Dropping Stereotypes

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

When you take in what you are viewing
You may find your thoughts have been skewing
The picture that’s true.
Now it’s time for you
To change; it’s time for renewing!

What stereotypes can you clear
For broader appreciation of where you are?

Island stereotypes I didn’t realize I had:

Round
Green
Flowers
Calm.

Discard Calm today.
Wind roiling water,
Blowing sheets of sand across beach
Like snow during a Wyoming ground blizzard.

Not Round.
Long thin island allows
View of Gulf on one side,
Bay on the other.

Highway in the middle has become
My favorite bike route.
North.   Park Road 100,
Low traffic, wide shoulders, flat,
Straight.

Flanked by sand dunes,
Visual is like biking through desert.
Sand and sand.

Twice I’ve encountered signs for
“Road Work Ahead.”
BIG machines scooping away sand drifts.

Not Green.
Palm trees, planted with early development,
Provide their Crown-of-Green.
Vacation home lawns add urban-green.
Vegetation on dunes mostly scraggly brown now.
Makes me think of sagebrush plains.

Flowers.
Maybe at another time of year.
Now, February, I see a few single blossoms
Next to some building.

I’ve dropped some stereotypes.
Didn’t even realize I had them.
Allows for a broader appreciation of
Today, this moment!

Hugs,
Lin