Hannah

This is a poem I wrote in the Fall of 1994, after walking my daughter to the bus stop. She was 14, her brother and sister were out of high school, out of college, and she was at home with me, the two of at the mouth of Limbaugh Canyon in Palmer Lake, Colorado. Walking down the hill in the October dawn you stoop to fix a shoe brown braids heavy, heavy on milkwhite shoulders. I pretend not to ache with love for you. I walk into the cold-burning dawn as fire hits Sundance Mountain and I hear the schoolbus pull away. In the brief flash of brakelights you are gone.

Untitled requiem for E -

I remember when you wove beauty from the sky in purple hues and bands of green and gold A woman of passion and fire, who painted the Sangres, who drank deeply from mountain streams. I long to see you take up your brushes and your loom once again, old friend. The West has become a faded memory behind your eyes. Banked fires hold the heat of youth, of memory and desire… You live now among green hills and fields unbroken by time Driftless in a cocoon of memory; mute, with tales untold.

I write -

This week's prompt was "I write," prompting musings on process, on why we write - reminds me of the Shaker hymn "I Sing Because I'm Happy," or at least that's the title I like. So the following was the result of that - writing is a solitary pursuit, and the irony is that the group has motivated us all to write more, to write better, to write as a social pursuit - even in these anti-social times. I write sporadically, sometimes reluctantly, in the spaces between mundane chores and restlessness, fueled by wine and a stubborn resistance to anything that I should be doing. I find the computer more satisfying that my old typewriter and rarely write by hand – do we now key instead of type? I can’t keep up… But I digress. Publication – I wrote a monthly newspaper column of a nostalgic bent a few years ago promoting a year-long celebration of my hometown’s sesquicentennial, and subsequently wrote and edited a history book – you find that many folk have a storytelling talent – raconteurs who are modest about their diaries and recount charming family histories, whispers of the past in sepia and sentiment. Self-publication was less satisfying in some ways. My son and I put together a small volume of poetry with selected drawings and photos…I felt self conscious about the enterprise. An old-fashioned sort of modesty regarding blowing one’s own horn, I suppose… I used to blog, selected an arcane term for the title of the blog and no one read it, of course. It’s still out there – Zwischeraum – it means a space between the wall and an outer wall, originally an architectural term – I have no idea where I found this word. And I altered the spelling. I know that my writing buddies will look up this word and find that it should be Zwischenraum The blog can still be found at http://cosmicalice.blogspot.com/ and this group may spur me to resurrect it. I miss writing during my dry spells, but don’t do it anyway, some perversity that causes me to rebel against myself. NaNoWriMo got me started on longer pieces: besides “Strays,” I have two nascent novels: “Lead Astray”, a struggling murder mystery that won’t take shape, and a memoir of my marriage entitled “The Sky in August,” a recounting for my children, who didn’t get a chance to know their father as I knew him. “Lead Astray” involves a lead mine, thus the spelling. Shameless punning. There you have it, my friends. And I do consider you valued friends.

Another Fall Writing Prompt

two years later, and ...tah dah! another writing prompt on Fall.  This one elicited a poem that I'm honing:

Evensong graces the autumn night

tree frogs and locusts pulse, slowly now

as the Harvest Moon rises over the

eastern hillside, full of itself.

Cornstalks whisper their dry secrets as owls

whooo-hoo across the river bottom.

The breeze carries news of the fall, the aroma

of decaying leaves permeates

the night.  Great cottonwoods drop

softly their golden attire

onto the

patient

earth. 

Fall

recently attended our local writers' group and the prompt was "fall:"  verb, noun season, whatever.
We had 20 minutes - and being the consummate cradle Catholic:

Falling from grace, again.  No number of confessions, aloud or to an unknown god or goddess seemed to purge my soul.  How many times can you be sorry, seek absolution - to reach redemption?  And how many times will you utter "Never again?"  Well, one more, I suppposed, as I pulled the wool knit watch cap lower on my brown  The raw November wind was blowing out of the east, a sure sign of a storm brewing.  A light mist freshened and I turned my face to it, relishing its cleansing touch.  Baptism, I thought, idly.  Maybe that works full spectrum.  Once as an innocent, then rinse and repeat  as needed.  I looked out over the dark creek: not a ripple, even where I'd tossed my burden, my nemesis.  I almost wished I could feel more remorse, see some rent in the smooth surface, some outward sign, a stigmata of sorts.  Not that I didn't have my regrets.  I always did, now, didn't I?  This is the last time, I vowed.  The last time I look into the darkness and recall my latest transgression.  I'd really let things too far this time.  Further than ever, and further than I could afford.  What price, really, had I paid, what bottomless account had not yet been bankrupted?  Tattered gray clouds shrouded the quarter moon.  A new moon would have been perfect.  I resented the silver shafts of moonlight like bony fingers shining on the water's surface, accusing me.  I used to take months, once a year, to reach the ugly emotional escarpment driving my precipitous fall.  My necessary evil.  Basta! I exclaimed, recalling my old Sicilian aunts.  Basta - enough!

This is the end of it.  I pulled my shawl closer, threw the leather gloves in the scrub along the creek and pulled on a pair of fleece-lined mittens.  There's something so innocent and childlike about mittens, something comforting.  The mist turned into light rain as I hiked back to the truck.

Submission

So, submission, submittal - I have finally submitted (at least I'm sure of the verb form) poetry to a journal - last minute, of course, having given myself an entirely arbitrary deadline.  The journal is "Aberrant Labyrinth," and I offered for consideration "Memento Mori" and a rewrite of "November's" ghost-eyed dog, an image I particularly like.  The journal is an eclectic, irreverent and dark publication...you may read it online, of course.

Following is the rewrite of "November:"

             a ghost-eyed dog
             trots across a field
             lately crew-cut of its corn
             brown stubble
             and rich clay
             expose the bones
             of the earth

             bones of the earth
             waiting in silence
             for another harvest