Of My Former Self
by Georgia Cook
"Bone loss"
announces my dentist promising
to cap that noble worker,
lower back grinder,
I'm hoping to keep to cremation
It's a disappearing act.
Store clerks and waiters address
my daughters when we're out together...
In family albums
I'm bigger than the children,
How is it now, when we hug,
I'm smaller.
The last week in August
hiking in the Highline Trail,
sumac is starting small fires.
Milkweed grows here:
the arbitrary flutter of monarchs is
taking them to Mexico.
My good shadow bounces
from asphalt to prairie grasses,
to goldenrod, quicker, slimmer, darker than I am.
The Shade of Lilacs
by Charles V. Lisle
The best part of the springtime when he was ten
was sitting with his dog under the lilac bushes at
the end of the block and waiting for his dad to be
walking home. The little terrier would see him
first and bark and bounce as they ran to him and
skittered 'round him, trading tales of the day.
One sunny day when he was sixty he drove back
and parked at the corner where the lilacs once
stood. They were long gone, but the breeze still
held the scent of them. And the sound of a small
dog barking.
100 Words on Shadow, Volume 4 No. 2, International Writing Program, 1996.
Okay, folks...you've got only 100 words to tell a story, capture a moment, express your reality. Can you do it and can you do it in such a way that others can understand the moment or the story and feel what you feel? I think Georgia and Charles succeeded. What do you think?
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