HappyThanksgiving To All My America followers and friends

Three Word Wednesday- Preference

Prompts: Machismo, noun: (aggressive) masculinity, toughness, male chauvinism, sexism, virility, manliness; bravado, testosterone, macho. 

Nauseating, adjective: sickening, nauseous, stomach-churning, emetic, sickly; disgusting, revolting, offensive, loathsome, obnoxious, foul, vomitous; informal gross, gut-churning, gut-wrenching.

Oaf, noun: lout, boor, barbarian, Neanderthal, churl, bumpkin, yokel; fool, dolt, dullard; informal idiot, imbecile, moron, halfwit, lamer, cretin, ass, jackass, goon, yahoo, ape, baboon, clod, blockhead, meathead, butthead, meatball, bonehead, knucklehead, chucklehead, lamebrain, palooka, lug, bozo, hoser, boob, chowderhead, lummox, knuckle-dragger, galoot, klutz, goofus, doofus, dork, turkey, dingbat.

Preference 

I much prefer 

What some call an oaf

To nauseating men

Who preen and primp

And have to show

How machismo they can be

For oafs can have the sweetest centre

Gentleness at their core

Their tender hearts

They share with one and all

Kindness their motto

Their true handsomeness

For all to see

If you truly look

Beneath the exterior

©Sheilagh Lee November 23 ,2016

Remembrance Day

Soldiers in full dress

Some frail,

With canes, walker and wheelchairs

Still they come in tribute

For fallen comrades

New and old

The heavens cry

With rain and wind

Still they stand tall

People old and young

Marvel at their inner strength

The symbol a red flower

Proudly worn on their breasts

To remember so we can never forget

The sacrifices given

Though some think long ago

To these brave men and women

It’s yesterday again

Pain in their eyes

They remember and thank

Fallen comrades

Again and again
How can we do less?

©Sheilagh Lee November 9 2016

Three Word Wednesday- Election

Prompts:

Far-fetched, adjective: improbable, unlikely, implausible, unconvincing, dubious, doubtful, incredible, unbelievable, unthinkable; contrived, fanciful, unrealistic, ridiculous, absurd, preposterous, hard to swallow, fishy.

Gamy, adjective: having the tangy flavor or odor of game, having the flavor or odor of game or other meat kept uncooked until slightly tainted, plucky; spirited, lewd or suggestive, risqué, gross or squalid; unwholesome.

Halting, adjective: hesitant, faltering, hesitating, stumbling, stammering, stuttering; broken, imperfect, unsteady, awkward, faltering, stumbling, limping, hobbling.

Election

Farfetched

Beliefs

Halting

Votes

Election

Gamy odour

Of defeat

Win

Breaking

Hearts

Around

The world

Bridges

Not Burnt

Realizing

No one

Stands

Alone
Governs 
Alone

Hands

Reaching

For

Peace

Respect

Given

Listening

Hearts

Civility

Returns

©Sheilagh Lee November 9 2016

Three Word Wednesday-Defusing Powder Kegs

Calculate, verb: compute, work out, reckon, figure; add up/together, count up, tally, total, tote, tot up, intend, mean, aim, design, expect, count on, anticipate, reckon on, bargain on, figure on.

Dire, adjective: terrible, dreadful, appalling, frightful, awful, atrocious, grim, alarming; grave, serious, disastrous, calamitous, ruinous, hopeless, irretrievable, wretched, desperate, parlous, urgent, desperate, pressing, crying, sore, grave, serious, extreme, acute, drastic, ominous, gloomy, grim, dismal, unpropitious, inauspicious, unfavorable, pessimistic.

Erratic, adjective: unpredictable, inconsistent, changeable, variable, inconstant, irregular, fitful, unstable, turbulent, unsettled, changing, varying, fluctuating, mutable; unreliable, undependable, volatile, spasmodic, mercurial, capricious, fickle, temperamental, moody.

I calculate the mood

Of the people around me

Will they go off like powder kegs

Is it a dire situation?

Are they acting erratic?

For I have learned

That some people are volatile

Scary and overpowering

It is better to diffuse them

With kind words

Apologies meaning nothing

Though they know that not

Then to let them

Explode with anger

Harming me or others

©Sheilagh Lee November 2 2016

Three Word Wednesday- Celebrities

Three Word Wednesday Prompts: 

Vapid, adjective: insipid, uninspired, colorless, uninteresting, feeble, flat, dull, boring, tedious, tired, unexciting, uninspiring, unimaginative, uninvolving, lifeless, tame, vacuous, bland, trite, jejune.

Adjoining, adjective: connecting, connected, interconnecting, adjacent, ensuite, neighboring, bordering, next-door; contiguous, proximate; attached, touching.

Bouncy, adjective: bumpy, jolting, jerky, jumpy, jarring, rough, lively, energetic, perky, frisky, jaunty, dynamic, vital, vigorous, vibrant, animated, spirited, buoyant, bubbly, sparkling, vivacious; enthusiastic, ebullient, upbeat.

Vapid celebrities

Filling the news

Bouncy outlandish personalities

Living life not really seeing

The world but only the trappings

Of the rich and famous

Not the adjoining 

Neighbourhoods that are poor 

Now facing reality 

When they are targeted

By those who are bad

Poor or indifferent

Wake-up calls can be 

Good 

But what a terrible price

Leftover PTSD occurs

©Sheilagh Lee October 26, 2016

Three Word Wednesday -Curse

Symbolic, adjective: emblematic, representative, typical, characteristic, symptomatic, figurative, representative, illustrative, emblematic, metaphorical, allegorical, parabolic, allusive, suggestive; meaningful, significant.

Tendency, noun: propensity, proclivity, proneness, aptness, likelihood, inclination, disposition, predisposition, bent, leaning, penchant, predilection, susceptibility, liability; readiness; habit, trend, movement, drift, swing, gravitation, direction, course; orientation, bias.

Unhinged, adjective: deranged, demented, unbalanced, unglued, crazed, mad, insane, disturbed, out of one's mind, out of one's tree; informal crazy, mental, nutso, bonkers, batty, loopy, loco, postal, bananas, touched, batshit crazy. 

A symbolic gesture of a rose

The tendency to grant forgiveness

But unhinged minds

Forget the act

After all it was faked

To get their lover back

So they’d forget

The beatings, the raised voices

As they self-medicate

With pills, liquor

Whatever takes them away

For a little while

And makes them

Happy for a moment

The gesture of the rose

Seals their fate

The unending cycle

Taught always to forgive

The family curse goes on

©Sheilagh Lee October 19, 2016

Three Word Wednesday- Resilient

Three Word Wednesday- Resilient

Three Word Wednesday Prompts: 

Radiance, noun: light, brightness, brilliance, luminosity, beams, rays, illumination, blaze, glow, gleam, luster, glare; luminescence, incandescence, joy, elation, jubilance, ecstasy, rapture, euphoria, delirium, happiness, delight, pleasure.

Rasp, verb: scrape, rub, abrade, grate, grind, sand, file, scratch, scour, croak, squawk, caw, say hoarsely.

Rhythm, noun: beat, cadence, tempo, time, pulse, throb, swing, meter, measure, stress, accent, cadence, pattern, flow, tempo.

Resilent 

She gave radiance in her advice

Beauty in her soul

Her voice at times raspy

From the surgery on her neck

She spoke of the rhythm of life

Teaching her children

Nothing is insurmountable

Poverty can be met

With humour and hope

Teaching us that

Nature is free to enjoy

Hard work does achieve goals

Even when life is difficult

It will get better

Yet her life was hard

Money was scarce

She fought and worked

To feed and clothe  

Her six children

Making something from

What others would say of nothing

While her husband often ill

Could not help

Neither with his money or spirit

She found money for extras

When it was truly desired

Not living the life she’d dreamed

But accepting fate’s quirky hand

Not asking for fame but…

Achieving status in hearts and minds

Of her children and grandchildren

Her kindness and heart

Our mother

Remembered forevermore. 

©Sheilagh Lee October 12, 2016

Three Word Wednesday -Oddball

Three Word Wednesday -Oddball

Notable, adjective: noteworthy, remarkable, outstanding, important, significant, momentous, memorable; marked, striking, impressive; uncommon, unusual, special, exceptional, signal, prominent, important, well known, famous, affluential, famed, noted, distinguished, great, eminent, illustrious, respected, esteemed, renowned, celebrated, acclaimed, influential, prestigious, of note; noun: celebrity, public figure, VIP, personage, notability, dignitary, worthy, luminary; star, superstar, icon, name, big name; informal celeb, somebody, bigwig, big shot, big cheese, big fish, megastar, big kahuna, high muck-a-muck, high muckety-muck.

Oddball, adjective: whimsically free-spirited; eccentric; atypical; noun:  person or thing that is atypical, bizarre, eccentric, or non-conforming, especially one having beliefs that are unusual but harmless.

Perky, adjective: cheerful, lively, vivacious, animated, bubbly, effervescent, bouncy, spirited, high-spirited, in high spirits, cheery, merry, buoyant, ebullient, exuberant, jaunty, frisky, sprightly, spry, bright, sunny, jolly, sparkly, pert; full of beans, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, chipper, peppy.

©Sheilagh Lee October 5, 2016

Three Word Wednesday- Renewed

People say I’m two sides of the same coin

Mercurial and hard to pin down

These are the people

Who don’t know me

Kindly refrain for pigeonholing me

I am lighthearted most of the time

I don’t want to seem melodramatic

But like everyone

I hide my inner thoughts

And when depression gets me down

 When I’m spiralling down that hole

I cut myself off from friends

Protecting them from me

And my dark mood

Until I’m me again

Positive and renewed.

 ©Sheilagh Lee September 28, 2016

Goodbye Old Friend

During a heavy storm, a mature deciduous tree can 'drink' a couple of hundred gallons of water, which is funnelled to its roots. This water is stored in the surrounding soil, to help the tree through future dry spells. Trees think ahead.

A single tree contains millions of calories in the form of sugar, cellulose, lignin (which helps to make the structure 'woody') and other carbohydrates. But to insects and birds, a tree isn't so much a grocery store as a guarded warehouse, because the food is surrounded by a thick protective wall of bark. Trees think about security.

Every day in summer, trees release about 29 tons of oxygen into the air per square mile of forest. A person breathes in nearly two pounds of oxygen each day, so that's the daily requirement for tens of thousands of people. Trees don't care about us — but we should care about them. Elms and pines use a different tactic. When an insect eats a leaf, electrical signals travel from the damaged area to the roots — just as human tissue sends pain signals along the nervous system.

It takes at least an hour for the roots to react and unleash the defences, by flowing bitter compounds into the leaf to send the attacker packing. But something even more amazing is also happening: the tree identifies the attacker by its saliva. Armed with this, the tree releases phero-mones to summon specific predators, to prey on the insects. For example, elms and pines call on parasitic wasps that lay their eggs inside leaf-eating caterpillars, condemning them to slow, painful deaths. Trees are prepared to wait for revenge.

The main reason humans cannot perceive how clever and complex they are is because we exist in such short time scales by comparison. There's a tree in Sweden for instance, a spruce, that is more than 9,500 years old. That's 115 times longer than the average human lifespan.

A tree's childhood lasts ten times as long as ours. Activities that take us moments — waking up or stretching our limbs, can last months for a tree.

It's hardly surprising that most of us see trees as practically inanimate, nothing more than objects. But the truth is very different. They are just as intensely alive as we are . . . and for much, much longer.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3792036/Do-trees-brains.html#ixzz4KPnCdEB6
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source DailyMail UK

Beautiful tree, majestic ash     

How you must have weathered

Storms, times and emotions

Did you miss the woman?

Who owned our house?

That you withered and died

Did something

Kill your spirit and your roots?

How I wish I could seen

You at your best

Though I did try to

Bring you back to life

I shall miss your shade

And the birds and animals you sheltered

But today I bid farewell

To your magnificent height

Strength and presence

May it comfort you that

A tree has been planted in your honour

Goodbye old friend 

Goodbye

©Sheilagh Lee September 16, 2016

Three Word Wednesday - Peace

 Prompts: 

Firm, adjective: hard, solid, unyielding, resistant; solidified, hardened, compacted, compressed, dense, stiff, rigid, frozen, set; secure, secured, stable, steady, strong, fixed, fast, set, taut, tight; immovable, irremovable, stationary, motionless; strong, vigorous, sturdy, forceful; resolute, determined, decided, resolved, steadfast; adamant, emphatic, insistent, single-minded, in earnest, wholehearted; unfaltering, unwavering, unflinching, unswerving, unbending; hardline, committed, dyed-in-the-wool; close, good, intimate, inseparable, dear, special, fast; constant, devoted, loving, faithful, long-standing, steady, steadfast, rock-steady; noun: company, business, concern, enterprise, organization, corporation, conglomerate, office, bureau, agency, consortium.

Grave, noun: burial site, gravesite, cemetery plot, tomb, sepulcher, vault, burial chamber, mausoleum, crypt; last resting place; adjective: serious, important, weighty, profound, significant, momentous; critical, acute, urgent, pressing; dire, terrible, awful, dreadful; solemn, serious, sober, unsmiling, grim, somber; severe, stern, dour.

Heated, adjective: warm, hot; thermal; vehement, passionate, impassioned, animated, spirited, lively, intense, fiery; angry, bitter, furious, fierce, stormy, tempestuous; excited, animated, inflamed, worked up, wound up, keyed up.

Peace 

I am firm

In my belief

Though people get heated

About different views

They can come together

To make the right change

In goodwill and harmony

If they only try

But if they cannot make change

Then find some calm

Because life is too short

To argue and moan

About what we cannot change

Let’s take some

Peace to the grave

And have serenity

Now

©Sheilagh Lee September 14, 2016

Forgiveness?

I tried to winnow out

Life

Abashed with ways to change the past

Blind

Because the past is what defines us

Good

Bad

How we cope with difficult things

Forgiveness

For ourselves and others transgressions

Survival

We cannot change the hurts

Forgiveness

But still the sufferings

Hurt

From those we love

Hide

Within our consciousness

Burning

Brightly in our dreams

Haunting

Forgiveness still on our lips

Forgetting

Not going to happen

Burning

Deep inside the cycle

Continues

Pretending that all is alright

Lingering

In consciousness burning bright

Hurting

Still hearing the words

Cutting

To my soul

Again

And 

Again
Time to forgive

©Sheilagh Lee August 31, 2016