Well howdy there, Web surfers. No saving the world today; I’m merely pasting in old stuff from rapid-write Free Fall Fridays.
Writing Prompt dwellers
One of my joys in life is being a prairie dweller. Do you know what that means? In the winter, long underwear is sexy. In the summer, a back pack serves to enable the layered look, for you need it. Spring and Fall? There is none. Ok, maybe a very swift week of falling autumn. Then autumn is prostrate, and it’s winter.
Yes, T-shirts to frost warnings in one weekend.
I dwell in a land where distance is measured not in miles but in time. My favourite comic book store is three hours away. Here the grass is yellow, except when it’s green, then back to normal yellow again. My ambition is to hit the coulees and wadis when the grass there is green, but I never seem to get around to it: Too busy, too puritan, here in the prairie bible belt.
… …
prompt- activist
The trouble with the 2,000’s was that being an activist was no longer so blindly cool. Back in the 1960’s, thought Mark, no one would have called him ‘Megaphone Mark.’ But now, people knew that he was an activist partly to get attention.
“Okay,” he told his study group, “so yes, I’ll be the one on the rock with the megaphone, but you guys could be a Greek chorus. You could wear togas. He looked right at Candy and Marilyn. “And you can wear very short togas.”
Candy squealed, and Marilyn looked at him over her librarian glasses.
Tom spoke up (Don’t call me Tommy) “We need placards.”
“Great!” Said Mark, “I’m delegating you to get at it.”
Tom said, “Uh, what?” (Don’t call me Thomas)
Mark said hurriedly, “Think of it as an initiative-leadership thingy, I’ll leave the details to you.”
Then louder, panning over the group, “We have to tell people to save the wetlands! It’s important! We can’t let the campus-capitalist-administration drain that swamp!”
Candy said, “Oh, those poor ducklings.”
Marilyn said, “Exactly. We need to personalize a duck, as a symbol, to rally around.”
Candy said, “Uh—“
Marilyn continued, “What would be a good name, Candy, for us to call our duck?”
“Ariel! A duck named Ariel.”
Tom frowned, Mark smiled, and other students walked the grass oblivious.
… …
Prompt- eulogy
A duck, named Ariel.
She lived like a duck ought to, splashing innocently in the water,
Or as our professor emeritus, Simon Tinsdale, put it,
“A little white duck, swimming in the water, doing what she oughter”
But she was not white, not for her the green neck of a mallard; no, her place was to be a modest brown and black and yes, white too, as a duck of diversity. A fine credit to our campus, and let us say it again, “a duck of diversity.”
Her name was Ariel, and she stood for all of us who just want to be left alone to float our boat, paddle our canoe, or rest upon still waters.
Such a modest duck. She never sought to be dean of the campus, or famous among multitudes. She just wanted the dean, and the multitudes, to leave her alone.
She had a life, a good life for a duck. Her call was a simple homey quack. Not a loud bark, or scary roar, or frustrating squeal. Just a simple quack.
She brightened a lot of lives with her quack.
I, for one, will forget many things about my years on campus. But I hope I never forget a duck named Ariel.
… …
Two Prompts: word: twenty bucks, and genre: science fiction
I think that I shall never see,
A man as hard working as a bee
Indeed, if I’m not given money,
I’ll have to work for my honey
Under an indigo sky is the Ares Spaceport
In the distance the hives of the Strath
If I don’t get money from old man Gort
I won’t even have coins to take a bath
I walked to the great hive, and held out my phone
‘I have a new app, is anybody home?’
Workers brushed past, but finally there stopped—a drone
‘Buy my app,’ I said, ‘it’ll make you buzz and moan’
‘Humans speak with sour nectar,’ he glared, ‘is your name Hector?
‘I am not he, I will not steal, not from you, do we have a deal?’
In the indigo sky a sled went by, howling
I was desperate, stomach growling
The drone glared, but ran black fingers over my screen
He like the deal, it seemed like a dream
Now I have twenty dollars, my heart’s in a whirl
Back to the spaceport, to see my girl
On a day with such nice weather,
I have the cash, we’ll bath together
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
In the prairie city of Calgary
May
2025
Blog note: Some one noted that on our Free Fall blog, where the names are at the bottom of each piece, she could always tell if she was reading a piece by Sean.
Ain’t that nice to hear? It means I have achieved my very own “writer’s voice.”
