Faces

Kiki Hiding Her Face

I put the flower in a cup of water so it will not wilt. The cat puts her face in it as well. She wonders what that flower is doing here. The flower isn’t doing anything. It would have preferred to remain where it had been attached to its true source of nourishment and understanding, its roots. They miss each other.

Birds sit on a railing watching me approach. They aren’t struggling to survive. Survival is not that hard. They are not afraid I will pick one of them and put it in a cup of water so it will not wilt. I have no crumbs for them. They don’t mind.

SUMMER FLOWERS CUT
KIKI DRINKS BLOSSOM WATER
BIRDS WATCH AS I WALK.

Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Toni is hosting on any topic.  Come join us to write a haibun.
Photos: “Kiki Hiding Her Face” and “Birds on Boardwalk”, below, both by the author. These are linked to K’lee and Dale‘s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme “faces”. My cat Kiki’s face is hidden.  The birds don’t mind showing their faces anywhere.

Birds on Boardwalk

Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

64 thoughts on “Faces”

  5. I love Kiki! I had a cat years ago who would not sip the blossom water – he chose instead to eat the rose! I bought a bouquet of roses once for Mama for Mother’s Day and left them in the vase on the kitchen table. The next day, nothing but stems were in evidence with bits of rose about on the table. I love the humor in this piece Frank.

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    1. Thanks, Toni! And thanks for hosting today. Kiki sometimes chews on leaves of plants, but she prefers the food we put in her bowl. I was aiming for humor with a bit of melancholy for the cut flower.

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    1. Thanks, Jane! I’ve learnt recently that plants are more intelligent than we realize but their equivalent features to our organs are more spread out all over them and so when one cuts the grass, it grows back. We aren’t as versatile, but we do have mobility and more individuality.

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      1. Historically, we have always assumed that because we are ‘intelligent’ we are better than other animals, and what nature hasn’t given us (everything except brains) we can create with our superior intelligence. Our superior intelligence has certainly made us the most destructive of all creatures, and we’ve used our creativity to do what? Make clothes and homes because otherwise we’d die of exposure, wheels and wings because animals can naturally run faster, further than we can, or fly. What exactly do we add to the sum of creation?

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        1. I think plants are 99.5% to 99.9% of the biomass on the planet depending on who’s estimating. Do we have to add anything to the sum of creation outside of being here? One possibility is we kill ourselves off. Another possibility is we continue for hundreds of millions of years, maybe billions, until the Sun burns out, as a climax species bossing all the other species around. That should give us time to figure it out. Basically, I don’t know. 🙂

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          1. We’re already there, have been for years. I’m hoping that coming out of it will make people feel they can afford to be generous, pay more for ‘green’ goods. At the moment, people buy what’s cheap regardless of where it comes from, and meat is cheaper than fruit and fresh vegetables.

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        3. Based on the US market the hard part of the recession is still in the future although some claim it started in 2000 or even 1965 when social mood began to go negative. Some people I read are marking off Elliott Wave spirals to anticipate when the market peak will occur. It seems to me like a kind of scientific prediction with intuitive guesswork. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if patterns of living haven’t changed, the effects of a coming or present recession have not been experienced.

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  9. I love the bit about the cat and the accompanying photo, Frank! My husband brings a glass of water to bed every night and used to wonder how he drank so much of it in his sleep… until he discovered Mojo drinking it! He puts a coaster on top now. 🙂

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  12. Wow, you’ve got a regular farm there, Frank. Cats get into everything imaginable. It used to be a way to tell if we had left anything out that needed to be put away. Did she let the flower alone? Love the haiku, it’s like a word picture of the story

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    1. I made the haiku cover the prose part. Perhaps that was not correct. The cat didn’t bother the flower. She just wanted the water, but she has plenty of water. I even let her drink from a faucet with my hand catching the water to make it easy for her if she wants to do that. The birds don’t really belong to me. Thanks, Walter!

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    1. Plants recover easily from cutting unlike animals. It sometimes strengthens them although they may “miss” the part that was cut, but I don’t know how someone would test that speculation. I added it in thinking they might be like us in some ways. They may also be glad we pick them since it makes them valuable to us and then we keep planting them. Thanks, Victoria!

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  17. Love this tale you’ve told in your haibun, Frank. Especially LOVE the photo of the cat! 🙂 Perhaps she just wanted to “smell the roses” — even though it’s not a rose! 🙂

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    1. It wasn’t a rose. I don’t know what the flower was. I liked what the cat did as well. At the time, I wondered if she would be able to get her head out of the cup. Thanks, Lillian!

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  20. What a sweet kitty with her head in the cup. That is some perfect timing. Love it when that happens. I like the use of ‘blossom water’ in your haiku. The birds really do seem unconcerned, just doing their thing.

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  23. Perspective of
    cats birds
    flowers
    and
    being human
    human being
    an estranged
    bed and gal fellow
    from A reality NoW
    oF
    living
    just living
    without worries
    from living living..:)

    Haha.. back in the
    stress infused
    Dead zone
    days long ago..
    the Sister-in-law
    says then wouldn’t it
    be lovely to be your cat
    all sprawled out on the
    kitchen table.. ha.. i am thaT
    cat.. now..
    but she
    failed
    to
    see him play
    dance and sing..;)

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  24. Pingback: Faces – DAZZLED

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