting for that first flower. But once it bloomed I was less vigilant for more. The buds were there. That’s all I needed to know. They would bloom too, just as the first one had. 

So there is still hope that these men will come out of their meeting with a glimmer of the prospect of peace…just a glimmer would be good. Then maybe the world can breathe. 

I’m growing weary of bad news. But I am still hopeful. Much love and glimmers of peace to you.

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨


Poetry Form: the Piku 3/1/4 (a form that combines the first three digits of pi and the three line example of the haiku).


day 223

Spotted Lantern Fly
Bramlett Mountain Foothills in August 2025 ~ kat
dead spotted lantern fly

it’s so beautiful
deceptively destructive
marked for swift slaughter

~kat

At first glance, finding this insect filled me with awe. It is so colorful…so beautiful. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a spotted lantern fly. I was relieved that it was already dead. The park service has deemed this beautiful bug invasive, a threat to local crops and trees. Those who find them are advised to eliminate them swiftly. At least I didn’t need to squish it under my shoe. I hate that feeling, and the sound. I might be tempted after finding a live one to leave it alone.

Who am I to decide that this bug should not exist. After all, their favorite vegetation to devour are trees-of-heaven…an invasive, fast growing tree, abundant in the woods where I live. They have a shallow, but vast widespread root system that makes them hard to uproot. It would seem as if nature knew what she was doing by placing these formidable invaders in close proximity to each other. The issue is that the spotted lantern flies have an expanded diet…decimating other trees and plants. Meanwhile the trees of heaven flourish unabated. And humans, being the control freaks that we are with an affinity for cultured lawns and pristine landscapes, make it our mission to control nature. Sometimes I wonder who’s invading who! No need to answer that. I already know the answer. I learn a new thing every day. How magnificent and efficient the natural world is. That’s my glimmer for today.

Rest in peace little spotted lantern fly. You were just living your life to the fullest doing what instinct and evolution informed you to do. Even in death you are beautiful. A glimmer even!

Much love, peace, and glimmers to you.

~kat✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨


day 222

high ground 

when storms come, head to high ground
it’s not wise to wait for the water to rise
a fool tarries long, and many have drowned
when storms come, head to high ground
one tidal swell can take a whole town
look for the signs, dark clouds in the sky
when storms come, head to high ground
it’s not wise to wait for the water to rise

~kat

I live away from the city these days. Far from neighbors, crowds, traffic. You know everything civilized. When we moved here people would ask, “Won’t you be scared to live so far away from the world?” I didn’t have to think about my answer…”I love it here.“ I would declare. In fact, I feel quite safe here. Just me and the wild critters, a few rescue cats, a bird and a dog. And neon tetras.  And the trees…lots of trees.

I was thinking about this today. Thinking about how I might be able to wait it out; to live in peace under the radar. I’m not  bothering anyone after all. But I know it’s unrealistic of me to think I am immune to the scourge coming. Eventually all of us will feel the sting of democracy dying. Of systems and safety nets crumbling. And down the rabbit hole I go…

Oh well. Can’t blame me for wishing  I could avoid the inevitable. But this sort of thinking does waste precious present moments. I do have a choice.  I can choose to embrace the moment or wish the moment away.  For today I choose the former…just in time in fact. Look! the deer are holding space for me…a doe and her twins, a young buck and the strong resilient tripod doe who started coming around again this week. She inspires me more than she knows.

Much love, peace, and glimmers to you. 

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨

Todays poetry form:

triolet:

A (first line)
B (second line)
a (rhymes with first line)
A (repeat first line)
a (rhymes with first line)
nb (rhymes with second line)
A (repeat first line)
B (repeat second line)


day 221

accountability 

they spit this word
at wide-eyed apertures
to the invisible throngs
of loyal lemmings
as if words matter

like thoughts and prayers
mumbled post mass-slaughter,
canned comfort facilitating
a contemptible exit,
accountability averted…

for, or as penance,
it rolls off the tongue
like salty retch
but their putrid hot
breath, reeking of bile,
reveals their vapid souls

accountable to none
impossible to hold
to or for while stripping
away autonomy
tipping liberty’s scales
drawing lines in the sand
encroaching decency
rendering those seeking
to hold them accountable
voiceless, vulnerable, voteless…

accountability is just a word

~kat

I had written this yesterday morning, tweaking it a bit, but had not managed to get photos of the most wonderful glimmers…a half dozen or so young turkeys running circles around the deer and older turkeys in my yard at the woods edge…and the emergence of an old friend…a lame doe who has wandered through for several years now, with a fawn in tow. There was also a glimmer from my youngest…a few actual snapshots of her youngest heading off to preschool!

All fine glimmers. All much needed glimmers on a foreboding day of unsettling events…our leader announcing Marshall law in essence in the capital city over a trumped up declaration of urgency employing a fantastical skewing of the facts. He is dictator itching to deploy troops to a city, a state, the country to terrorize the people into submission. I am late to posting, not because I ran out of daylight this time, but because I needed time and a few winks to make sense of it all.

There were such wonderful glimmers presenting themselves to me. They drew me in and held me…searing a memory into me that perhaps was not meant to be captured by a photograph. The young turkeys who I had feared gone, lost to predators, seem to be alive and well, full of life and joyful mischief. I hope you can imagine it. It was a delightful sight to see. And then my dear tripod doe with fawn in tow…hope, joy, resilience…relaying just a few messages, very much needed messages, to snap me back from the edge.

To witness the stunning unraveling of this country at the hands of a madman and his growing army of miscreants, with seemingly no end in sight and no one to stop them, feels like a nightmare…if only it was just a nightmare. Destruction amidst a growing number of people going through the motions of normal, working, playing, shopping, laughing feels a little crazy. It is a little crazy.

While I will have fond memories only (and no photos to burn up memory on my phone) of the visitors to my peaceful oasis…the turkey teens and the doe and her fawn, there were photos captured of my youngest grandson, full of joy, excitement and life! I’ll leave you with a glimpse of those here as a reminder. This is why we can’t give up trying…why we can’t stop fighting for justice.

First Day

Much love, peace, and glimmers to you.

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨