Daryl provides prompt for Real Toads

I'm excited because, for this weekend's Sunday mini-challenge for Real Toads, Kerry has chosen a set of store-window photos by New Yorker Daryl Edelstein, probably my favorite big-city photographer, as prompts for our poems.

Daryl has such a great eye for composition, color, humor, pathos...and she's married to a real fun guy known as Toonman, so who could resist a combination like that?

I have some fun men and toon guys in my family, so I think I know whereof I speak. Daryl, you are fabulous! Kerry, you're pretty great, too. LOL

To see how other members and guests of the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads have responded to this prompt, click HERE.

A LOT WORSE

by Kay Davies, 2012

© Daryl Edelstein

the cowboy’s ghost

couldn’t handle the city

the noise and the lights,

the cars and the fights

(not that they didn’t have fights at home,

 but they didn’t have drive-by shootings

 and they didn’t have store-window lootings)

so he parked himself 

in sombrero and bandana

in front of a strange-looking bull

in a window full of hats

where he decided that

© Daryl Edelstein

it could be worse...

all those pretty mannequins

in micro-mini-skirts so short

it took his breath away

just to look at them all day

(not that they didn’t have girls at home,

 but they wore jeans and shirts

 and sombreros and bandanas)

the cowboy’s ghost

© Daryl Edelstein

then guarded the city,

the girls in their windows,

from his window—

oh, there were things he missed

like sawdust on the floors

and hardwood swinging doors

and coyotes singing love songs to the moon

(not that they didn’t have the moon in the city

 but if you blinked fast, you missed it

 through the skyscrapers and the lights)

and the cowboy's ghost decided death could be a lot worse