Tag Archives: 2024

2024

(Poem 366 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/QTVBSJ

2024 was a difficult year,
made all the more difficult
by losing my grandmother,
who was one of the people
I would commiserate with
about all the challenges.

It started off with a bang
at 3am on New Year’s Day
with taking my husband
to the emergency room
for a kidney stone.

I spent more time this year in doctor
offices, hospitals, or watching
my grandchildren so my daughter
could be by a hospital bedside
than I care to even try to tabulate.

This will not be a list of my woes,
nor a lesson in counting my blessings.
I do not have the energy for either
right now because I am recovering
from some sort of upper respiratory
infection that has caused me to end
my year in a rather puny state.

This is simply an acknowledgement
that 2024 was hard—painful—and I
am eager to begin anew with fresh
perspective and a sober heart
to love, create, empathize, meditate,
pray, read, sleep, live, learn, and grow.

@Home Studio – 366th poem of the year

Fire Pit

(Poem 365 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

Photos taken New Year’s Eve 2024 by Rebekah Marshall.

It is winter in Texas,
though our photos
make us look like
we are on some tropical
island where the weather
is always a balmy 75
degrees and we can wear
shorts and short sleeves
year round.

The fire is to pretend
it is wintertime, so we
can participate in the
festivities of making
smores, roasting hot
dogs, and sitting around
a fire pit for New Year’s.

We are good at pretend.
It is actually one of our
preferred states around
here because pretend
is usually much more
interesting and fun.

Charlotte had a dramatic
argument with the fire
pit lady for shooting sparks
out at her. It was quite
believable.

Julian scared
himself watching a giant
marshmallow transform
into a huge, flaming beast
with fire bursting out from
inside a hollowed out cave,
turning from dinosaur,
to alligator, to terrifying
skull; its ability to both
expand and melt was
nearly too much for his
imagination to handle.

Maybe later this week
we can pretend some
snow into being and make
a snowman to start off the
new year right.

@Home Studio – 365th poem of the year

Runner ups for the Fire Pit photos to accompany my poem:

The New Year

(Poem 8 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

(AI Generated images I prompted on Gencraft.com)

The new year arrived without
much ado while I slept.
Then the proverbial fan spluttered.
Five hours later, I drove my
husband home from the emergency room
a little doped up, but thankful
for temporary relief from a kidney stone.
Two days later I propped up his ass
so he wouldn’t fall off the porch
after a root canal and more meds
than his delicate constitution
could withstand on a weekday.
We’re only a few days in to 2024,
but it needs to slow its roll,
pace itself, it’s doing too much.

@Home Studio – 8th poem of the year

(Some more images playing around with AI…one of my favorite is this dragon representing 2024 doing WAY TOO MUCH!)

(And this poor little guy in the bottom left about to get eaten by 2024…)

(Here are some more because I was having trouble coming up with an image to represent what I wanted. We’ve got bleak city streets, Dickensonian dental surgery, and the after Christmas blues in this collage.)