Here’s a bit of trivia from my life: Exactly 22 years ago today, on another Friday the 13th, I ran a fabric rotary cutter over my left forefinger and removed a good chunk of it, necessitating a ride to the hospital in an ambulance.
This form of transport was over the top, yes, for this injury, but I was home alone, I couldn’t drive myself, there was a lot of blood, I couldn’t raise any of the neighbors to take me, there was lot of blood, and I was scared. Every year on this date I am grateful for the guys on the ambulance who calmed me down and got me to stop sobbing and waving my dishtowel-clad hand around.
My finger healed fine, though it’s still smaller than it originally set out to be when it embarked on life as part of my left hand.
In case you are wondering what happened to my rotary cutter, it went in the trash as soon as I came home from the emergency room. Once a cutting tool has tasted blood, it does not go back.
And on this day, November 13, I do not handle knives, scissors, or other sharp instruments. No. I just don’t.
*******
Today, this November 13, nothing so bad is happening (crossing fingers, no pun intended, I don’t want to tempt fate since there is more of the day to come). All I can report is a rainy November morning, lots of leaves on the ground.
That’s good.
Let’s get to poetry. All week I have been working on haiku inspired by five word phrases I’ve picked up here and there. I really enjoy the immediate image or tiny story that comes to me when I read the phrase – and then the challenge is to express it in 17 syllables total, the five I start with and the 12 I can pluck from the air.
The phrase here was “A hundred more times”.
2.
A hundred more times
she wore the dress. And each time
it was wrong for her.
The phrase here was “burliest gazelle”.
5.
in any size crowd
there’s the burliest gazelle
the skinniest pig
The phrase here was “diary orbits”.
6.
diary orbits
circles of daily routines
written in pencil
The phrase here was “twentieth teapot”.
7.
twentieth teapot
the oceans of strong black tea
you do drink each day
And this one, “chalky quarter moon”.
8.
chalky quarter moon
scrawls out white shadowy clouds
on night’s clean blackboard
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
I love the strong visuals in the moon poem and the amusing contrast of “burliest gazelle” and “skinniest pig”. Those could be characters in a children’s book. Number 7 feels directed at me to the extent that it could be an accusation. Ha ha! Pandemic Autumn has me drinking ludicrous quantities of tea.
I think you could get the kids in your class to make up the gazelle/pig story. It just goes to show that even if we are in groups, we have things in common with people in other groups (tell our politicians, ugh, not going there). Tea. I drink a lot of iced tea. Not hot. But I like the idea of hot tea.
I like that moon. (K)
Yes. I find these days I am looking for the moon/ thinking about the moon – sort of a reassurance kind of thing, I guess. That my feet are still planted here on the earth!
Its a good companion I think. Dependable.
The rotary cutter deserved the trash…Tonight I marvelled at the phrases you had collected as well as how you haiku-ed them (probably always worthy of note but after drinking an ice tea my full attention was there). There is something about the poem about the dress worn over and over but not really fitting that strikes a chord…the kind of denial I am trying to steer away from.
Yes, me too. I think that is exactly where the dress haiku came from, in that I am currently in the process of doing a basement redo project, simple things like paint, instead of telling myself the basement fits like it is, why bother? I add this to the list of assumptions that I have exploded over the past year. Turmoil will certainly do that for you.