Coincidence?

Have you ever been working on something and you just can not make it fit back together?  Trying time after time to start a simple threaded fitting onto its threaded mate.  Maybe a nut onto a bolt in an awkward place that you can’t reach…a place you can’t maneuver you body into a comfortable position…a place your fingers can’t quite get to.  In spite of owning every tool known to man…no tool will fit because of all the obstructions.  You have to question what the engineer was thinking when he designed the equipment. 

You just want to go outside and scream every bad word you can think of…but after an eternity of fighting it…you remember to pray instead.

No sooner that you say, “Jesus, help me”…everything goes together like magic. 

God amazes me.

Grand Canyon Trails

I plodded past the red rock walls and down the twisting trail of Angel Bright Canyon watching the white water rapids rush through the parched landscape below while the rock spires and precariously perched boulders towered overhead.

The awesome backdrop was a reminder of the billions of years of erosion that exposed the geological layers of limestone, sandstone and shale.

As I reached the Phantom Ranch Suspension Bridge...perspiration seeped from every pour...my rubber legs told me it was time to climb off the elliptical and turn off the YouTube video playing the on my son's new 75" LED 2160p 4K HD flat screen TV.  As I stumble to the kitchen for a beer I notice the display on the exercise machine had counted off the exact numbers of calories equal to the donut I had inhaled before I started.

I guess I'll make that a diet root beer.

Reading, Righting and Rithmetic

Is it my genetic makeup, some mental deficiency or just a total lack of interest in the written word that contributes to my inability to read and write? 

I’m not sure…but I do have the report cards to prove that I am basically illiterate. 

Spelling, punctuation and simple sentence structure are overwhelming challenges.  It seemed that there are just too many rules and each rule has exceptions…not to mention the exceptions to the exception.

I’ve spent a lifetime of avoiding putting pen to paper…but as of late I have become interested in leaving a sort of breadcrumb trail of my journey through the forest of life.  With the advent of the computer, spell and grammar check…I can almost pass as literate.

I find it strange that my interest has turned to writing…even stranger…writing poems.

Maybe because verse tends to fly in the face of the stiff and stilted system espoused to by the old maid English teachers of my youth.  

Poems and verses seem to ignore the trite and hackneyed prohibitions against dangling participles, pluperfect verbs and proper pronouns.

I am attracted by the fact that the rhythm of the rhyme seems to be more feeling than function, more cadence than correctness, and more passion than prescription.

Although my doggerel is more of a dirge like drone of awful alliterations, hubris humor or some lame limerick…yet…to me, it holds a strange fascination.

I suppose it is ridiculous to think my rudimentary rhymes could ever be elevated to the status of poetry.

It’s quite the trick/ a limerick

For it takes time/ to make a rhyme

I want proper grammar/ but stumble and stammer

It’s almost a crime/ such clatter and clamor.

But what comes forth/ is not mine of course

It a gift from above/ that I’ve learned to love

So all I can do/ is point to you

You are the one/ everything comes from.

I owe my thanks/ to the one who ranks

To my Lord and God/ I give You the nod

So Thanks again/ my best friend

You’ve made it clear/ there’s nothing to fear.

Amen.