Three Versions

Sometimes Fio overflows
Sometimes she runs dry
But all in all, it evens up
By and by

Sometimes Fio overflows
Sometimes she has naught to say
Yesterday the river raged
But it's dried up today

Sometimes Fio overflows
Sometimes she goes blank
And needs vacation time
To fill her empty tank

Fiver Again

Fiorella awoke this morning with her inborn rhyming machine going full blast. Watch out, world! WordS that hiSS are Swords!
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Minnesota son is coming to town tomorrow, and Fio will dump her electronic problems in his capable hands. He not only understands the digital world, but explains it well and, most important, is patient.
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Weekends are hard for Fio because she misses her telenovelas. Yes, two of them, La Doble Vida de Estela Carrillo as well as La Piloto. OMG, she's addicted!
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Fio was born limber. Not athletic, but limber, even in her hands. Thus it amuses her, when she is in the hospital, to slip the plastic ID tag up off her wrist. (Fio is also easily amused.)
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The family is going DNA crazy. It started with nephew Barrett and his wife, who infected Fio and Husband, then moved on to Minnesota son, and now has spread to Daughter and Austin son. But, truth to tell, it's more an indulgent novelty than anything else. A person is not defined by his lineage, but what he says and does on his own..

While Fiorella is recovering from surgery, she invites you to enjoy one of her favorite poems.

 

“It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It.”

By Anthony Hecht

Tonight my children hunch

Toward their Western, and are glad   

As, with a Sunday punch,

The Good casts out the Bad.

And in their fairy tales

The warty giant and witch

Get sealed in doorless jails

And the match-girl strikes it rich.

I’ve made myself a drink.

The giant and witch are set

To bust out of the clink

When my children have gone to bed.

All frequencies are loud

With signals of despair;

In flash and morse they crowd   

The rondure of the air.

For the wicked have grown strong,   

Their numbers mock at death,   

Their cow brings forth its young,   

Their bull engendereth.

Their very fund of strength,   

Satan, bestrides the globe;

He stalks its breadth and length   

And finds out even Job.

Yet by quite other laws

My children make their case;   

Half God, half Santa Claus,   

But with my voice and face,

A hero comes to save

The poorman, beggarman, thief,   

And make the world behave   

And put an end to grief.

And that their sleep be sound   

I say this childermas

Who could not, at one time,   

Have saved them from the gas.

There's something about rhymes that lends itself to humor,  and those are the words that Fio will use to introduce a talk she is planning to put together on poetic humor, one of her fortes.

Poetic Hyperbole Revealed

Your Fio is a rhyme slut.  Anything to repeat that final accented syllable--like yesterday, when, in the last stanza of her ditty, she used "Jake," when she doesn't even know a Jake, and "birthday cake," when it isn't her birthday.  In her defense, she first wrote "chocolate cake," then realized she could squeeze out another line if she wrote "chocolate shake" so she had to find a different meaningful adjective for "cake."  "Birthday" seemed to fill the bill, it being indicative of a calorie-laden dessert and sounding just a little intriguing.

Actually, while Fiorella does not partake of any of the foods she so blithely slandered, she also would never even consider a spread like she described in the final stanza.  The stomach pump is not her idea of fun.