Musings of JR Simmang

When my wife and I got married, we saw all our presents scattered over our living room floor when we pulled back in from our honeymoon. The lights were out, but even in the dark, silhouetted against the fireplace stood, stark as night, a foxtail fern, sprightly and uprightly waving in the shadow. A fern. I thought. Well, it won't make salsa. But, my wife, dropped my hand and lowered herself to the side of this fern. "Is this?" She muttered, and looked to me. "I don't know." I said. She ran a hand over the foliage and took the card from its envelope. For minutes, she kept her eyes locked on the card. When she joined me back over the threshold, she turned me to face her constellation "This fern was raised by my great-grandmother. It has lived in her house while the hammers fell on the west-bound train tracks. It lived with her while the great furnaces pumped out the Atlantic. It lived with her while the Germans forced...

I've been posting on Writer's Digest for quite some time, and occasionally there are challenges which could land a participant in the print magazine. Most recently, the challenge was to write a cinquain. So, keep your fingers crossed for me. Here are a few of my entrees: LABRYNTH I am blind, learning to walk through the pure, perfect eyes of the handless; tongues cut out their mouths. SWEET CRUSH Palms sweaty, he chanced her smile as they picked apart a cotton candy and climbed aboard the ferris wheel. ELBOW HIGH Cornfields struggled last year, the stalks drooped down to the ground, kneeling in the dust for fallen soldiers.

It's awfully tall, I said as I stared at the ladder leaning on the sun. There's no possible way I can climb up that high, and put my foot on the bottom rung. At first it was easy, my arms pulling me up. I didn't dare look down through my feet. But, the higher I went, the thinner the air, I was starting to feel pretty beat. Though my arms tired, and my legs ached, I climbed on and on and on. Forever upward, toward the sun, the ground below me was suddenly gone. Above me, so close, was a platform for rest. I sat myself down and leaned on the stars. All I could do was admire the view, and caress the Earth, Venus, and Mars. I'd finally arrived, and here I can breathe. My journey was finally complete. But when I chanced a final look up, I saw the ladder extended far above my seat. It was time to keep moving, always upward, toward the brilliantly hot sun. When this climb ends, I'll never know, but the journey belongs to everyone, a...

You can hear them in the trees, and even without a calendar, we know the pavement has just become the Styx, and the season Charon's smile. Admiring the sun from the inside, I play games with myself. Hopscotch with my tiles, tennis with my dogs, basketball with my wadded up spent imagination. But the other half has drawn my ire today. South, further south than my feet can carry, the cold wintery chill of fall has come and gone and in its place left a deep mark of envy. I cannot help but think that the mirrorme is looking into his screen, and imagining a place where the sidewalks scorch the soles of Mercury. So, sound on, devoted drones of Verano. I would rather you than Frost.

Circling, I make my way around my garden, now enshrouded in Endymion's arms. I look down on my gladiolus, eyes open and admiring, while the weathered yellow of the summer heat bleeds up into the petals. It does not complain, for what would it ask? My fingers are rough and the sun has done its job in draining away my sleep. Oh, Selene, you and I are not too far from another. Perhaps I could entreat you to ask Zeus for another favor. We are friends during this time, are we not? You can tell me your secrets while the ground's heat seeks the stone and the soil becomes a cool glove. I'll be here, listening in the garden awaiting Zeus's answer among my gladiolus.

Thanks to Writer's Digest, I have discovered another poetry form that may rival the shadorma in fun and function. It works mathematically, requiring five lines, two syllables in the first, four in the second, six in the third, eight in the fourth, and two in the last. I suppose you could loop it, using a sixth line for four syllables, the seventh for six, and so on and so forth. At any rate, it was created by Adelaide Crapsey, a turn of the century American poet. She wrote a large number of cinquains in the years preceding her death, so they typically tend to have a darker tone. However, this in one of my favorites of hers: ROMA AETERNA The sun Is warm to-day, O Romulus, and on Thine olden Palatine the birds Still sing - Adelaide Crapsey Here are mine, though they are starkly overshadowed by hers. Hoof in Mouth We can’t learn how to dance until I learn how to hol...

The first step to cultural proficiency is to look inside yourself and pinpoint your knowledge of others. There are several ways to do this, but the most effective is just to look back through your life and see how it is you were raised, what your interactions with different people were like, and how it was you moved on. Thankfully, there’s an algorithm. It’s called “the cultural autobiography.”             There are numerous cultures coexisting in ever society, even in every person. However, as faulty as this logic is, the one characteristic of culture humans have a tendency to focus on is race and ethnicity. I love using this line: “there is but one race, the human race.” I was raised in several small cities across the southwest United States. My parents always lamented the fact that we have to clarify our ethnicity on applications. They always wondered why it mattered. The same should be true in education. My mother is a teac...