A Beautiful October Afternoon

Sunshine brings a glad brightness to yellowing green foliage, punctuated by sumac hurrahs of red and rust. Noon and the early afternoon hours are blessedly still.  Street construction crews and equipment are silent. The dust they've created all summer long settles on window and wall, even a a fine sprinkle has filtered into the house, sifting onto shelves and into cupboards.  But cleaning is suspended until the neighborhood's summer-long street project is complete.  (When, O Lord, when will that be?)

Outside our picture window, a scattering of box elder bugs rejoices in undisturbed sunlight,  their aerial versions of pop wheelies and stately mazurkas vying to impress.  Who feels sad, depressed, forlorn?

Come and see.

This show is free. 

Work to Do and Ten Things I Have Left on Planes

Browsing in old and not-so-old journals, sorting and filing new poems and notes for revisions on old, discovering half-written, originally-never-intended-for publication poems.  Does this snippet from September 22 of this year qualify?

                                 Ten Things I have Left on Planes
                                       by Shirley Smith Franklin

My ticket
Two full size pillows
One shawl
One umbrella
Empty lunch bags, plastic, zip
One half-eaten chocolate bar
Every neck pillow I've owned
Several airline magazine contest entries, neat, complete, correct
One small notebook, with notes from the funeral of my very best friend forever
and contact information for her family
who were to tell me more about her  later
My heart
and all that makes the world
so bright, so beautiful, and fair.

She loved me. And I love her still.

Note to reader: [Is this a poem?  Does it matter whether it is? What do you think?]