Category: Uncategorized

“Sing for your supper and you’ll get breakfast! Songbirds always eat…”

Northern Cardinals, Tufted Titmice, and Chickadees, and the
an occasional Sparrow or two,
drop in and fly out of the feeders as if it were the checkout line at a cafeteria
White Wing Doves know they are safe at the big wooden feeder in the Sycamore tree; it's hunting season but still they gorge as if is their last meal!
No fear.
This is a no kill space.

Recently, a flock of great American Grackles have appeared to noisily squeak and clack as they clean up the white wing's leftovers below the feeder.

For the past week I've watched a petite finch stop in to eat, it's reddish breast feathers shining in the early sunlight.

I've trained myself to ignore the sound of rushing trucks and cars and the cacophony of motorcycles-just getting on with their day in suburbia,

not unlike these birds
and this aging couple who keep the feeders full of millet and black oil sunflower seeds.

Today I am headed to my neighborhood park.
A friend told me that she saw Blue Herons there-
blown inland from the recent hurricane in the Gulf.

I need to go see!

©Nancilynn Saylor 8 September 2017
Photo at Port Aransas, TX winter of 2016( I did not see any today.)

Good morning, America; how are you?

I can tell you how I am.

I am sickened by the thought of a pack of teenagers

filming a disabled man

drowning in a pond in front of them

Laughing as they watched and recorded the event. Cocoa, Florida sounds like a sweet spot residing at the entrance to

The gates of Hell.

No laws broken.

No charges filed.

Karma and my prayers for justice.

I could meet out justice but the land I loved suffers

Chicago

Saint Louis

Minneapolis

Detroit

Heavenly Father-

Send the comets!

(Or apologize to Sodom and Gamorrah.) Sadness breeding anger tonight

©Nancilynn Saylor.                                    21July 2017

You are always on my mind…

Waking up to another day.                    without you here,                                             on this the, thirteenth year.                                

I know you’d be smiling just                                  knowing it is going to be another hot       

sun-baked summer day-                            you’d be looking for someplace to swim &.                       something to put in the grill.                       

You are probably thinking how I can still have tears…                                                  

after so long.                                                      

I’ll likely always begin these remembrance days                                                                 

with a lump in my throat as                                  I blink back hot tears.                                    

The hug I feel around my shoulders      seems almost real today.                                                

I love you my dear firstborn son.                                       I always will. 

Keep watch over your brother and your friends                                                             who keep the spark of your memory alive.                                             

Death has not diminished our bond. 

©Nancilynnn Saylor                                        10 June 2017

Those I remembered on Memorial Day 

On this most recent Memorial Day weekend i spent sometime reflecting on the soldiers In my life. My maternal grandfather was a horse soldier in WW1; i have a photocopy of his draft notice snd a picture of him in uniform on a horse.

My father was in the Navy, the Army Air Corp and later the United States Air Force. He flew in planes in the Navy during WW11. He served during the Korean  conflict and Viet Nam war. He was in the military his entire working career.  

My uncle’s, cousins, brother, two husbands and my oldest son also served, as well as a niece. They all felt a call yo serve. 

A strong thread of patriotism is woven through the fabric of my life. 

No one in my immediate family died in war. My mother’s first fiance died in the second world war. A dear high school friend paid with his life in Viet Nam; another friend was one of the countless victims who returned as mere shells of the young men who left. Their minds forever scarred.  

When my father was in the last year of life the Navy awarded.him some medals 70 years after he earned them. All of his five children attended the extremely moving ceremony…he hated being in the spotlight but endured the event for us kids. Less than a year he was gone;  buried in the military cemetery at Fort Sam Houston. His was not the only funeral I attended in that place filled with a seemingly unending ocean of white tombstones. I suspect it will not be the last. The sound of Taps played on  bugle on a gray December after a twenty one gun salute will forever be etched on my heart. 

This  year I needed my flag hung early. Saturday we hung it over our front porch. The next morning at Mass, there was an elderly man alone, a few rows in front of me. He had a colorful shirt on , on a grey, rainy Sunday. I was startled to notice the naval planes and ships on the shirt on the word  “Midway” in red lettering. I left my seat when it was time to offer each other the sign of peace and walked up to where he was standing and touched his arm. He turned as I said “Peace be with you.” That ever present thread of patriotism  will always tie me to the military. I looked in his  aged eyes and saw another American hero.

Peace be with them all, now and forever.

©Nancilynn Saylor.                                      June 6, 2017

 “Dance in the Shadows”

Sunlight, pale today                             Plumeria in shadows                             Gathering clouds tease 

©Nancilynn Saylor                                             3 June 2017

Reflection and stones