Category Archives: Social Issues

Na/GloPoWriMo 2026 -Day 4

Midnight Moon
midnight moon

i like the dawn golden in hues, powder blue
with lemony mist creep-creeping mid-tree
east window undressed to take in the view
to rise with the sun, the first sight I see
past settling dusk I prefer shadows cool
the slightest white twinkling star canopy
darkness as black as a patent black shoe
to swallow me whole into rem cycle sleep
but windows exposed to the fullest of moons
send me wearily toward sheer insanity
I could cover the glare but I’d miss the dawn too
restless nights produce poems laced with lunacy

~kat

Na/GloWriPoMo 2026 Day 4 Prompt: craft your own short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season. Try using rhyme and keeping your lines of roughly even length.


I may hop back on later today to share another glimmer. But at least for now, the moon though my side window tonight should be glimmer enough!

I love my naked windows most of the time. Mornings especially…and throughout my workday. And even most nights…except on those nights when the moon is full. As you can see I have a direct view of the moon when it is days before and days after a full moon. It makes me question my interior decorating practice of no window dressings for our house on the edge of the woods. Then dawn arrives and I find myself grateful for the view once again!

Can something that drives you bananas still be a glimmer? I’ll let you decide that for yourself. As for me…this evening’s glimmer became inspiration for a poem. As tired as I am that it’s going to take a few minutes longer before the moon passes through…I made good use of the time, and have a fun little poem to show for it. A glimmer in disguise so to speak. So that would be a yes for me. With some glimmers you may have to look for the silver lining!

Much love, Peace, and Glimmers to you

~kat

✨✨✨💚💚✨✨


Na/GloPoWriMo 2026 ~ Day 2

the doe’s motel 

twelve is that awkward age in the best
of times, sweaty, smelly prepubescence with a touch
of self-consciousness, breast nubs, and pimples,
no matter where home happens to be, in
a tidy cul de sac with a mailbox at the end of a paved
driveway, edged by a meticulously coifed lawn
with a lavender phlox border or at the Doe’s Motel
on Route 45 in Libertyville, home to a family
of eight kids who shared three rooms, the oldest
boy, a paraplegic who could swim like a fish in
the kidney-shaped swimming pool and us,
my dad, mom, sister and me, third kitchenette
unit from the end, the only room with a colored
TV, bought by my dad, with special permission from
the reservation office, to make it feel more like home…
normal is just a setting on a washing machine

I don’t know why it pops into my head all
these years later, I don’t need remembering
now with a steady roof, a proper address, a mailbox, cupboards
always stocked, categorized, alphabetically, in tidy, unsettling rows, labels facing out, and
a mortgage paid on time, the first bill paid
every month year after decades before
groceries, before anything, with a steady
9 to 5, give or take, to sustain it all,
I’ve come a long way from the Doe’s Motel…I have…

imagine my surprise to discover it still
stands, an RV stop these days, reminding
me how fragile life is for survivors…
that kidney-shaped pool is paved over
now, but the ghosts of us swimming
like fishes that summer of 1968…
I remember us swimming all too well

~kat

Na/GloWriPoMo 2026 Day 2 prompt: write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.


Time for a glimmer…in the midst of a deluge of storms yesterday afternoon well into the night we had a brief glimmer of sky and the setting sun at dusk. Proof that even in the midst of a storm…there are glimmers to be found!

Much love, peace, and glimmers in the storm to you!

~kat ✨✨✨💚✨✨✨


how are you…really

how are you?
.
fine
every thing’s fine
yep
I’m fine…it’s all fine,
fine, unless, of course, you consider
our prez
is bat-shit crazy…that,
and realizing
world war three’s
a heartbeat away
.
our cities are frozen by ice
while a gold, bunkered ballroom rises
to entertain oligarchs
there’ll be no cake nor crumbs for children
no healthcare
for the
ailing, no
help from spineless sycophants
drunk with power
their blood-thirst quenched by hate
.
prisons…
let’s not go there…really
let’s just say that
nobody
no body
should go there…except perhaps…well..
I’m sorry,
you asked?
I woke up this morning…yay!
that’s good, right? If only more were woke

~kat

Another pi-sequence poem (syllable count per line: 3.1415926535 8979323846. 2643383279) that I accidentally erased, and had to rewrite. That is how my day went today. Is there a planet in retrograde somewhere? Anyhow. Today’s sunset came to the rescue once again. Sorry if all these sunsets are becoming boring to you. As for me, I cherish every single one.

Much love, peace, and glimmers to you.

~kat

💚💚💚✨✨✨💚💚💚


setting time

setting time

these lengthening days
warmed by the afternoon sun
set the sky ablaze

~kat

It’s been a while. I’ve been passing mindlessly, from one day to the next, barely breathing. Well, I exaggerate. Obviously I am breathing. But I can’t catch my breath. Everyday another terrible bit of news spews from the spineless, malevolent fools in government. Every day, choosing ways to manage rising basic living costs by deciding what we can do without. Living with some sense of comfort in these times takes great effort and diligence. I’m bone tired.

My saving grace…my glimmer…the moments I actually pause from work, is at sunset. A brief few moments of watching the sky transform before launching into my night-time chores. Honestly, it is something I need desperately.

And there is writing…my love of words. I am planning to enter another NaPoWriMo exercise in a few days. It’s been a hard winter. Time for spring in every sense!

Much love, peace, and glimmers to you.

~kat

✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨


tell the bees

Photo Credit: YHBae on pixabay.com

tell the bees
.
I
understand now
how
important they are
not only because they are master
keepers
of all life in balance
but as sages of
great wisdom.
consider the hive…
.
a bustling community of
workers, drones, and one queen, each of whom
has a vital role to play
in the health, safety, and prosperity
of the whole
where the swarm
protects
at all cost
the matriarch, the very heart.
it’s not honey
that drives them, it is she…
.
ancient
feminine energy
hidden away
just buzzing
to be known
by humanity gone astray
honey drunk,
where drones
have taken over the hive…
they forgot, the workers are legion

~kat

The poem is a pi-sequenced offering based on three sections: 3.1415926535.8979323846. 2643383279, determining the syllable count for each line. Happy 3/14!

Wisdom from the Bees

There are three vital roles played out by very distinct players in the life of a hive. It’s not about the honey. While it is a sweet byproduct of the harmony of a healthy brood of bees, it is not the heart. 

That would be the queen. A single fertile female who holds everything together. Bee queens live 2-3 years laying up to 3000 eggs a day. She is literally the mother of all bees, the quintessential life giver of the colony as well as the anchor that keeps the hive humming. 

The queen is sustained by worker bees (also female). These busy bees tend the hive, clean and feed the queen royal jelly, a special food reserved only for queens, and provide for her every need so that she can spend her short productive reign reproducing. Worker bees are born from the fertilized eggs of the queen. Given the fertile reproductive qualities of a heathy queen, workers are legion. Throughout their relatively short lifespan (in the summer two to six weeks, and in winter, up to 20 weeks because they don’t venture out of the hive during colder months) worker bees do it all! After 21 days, honey bee larvae emerge fully grown and the work begins with cleaning the cells (days 1-3), feeding the worker and drone larvae (days 3-7), and attending exclusively to the queen (days 7-11). Around days 13 – 18 the workers use wax from four glands in their abdomen’s to build and restore the cells of the hive. On days 18 – 21 when their stinger has matured, they move on to guard duty protecting the hive, and finally, in the last sweet stage of life these busy workers emerge from the hive to scout and forage for water, pollen, and nectar. A foraging bee will make 9-10 hour-long trips to and from the hive in a single day. There are other tasks which worker bees do such as maintaining the temperature of the hive and mortuary duty (removing dead and non viable eggs from the hive). I’m figuring out where the term “busy as a bee” comes from. 

Which brings us to the drones. These guys (the male component in the life of bee colonies) are born from the unfertilized eggs of the queen. She basically creates these fellows for herself, as they have one vital role to play. They do not have stingers (an important fact to ponder), they do not feed themselves (worker bees provide them royal jelly for a few days, then a steady diet of honey), they do not scout or forage or protect the hive (remember…no stingers). When a queen emerges from her nest, she takes a maiden flight solely for the purpose of mating with several drones. This act will fertilize all the eggs she will ever lay in her lifetime, so once the deed is done, each drone dies.

I could go on and on…there are so many details i could share regarding the masterpiece that is a bee colony. And there are a few analogies as well that I could indulge, but I won’t. I’ll let you fill in the rest of the story. Suffice to say, is it any wonder that compassion, kindness, peace, community, conservation, nurturing, the arts and wisdom are making a bold resurgence in these times we find ourselves living through? And what can we learn from the bees? I’ll just leave all of this here for you to ponder. 🤔😉 😊

Much love, peace, compassion, and honeybee wisdom glimmers to you. 

~kat

🐝🐝🐝✨💚✨🐝🐝🐝