UU Haiku and Limerick Birthday Madness

This will take some explaining, but first I should apologize for the sparkle delay. I've been very busy, and it will take some catching up. I've got a backlog of sparkle! This sparkliness is from two weeks ago, a couple of days before Bill's birthday. Bill is one of the UU Dinner Group members that I have the good fortune of seeing approximately once each month. This group, which includes Cathy, Karen, Jan, Pat, Nancy, Lee, and occasional guest appearances from Helena, two of Lee's kids, Sue and Becky, the Hawkins's family friend Grace, and not infrequently the impish spirit of Roger, who left us at the age of 94 for adventures of a different kind, was supposed to meet only three times, but has now been going on for about 12 years! I was a late addition at almost eight years now! Most months we have themes, such as South East Asian food, foods beginning with the letter "B," things like that. This month, which also happened to fall two days before Bill's birthday, which is also happens to be Bastille Day, we had to write a haiku or a limerick about the dish that we brought.

See if you can guess what we served:

1. Appetizer:

Bread goes round and round
tasty snacks spiral inside
yum, yum, on my tongue

2. Vegetable:

There once was a bean named green
That made a very bad scene
Swimming up and down
In a boiling pot, drowned,
to surface as tasty cuisine.

3. Where's Lee's moving haiku?! Lost in the fray? Do you have a copy, Lee?

4. Main dish:

Waves churn, current flows
Water and sand surround us
Our white flesh tastes good.

(Alternate last lines:
"...upon death we swell."
"...so please eat us soon."
"...please leave us alone.")

And of the lettuce we never ate:

On our patch of earth
Lettuce grows in abundance
So grateful we are.

5. Dessert:
Red, blue, white create
From stem, grain, and cow a treat
Bliss is on the plate.

(If you haven't guessed this one, these limericks will give it away.)

Strawberries hail way back to Rome;
Shortcake often claims Europe as home.
But around eighteen-fifty,
We said they're both nifty,
And on top let's spread whipped cream like foam!

Shortcake parties are quite the tradition,
But tonight that is not quite our mission.
Happy Birthday to Bill;
He's not over the hill!
In our group he's a much loved addition.

Bill has the same birthday as France
There's a flashlight inside of his pants.
You may hear him mutter.
I need all this clutter;
He's so funny he makes us all dance!

The picture at the start of this email is what Bill looked like after the reading...
and then he pulled a flashlight out of his pants!

Since we had a couple of guests for this dinner who weren't cooking, we got the following additional haikus. (I think I'm still missing a couple, so look for future posts, which will include these.)

Peaceful, calm, quiet
Waves lapping gently to shore
Six ducks gliding by.

And here's one that sums up this dinner group experience:

Never forgotten
Good food, laughter, and support
Circle supper friends.

On one final note that shows the spirit of the dinner group, Cathy started a Choose a Caption contest for the picture above. Here are the entries:

"Oops! I wished to be old enough to drive a car but I didn't think I would get this old!"

"Oh my gosh! What have I gotten myself into???"

Bill's well past sixty
if he holds his breath this long
won't make seventy

"Oops, I think I sat on the ice cream." (Bill's very own)

Thank you to the UUs (and non-UUs) of the group for all the sparkly moments!