Hello to my legion of fans, (Hello Lester!)

I have not published in many months. I have lost the urge to toss my personal life out into the public domain and I am not perfectly sure why I was so drawn to it in the first place. It’s brave and sort of crazy and maybe that defines exactly why I did it.

I still believe that an honest analysis of one’s personal terrain can be useful to others who are likely to be sharing your experiences.  I do believe that the more we share the less we judge. And of course I did enjoy hearing from the occasional reader and connecting to other writers.  But I began to feel like it was the easy way out and challenged myself to write a novel.

Therein followed a large silence, a deafening roar of nothingness. I made the same mistake I have made all my life in which I overwhelm myself with high expectations. But I was not inactive in my painful attempt to write a novel; I have actually written 60,000 words but they are 60,000 words that need a whole lot more of work.

At the same time we were going through ‘life’; teens growing up, illnesses and deaths, family stress, debt. The usual ‘first world’ stuff that is surprisingly painful.  At the same time I was trying to build a career out of  thin air.  I was working hard at my job and putting in many hours in my position on the board of a beautiful but struggling Nature Centre. I spent too many hours on the computer and it became a place of work not pleasure or creativity.

In order to repair to a happy place I began to write poems in bed.  And my tiny but delightful writer’s group kept me going and even encouraged me to read my work at a local writer’s gathering.  So I will post a small poem or two.

Home Wife

 

I got strung out

Like laundry whipped and tangled

By a strong wind

 

I got wrung out

twisted and worn

Like clothes in an old washer

 

I was wiped out

By a stinking kitchen cloth

Smelling like mold

 

I wanted to mellow out

Like butter on a counter

 

I needed to rest

Like a roast right out of the oven

 

I sat and steeped, like a good cup of tea

My pen dunking into fresh thoughts

 

Warm water and sugar make tiny eggs of yeast come to life.

Just as words and poetry make my spirits rise.

 

Still Womb

 

A ceramic bowl, cream coloured and cracked,

Hip bones rising from white flesh,

Delicate handles circling the empty womb.

Dimpled, silent vessel.

 

It is a still pool that once whispered life

Gurgled with bubbles, babies and blood,

Now no signs of the cycles of pain, hard labour.

Sown seeds swelling.

 

Her shroud was my raw silk gown,

Her head thrown back as if in throes of ecstasy,

Eyebrows lifted as if about to speak.

Cold, still, removed.

 

A curve of a rib emerges from the dune of the bed,

I will brush the dust off the bleached bone

And reveal the story of her life,

Porous, shifting, mythology.