get listed for February: Absent

Abandoned, near Barker's Dam, Joshua Tree National Park

Been traveling.

In the last month I've flipped the page to 50, and travelled (were I a crow) over 10,500 miles, successively: home, Miami (work), home, Tucson and Palm Springs (friends), home, New Orleans (work), home, and Joshua Tree (son's 16th birthday). Now home for another 5 weeks, before Atlanta calls (work).

King of Smores. Age 16.

Hence, radio silence.

Met some interesting folk along the way, got stuck in Houston when United Airlines blah blah blah, saw some very cool rocks, gained 10 pounds (have you had a beignet?), sat in the desert to utter, utter quiet, when one can hear blood pumping, birds mutually sing from across a mesa, and wonder where the background hum of vehicular traffic went and how we ever let the skies lighten to blank the stars and cars dampen birdsong and roads be built to cross the desert - ironic, since that's how I got there.

(By the by - if it's on your bucket list, get to Joshua Tree National Park sooner rather than later. Climate change and decreasing rainfall spell a grim future; current estimates are that the park will be barren of its namesake by mid-century - extinct by drought. Of course, Miami and Nola might well be under water by then, too. Pack light; it's warm there.)

So, this is breakfast in Houston.

Beignets. At NOLA airport!

Saw the Ganymede moons floating near Jupiter magnified 280x through a telescope at an observatory outside 29 Palms; flying beads from a float in the French Quarter; geodes 3 meters tall at the Tucson gem show; dancing girls at a street restaurant in South Beach; but not my own bed on a Saturday night for a month, and I'm glad that's where I'll be this weekend.

If it were anywhere but New Orleans, this would be creepy.

Did I mention dinosaurs? Hwy 62.

Campsite 101, Hidden Cove, Joshua Tree

This month's get listed word choices arose from pondering while sitting in a flying bus at 35,000 feet. I got to thinking how close yet how far some words are, and started thinking of pairs that share a root, as it were, but not necessarily a sense. So not tense/intense, which are closely related, but... well, these:

miss / remiss
deem / redeem
wager / dowager
pulse / repulse
file / defile
peat / repeat
sent / absent

Your challenge is to select at least 2 of these pairs - or come up with a pair of pairs of your own, words that share common spelling but not common meaning - and weave them into a *new* poem, however you please.

As a reminder, please post the link directly to your pen (and not just to your blog page) in Mr. Linky below, and then revisit often in the coming days to read (and hopefully comment on) your fellow poets' work.

I'll be around later in the week; if it takes a bit to compose your piece, feel free to link up to The Tuesday Platform next week.

Looking forward to rejoining the garden, for a bit. Thanks for coming by.

~ M

Babyface Nelson, the Hotel Congress, Tucson

(note - all images copyright 2015 by author)