Poem: "Sunshine in the Sidewalks"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is today's freebie, inspired by rix_scaedu. It also fills the "yellow" square in my 4-1-17 card for the Month of Rainbows Bingo fest.


"Sunshine in the Sidewalks"


Everywhere the pavement goes,
the weeds are sure to follow.

Their seeds sink into the cracks
between the squares of concrete,
reach their roots into the damp dust
and pry the pavers apart.

They bloom with unrelenting cheer,
their small yellow flowers peeking out
like spots of sunshine in the sidewalks.

Dandelion opens its golden umbrellas,
closes them, then reopens silver seedballs.

Creeping buttercup crawls through the cracks
like a squad of soldiers entrenching themselves.

Lesser trefoil is tiny, easily overlooked,
and all but impossible to eradicate.

From the yards to the sidewalks they spread,
and from the sidewalks to the vacant lots and
the parking plazas, stretching themselves
everywhere that humans have gone.

They invade the paved spaces,
painting over gray with yellow and
green, an aggressive graffiti of growth.

Sure, they grow in the lawns too,
clamoring among the grass in the parks,
in the front and back yards, but really,
weeds do best when living in the cracks

where there is less competition.

* * *

Notes:

Weeds in cracks can destroy pavement. There are various ways to kill weeds and seal cracks, some safer than others.

Dandelion, creeping buttercup, and lesser trefoil are among the yard weeds prone to growing in cracks.

Comments

[technoshaman]

o/~ We are the little folk, we... o/~

Endings. *hugs*

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm glad you liked it.

"... too little to love or to hate"

[stardreamer]

Completely off-topic: If you have any content on your LJ that is not mirrored here, you'd best grab it NOW. I know I've seen some poems that only seem to have been posted over there, and the kind of content you post is going to put you right in the cross-hairs under the nasty new TOS at LJ. I will be nuking and paving my account over there within the next couple of days.

This is not a decision I'm undertaking lightly. I've spent most of today researching it, and I'll be giving up a permanent account over there. But I don't see any better path.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I have copied my LJ posts back to DW. The problem I have includes:

* lots of links to LJ posts that would die if the LJ account is closed, far too many to fix

* I still have some donors who are only on LJ

* DW doesn't offer all the same features, and in particular, posting poems a verse at a time is very difficult on DW

I hate the new TOS but honestly almost all contracts are abusive now.

Re: Well...

[stardreamer]

I see that. In that case, just be sure that you have all your content cross-posted going forward, so that if something does happen with LJ you don't lose anything. You might think about running a comments import once a month or so, perhaps right before the new Fishbowl.

Would fixing links to LJ posts, to point them at DW instead, over on your Weebly site be something I could spend some time doing? Oh, and there don't seem to be any links to your functional sub-thread pages on your front page there. Are they somewhere else, or would you like to have them added?

Re: Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> You might think about running a comments import once a month or so, perhaps right before the new Fishbowl. <<

I've been doing that all along.

>> Would fixing links to LJ posts, to point them at DW instead, over on your Weebly site be something I could spend some time doing? <<

Yes, that's a great idea. I suggest coordinating with callibr8 as Weebly tends to eat edits if two people are working simultaneously.

>> Oh, and there don't seem to be any links to your functional sub-thread pages on your front page there. Are they somewhere else, or would you like to have them added? <<

Which front page, the home page for the blog, the main Serial Poetry page, or the main Polychrome Heroics page? Adding links to the thread pages would make sense on the SP and PH pages, it just never occurred to me to do that. Usually people just use the pulldown menu.

caveat editor

[callibr8]

>> Yes, that's a great idea. I suggest coordinating with callibr8 as Weebly tends to eat edits if two people are working simultaneously. <<

Oh, Weebly eats edits even when I'm working solo. I strongly recommend making your own "snapshot" backup of a page before you work on it, and another after you're done. I'm not sure that more than a week has gone by between times when I've had to repopulate a page that got chomped somehow. An additional precaution I take is that I only edit one page per session, i.e. I close out each session after making all the planned edits to Page A, wait at least 30 seconds, then start a new session for edits to Page B. It's a minor pain in the ass, but it has reduced (though not eliminated) the amount of page chomping that happens.

Re: Well...

[stardreamer]

I was thinking about the main Polychrome Heroics page, although it would also make sense to put them under the PH section in the Serial Poetry page.

If you're talking about the pull-down menus at the top of each page, the one for Serial Poetry has gotten so long that PH disappears off the bottom of the screen, and for whatever reason just running the cursor down to the end doesn't continue to scroll thru the entries.

Looking back at my comment, I don't think I was very clear. I'm talking about the links to the Officer Pink page, the Antimatter & Stalwart Stan page, etc. -- the equivalent of the various titles in your superhero comicsverse. You put them in on the individual pages of new poems, and that's how I've been having to get to them.

[meridian_rose]

Nice :) The tenacity of some plants is truly amazing, the conditions they can survive and in the damage they can inflict on man-made items!

stephen message and donation

[goldbach5.livejournal.com]

Thank you.
You make the world a wonderful place, to live in.

signed
stephen
p.s.
what lives in the cracks of humor?

enjoy the 25.00 donation.

[rix_scaedu]

I have buttercups in my garden.

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Some types of buttercup are really nice.

My favorite definition is "weed: a flower growing where it's not wanted."

RE: Yay!

[rix_scaedu]

I have embraced them because I like them, and there are other things that I need to worry about more. :-)

Privet, jasmine, lantana....

RE: Yay!

[rix_scaedu]

I have embraced them because I like them, and there are other things that I need to worry about more. :-)

Privet, jasmine, lantana....

[rix_scaedu]

I have buttercups in my garden.