Grandmother

She smelt of burnt cigarettes and moth balls
Sitting at the kitchen table, a single stream of smoke
spiraling up to the ceiling
One elbow planted on the table holding her cigarette
and the other under her chin
looking down her bifocals
at a Sunday morning paper
from last weekend

She never fully smiled
It was always a hesitant act
But she would hug you until you couldn't breathe
Her fingers stroking my hair
and pulling it into a ponytail
Recalling memories of when I was just a little girl
running around barefoot through the grass
and bothering the chickens
swinging on the homemade rope swing that
hung from the great tree in the backyard

And at night we would sit in a circle
everyone with a beer and cigarette fastened in their hands
and talk and laugh and poke and remember
The mosquitoes would buzz softly in our ears
just long enough for us to swat them away
and return to our family stories

In the real upstate New York is where you'd find that family
In the old broken down houses with the broken down people
With their cigarettes in one hand
and their heart in the other.

Paper thin walls

On the other side of the wall there's a story
A story with kettles on the stove and tea in the pot
food in the cupboards and sun streaming in
The curtains gently blowing the sweet spring air
There's a kitten nibbling on her food in the corner
and the children stare empty-eyed at a TV screen
their mother calls for them and they come running
opens hands and open mouths
and take their fill, and wash, and bundle for the night
The stars rise and fall and moon takes its place over them
and the mother stays up and smokes a cigarette
the smoke gently streaming up and up, reaching
unfurling, following the textured lines on the ceiling
a glass in her hand and the TV on mute. She waits
On the other side of the wall there's a story.
I sit, like a child listening to a bedtime tale.
I sit and listen to the story
on the other side of the wall.

Dead tree branches

Day 1:

Rising up from the earth and stretching high towards the sky,
Once green branches now a withered darkened brown
What is it reaching for? What did it yearn for?
And now it sits on a lonely wheat field, forgotten
It sits and sways with the help of the wind. Its leaves have all fallen.

Everything changes from brown to green
to pinks and reds and yellows and colors of every kind
except the frozen tree in the lonely wheat field.
It remains stoic and rigid, roots dug deep into the earth
It doesn't stretch its branches and welcome the birds
It doesn't greet the morning sun with fresh spun buds
It just is. It just stands and waits.

The world moves and grows and changes
and once the mighty tree did as well.
It shook and trembled with the earth
It grasped and fought and reached
It was renewed with the coming seasons.

And the earth will slowly have it.
And the earth will slowly have it all.
And the earth will slowly have everything.

Title this

The objective:

The purpose of this blog is to practice object writing using sensory descriptions in the ultimate pursuit of better song-writing.

Yeah...
Amen.