An Angel When You Least Expect One

Published August 20, 2018 by Nan Mykel

It was going to be a big day in more ways than one. My daughter was going to take my granddaughter to the small southern Quaker college she had been accepted to. Oh, there was the usual problem of scraping up the last few pennies for tuition, but that morning my daughter tried to start her car and discovered she needed a new battery. That required a little later start.

Then, in the middle of the night they had to pull off the highway with what turned out to be a flat tire. It was pitch black, although crickets could be heard singing in the forrest. One car passed and didn’t slow down. Several minutes later the same car appeared, and pulled over. It was the angel, on her way to her house 10 minutes away. Sizing up the situation (my granddaughter probably in tears), the angel phoned her husband who was fast asleep in bed.

I guess two angels were involved, not one, since he arrived without complaint and changed the tire. My crew arrived at their motel at 4 a.m., but in time for the next day’s college entry.

Oh for Snow!

Published August 12, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Hi ho hi ho

I’m an old Eskimo.

Sleepy after sleeping

Down words a-bleeping.

Shades of hell in New Mex

Like the rest of the text

Life in the heat with fires

hidden life behind tires

Wha’ happened to pretty

thoughts in the ditty?

If things get much worse

I may have to curse

and go back to bed,

c-pap on my head.

That New Conspiracy Theory: the answer?

Published August 4, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Could Q be Putin?

Nan

In the Neighborhood of Verse

Published August 3, 2018 by Nan Mykel

EARLY MORNING AWAKENING

It was 6:09 when I crept from bed.

Queen sheets often trip me but

I made it up and out of my room

to safety. I read too much I’ll grant

you that. You’d best quit reading this.

I’d seen a squib abut copperheads

in a closet nest, and I’d just read

about more than a hundred species

of arthropods found in the average

home, listed for our pleasure surely:

a few spiders, millipedes, booklice,

silverfish, ants, midges, flies, rolypolys…

They didn’t count bedbugs because

too few—and of course the R word.

They weren’t counting snakes.

Back to me: I heard a click near my

ear. Or was that a rattle? A presence

beside me in my bed! Remember I’m

just waking up, emerging from dreams

to this!* — Nan

*Although a house can feel empty when you’re the only one home, it isn’t really. A typical human household includes roughly 100 species of insects, spiders and other arthropods just milling around at the edges of the room, eating little bits of hair and dead insects. Rather than reaching for the bug spray, people should be excited that they live alongside so many other species ….Get to know your bug bunkmates, higher occurrence in more affluent homes. (Compilation of wisdom from Google).

See articles from Atlantic, Mother Nature Network, N.C. State News, Time, Chicago Tribune and especially https://peerj.com/articles/1582/ (for a table of the bugs found).