Something a Little Different by Nancy M Bell

Welcome to my day on the Books We Love Blog! So nice to see you all back. Rather than ramble on about something that is important to me, I thought I would share something a little different this month. I love to write poetry, the way the words sing and how they evoke emotions and even the memory of certain scents. With that in mind, I thought I would post a few poems from my dusty dusty poetry vault. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on my thoughts. LOL

Nostalgia

Bittersweet; nibbling at the toes of my subconscious
Memories of long past summer days
Evoked by the essence of green cut hay
A myriad of days
Wrapped up in the rustle of ripening wheat

Shimmering moonlight
Freeing the ghosts locked away in memory
Sending them shouting and galloping once again
Through the now silent dark
Plunging me back into half-forgotten dreams
And half-remembered loves

Sweet moon shadowed innocence of youth.


This poem was inspired by memories of riding with my friends when I was in my late teens and early twenties. I can still see it as clear as day, the blue June sky, the belly deep waving grasses, the smell of hot earth and dry grass sharp on the breeze. My horse strong and smooth between my knees, the lovely smell of clean horse and sweat. His coat silky under my hands, our thoughts as one, horse and rider. As if somehow we could capture a moment and freeze it in time, holding it forever in our hearts and minds.

Yesterday’s Last Day

This is the last day of yesterday
It can be no other way
Every other day will be tomorrow
Where joy will not be borrowed

I am closing the door on sadness
Offering myself forgiveness
No more misty dreaming of the past
I’m seeking a promise that will last

No walking with memory’s guidebook in hand
Revisiting places we played on the strand
With somehow tomorrow drifting away
Until I’m caught forever in the last day of yesterday

So now I’m searching through the clouds for tomorrow
Ignoring the beaconing sighs of yesterday’s sorrow
I’m leaving behind this lonely madness
And closing the door on sadness.

This one was about the angst of letting go of a relationship that has gone up in flames, but somehow I kept sifting the ashes through my fingers until I realized there wasn't really anything to hang on to anymore. I was in my late teens when I wrote this one.

Memories from a Honeymoon
May 1977

I remember green English fields and coal fires
Rain and Jubilee banners
Pigeons in Trafalgar Square
Walking through Hyde Park in the sun
Feeling the presence of ghosts from the past

And then Paris, City of flowers and bridges
Notre Dame rising from the stones
As if it has always been there
Inside the candles shining in the dark

I remember a pink rosebush in a park
Near the Eiffel Tower and more pigeons
Walking on the Champs Elysie in the rain
Sitting a little café with a café au lait
That cost a buck a cup
Crepes with strawberry jam from a street vendor

Zurich’s mountains and lake
A white swan in the river at dawn
And a hotel that was closed
Red roofs and cobble streets
Alpine flowers on the slopes and sweet mountain air

Amsterdam, city of canals
Dam Square and more pigeons
The Red Light District and a hungry alley cat
Walking along the Prinsengrache and Damrack
McDonald’s at last
Shopping the bustling streets
Wheels of cheese and fish markets
French fries with mayonnaise
And more rain

And over it all the glow of everlasting love.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Memories of our honeymoon. Europe on a shoe string. Hard to believe it was 38 years ago.

Touchstone

We are linked by love
You and I
You have been my steadfast friend
My anchor in the stormy seas
My safe rock on which to stand
And survey my uncertainties

The sharer of my secrets
The keeper of the wings of my spirit
You have given so much
And asked so little
Touchstone of my soul
Transcending even the distance of death.

This is a tribute to my first horse, Brandy. He kept me sane through my teenage and early twenties. I wrote this right after he died. His name was Brandy, Brandance Kaine.

Secretariat

You were bred to win
And born to race
While still a colt you left
Your rolling Meadow fields
Forever

Destined to show that dreams
Can still come true
The essence of power and beauty
Running for love of it
Running for yourself
Honestly and truly

The sun was your spotlight
You were the ruler
The world your minions
Like your daddy’s name a Bold Ruler
And like your momma’s truly Something Royal

And now each time we see a flaming chestnut
The world looks again hoping that it’s you
Knowing that it never will be again.


This is appropriate seeing as American Pharaoh won the Triple Crown. I wrote this after Secretariat won in 1973. The first horse since 1948 when Citation won.

Winter Morning

Snow silvered branches spread against the pearl velvet of the sky
Bare trunks a dark slash against the white-blue snow
The frosty filigreed branches glow with illumination
The pale light gathered and thrown upwards by the fields they guard
The Goddess is holding her breath
There is no colour on this palette
Only shades of silver pewter
The pale blue-white of snow and shadow
And the stark black wounds of the trees
Stitching the earth to the sky.

This is just a small vignette of a winter morning that enchanted me.

Okay, only one more. I promise!

Just Shy of Eighty-Two

You were just one day shy
Of eighty-two years old
The day you went missing
Really, just one hour shy

The night closed in
And you drifted away from us
You left the face we knew on your pillow
Taking the part that was You
Where we couldn’t follow

You chose to leave in solitude
Sending your lover to catch a bus
Alone, your great bear heart settled into rest
Your great bear spirit free from its cage

Where I sat in the dark car outside a Tim Horton’s
Stopping briefly in my mad rush to reach you
I knew I was too late
Even before my cell phone split the silence
As we passed the Barrie Racetrack

You are still here in the blood of your children
And your children’s children
In your daughter’s eyes you are a hero
The hero has just gone on a new quest
There is an empty place at our banquet table

Mom and Dad 1956

Daddy

This was written when my dad died in 2008. No matter how old we get, we will always be our parent's children.

Well, I hope I haven't bored you all to death! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and comments. Until next month!

Casting Your Characters - Gemini with Janet Lane Walters #Astrology #BooksWeLove

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This cover is for The Gemini Sagittarius Connection due to be released soon. She is a single mother Gemini with twin sons who has no desire for another husband. Her nursing career brings her face to face with a Sagittarius doctor who believes he had the perfect marriage. His wife's death has left him as one of the hospital's most eligible bachelors.

I am currently working on a second book this time with a Gemini hero and doctor who has given up the practice of medicine to become a writer. His love interest returns to town after eleven years. She is a Cancer Pediatric Nurse Practitioner who he hurt in the past/


We've all heard that Gemini is the sign of the twins and that these people have trouble making up their minds. Not really true. Here are some tips if you want to give your character a Gemini Sun, Rising Sign or Moon.

Gemini sun and this is the inner nature of the character. Geminis are ruled by Mercury, This means communication. Geminis are sympathetic, affectionate. Home and children mean a lot to them. One of the problems they have is being easily influenced by people who are kind to them. Geminis are intuitive and are good investigators. They can act quickly in an emergency. Another problem is that they can be changeable. They are also inquisitive and love diversity.

Rising Sign- the face shown to the world. Ambition often rules. They are curious and given to investigations and experiments. With this sign rising they are capable of two pursuits at the same time, even to having two careers and the drive to succeed in both. They can be idealistic, perceptive and imaginative. A love of pleasure can set them on a tangent. They can be restless and high strung. They are great talkers.

Moon -- The emotional nature. This side of a Gemini shows an agreeable, warm-hearted persom except they are reserved about personal and domestic matters. They gain pleasure from books. With a Gemini Moon, the character would dislike quarreling and warefare. They are also changeable. A real problem can be caused by being drawn into embarrassing or difficult situations.

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You Had to be There - A Summer Memory by Roseanne Dowell

Summer is a magical time in the life of a child and it was no less for me. I’ve always loved summer, especially in the fifties when I was young and carefree. It was a time of happiness and

contentment.  Secure in the love of my family, I enjoyed the summer days and nights.  We spent the days riding bikes, playing kick the can, hide and seek, baseball, and tag.  It’s so clear in my mind, it could have been yesterday instead of fifty plus years ago. 

My memories go back to warm summer days in Cleveland, Ohio.  Days spent waiting anxiously for my father to come home from work.  At the first sign of nice weather, my mother brought out the picnic basket. Every day in the nice weather, she packed it and had it ready to go.

While Dad washed up, we packed the car and before you knew it, we were on our way to our special place, Lagoon, named for the small lake nearby, Actually more like a pond.. The name sounded spooky, probably because in 1954 the movie Creature From the Black Lagoon was so popular. Not that I ever saw it, I didn't and still don’t care to. Spooky movies and I don’t get along.

We jumped out of the car and immediately begin gathering kindling while Mom and Dad brought the picnic basket and cooler to the table. No charcoal for us, wood was free and plentiful. After picking up the smaller twigs, we ran towards the woods looking for larger branches to use for firewood and. long skinny sticks for roasting marshmallows after dinner. Mom crumpled up old newspaper and started the fire and let Dad relax. She added the larger wood as the fire started smoldering.

My brothers, sisters, and I bickered and competed to see who could break the larger dead branches we had gathered. Holding the branch with one hand, we  jumped on it. Naturally, my brothers, being older and bigger, won. My sisters and I broke the smaller ones.  We held each end and cracked them across our knees. Even now I can hear the snap as the brittle branches splintered. Mom and Dad laughed at our antics unless we got too rough. Once the fire settled down to hot coals, my parents cooked, and we played.

Not far from our table and near the bridle path stood an old tree  with a crooked branch big enough to sit on . We called it our horse tree.  My sisters and I climbed the tree and watched the world while my brothers played baseball.  Sometimes we made up stories about the people who drove by. Riders often came down the path next to us, and we jumped down from our loft, talked to them, and petted the horses. That was before my fear of horses.

 Three or four of us could fit on that thick old limb, and we thought we were so high up that no one could see us At least we thought they couldn't. Far up to a child is a lot different than to an adult. . We often sat up there until dinnertime.  After dinner, we usually went for a walk by the lake with our parents or our brothers. We weren't allowed to go alone until we got older

On Wednesdays and weekends,my aunt, uncle, and cousins came on the picnic with us. We had some great baseball games  with ten kids and four adults. We played out in the dusty old field, screaming “go to third, or run home” and shouting “catch it, throw it home” jumping up and down as our team scored a run or someone in the field caught the ball.  Being the second youngest of six kids I didn't hit the ball very far, but the adults made allowances for us younger kids. They let the ball roll past them if we managed to hit it. But there was fierce competition between us kids and even my brothers didn't give us a break. After the game, our parents relaxed or played horseshoes.

While they visited with each other, we were allowed to go almost anywhere as long as the older boys were with us.  One of my favorite memories is going for walks up a long hill. At the end of the road, an old house stood surrounded by trees and covered in ivy. Dirty windows stared at us from their ivy-covered facade. An overgrown yard hid the sidewalk. The house looked spooky, probably abandoned, but we didn't know that then.

My brothers told us a witch lived there so we couldn't get too close. We slowed down the closer we got to the house. A little more than halfway up, one of my brothers yelled, "she's coming" or "there she is." We raced back down the hill like our lives depended on it. At the bottom, we stopped out of breath and laughed, thinking we outran her.

No matter how scared we were, we  begged to go back. I think we hoped to see her one day. Of course, neither my sisters or I ever saw her. Thinking back, I'm sure no one lived there, but even as a child I had a wild imaginatIon. Not that I was the only one, my sisters and cousin imagined the same thing. 

When we got a little older, my sisters, our cousin, and I were allowed to wander by off by ourselves. We even conjured up enough courage to go up the hill alone. Not that we ever made it all the way up. It never failed one or the other of us  thought we saw someone moving in the window or our brothers sneaked up out of the woods and scared the daylights out of us. As usual we ran like the devil was chasing us. After we caught our breaths, we took after the boys, never quite quick enough to catch them. 

I miss those days.  Many of the people are gone now, but the memory remains of that simpler time. A time when all we had to worry about was doing our chores, picnics, gathering sticks for kindling, playing and pretending. It was a time when fun, imaginations, and love abounded, and summer days were magical.

We went back to Lagoon several years ago for a family reunion. The tree still stands, but the witch's house, alas, was gone. We told our children and grandchildren these tales. They listened politely, smiling and nodding, but they didn't find the humor or magic in the story as we did. 

I guess you had to be there

Roseanne's books can be found at Amazon

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Taking over the police chief’s job in her hometown should have been easy for Callie Johnson. At least that's what she thought. After working in a big city, small town crime would be a breeze. What a surprise when she arrives to find her grandmother, the judge, accused of murder. As if that wasn't enough she’s attacked while walking to her car. Between criminal investigations, her nutty family’s antics and her Aunt Beatrice Lulu's matchmaking, Callie definitely has her work cut out for her. Will her grandmother be exonerated? Can Callie ward off her aunt’s unsuitable suitors? What other surprises were in store for her? More importantly, can she find the person who attacked her?