Today the time divides equally, half & half, which is what I like in my tea with a little sugar. It has a deeper flavor than milk, and autumn a deeper flavor than spring, since it brings to mind a returning time, reaching down and in, a time for calling everything back to enjoy the goodness of a new harvest under golden lamplight.
Except today is too hot for tea, unless it’s iced, and nobody puts cream in that anyway.
So I’ll divide my time between the pleasant now and a future full of golden promise, and I will wait.
Happy autumn, friends! I am hoping to kick off this new season with a renewed habit of sharing my poetry with you here. Thank you for reading! Who else is excited about fall?
I like noisy words ones with lots of consonants and sharp edges words like the prickly things that grow in the West Texas desert sharp, but also sweet and pleasing as those pastel desert sunsets that bring relief to the eyes and the body
And I like rounder words more temperate foothills as opposed to craggy mountain peaks words that roll like knuckles over the black keys of a piano words that rumble like a hot dump truck driving through the heaven of a spring sky colliding and ricocheting off its cooler cousins filling a soft evening with the deep drums of impending chaos and exploding pinpricks of blinding light
Phew, it’s been a minute! I’ve been writing every day, just not sharing. . . . for May I’ve kept a sort of poetry diary, writing daily about whatever happens to be going on. Guess what: we’ve had a lot of storms. Thanks for reading!
How He looked from the shadows where I had temporarily forgotten Him where He was stashed like an old toy recently become embarrassing and shoved under the bed
I turned my face away and then I turned more when the shame hit me full force in a hurricane of regret
But the Lord turned, and looked, and how that look turned me inside out
It took no time at all it took no time and even less thought a tiny moment, it took a toll the words steamrolled but I didn’t know it in the moment until I met His gaze
An ekphrastic poem for Holy Week based on the painting at the top. Thank you for reading!
I never promised you a rose garden. Or maybe I did, in a wild moment. I beg your pardon.
In a moment of wine drunk abandon, idealism rising to foment: perhaps I promised you a rose garden.
There are blossoms where thorns harden around my green-thumbed attempts: they too beg pardon.
Broken shovels and rakes also burden a space ripe with weeds’ intent. I never promised it would be a rose garden.
And my broken nails, caked with pollen and soil testify to my lament: I beg your pardon.
Some people make it look easy, this bargain with hard work and time. All efforts spent, I failed to achieve a rose garden, and for that I beg your pardon.
This NaPoWriMo prompt had to do with song lyrics and a villanelle. Thank you for reading!
On sand and grace the color of rainy day brine where sand meets grace and castles crumble at a pace only outmatched by ticking time wet grit beneath calcified fine tuning: weeds, shell: drab grace
Two Pink Shells / Pink Shell, 1937
Twinning sweetly blooming like a hidden opal sitting sweetly on the tongue with summer’s peachy mornings, taste a swell of hopeful growth, of pearls and other baubles sitting sweetly
Pelvis IV, 1944
unlikely eye sees the moon in perfect blueness (unlikely) I imagine curves bleached by the sky the sun relentless in trueness to itself: heat and light the best all-seeing eye
These 3 poems are ekphrastic responses to 3 paintings by Georgia O’Keefe – the paintings have the same titles as the poems and can be searched for here.
partial poem / work in progress | iphone photo by author
I wish I could float (with the clouds)
not so much with but above not so much the earth but my expectations leaving them below like unrecognizable neighborhoods from an airplane window a float full of nothing but airy vacancy light as a unicorn on the surface of a swimming pool clouds shining in the reflection like stolid trees on the façade of a mountain lake
This poem is in response to a prompt from my friend and fellow poet Kimberly McAfee (who has a new book! here’s a link to it, and to her instagram). She has a whole list of prompts for the month of September.
It fits in with something that Kirsten Miles of Tupelo Press (Kirsten organizes the 30/30 Program and leads the craft talks, etc) posted in our private August 30/30 Facebook page the other day. I don’t know the origin of this meme, so I’m pasting a screen shot of it below with where Kirsten shared it from.
I feel like this popped into my awareness at exactly the right time, because I have been struggling a lot this past week with the usual misery that crops up in me at near-regular intervals. I’m talking about the kind of misery where I look at social media, or a book, and it dawns on me why I get rejection letters. Suddenly it will hit home how far behind I am from where I would (secretly or not) like to be. I feel crushingly less-than. I wallow in my inadequacy and tear myself down. (I realize this is not a good thing to do, but if I can figure out exactly how to break this cycle forever I will let you know.)
Sometimes social media DOES feel like a competition, though. I look at the posts of more “successful” people and have the uncomfortable sensation that I am involved in a wrestling match I didn’t sign up for. Competition makes me unhappy (this is why I quit gymnastics when I was 12), even competition with myself, but at least that kind can feel productive. I know I’ll never catch up to the people with 10k followers and paychecks from their art. More than likely I wouldn’t like it if I was in that boat anyway, but it sure looks inviting from the bank where all the little people like me stand.
But maybe “making it” isn’t the point.
It IS all so subjective.
How do you “make it,” anyway?
Maybe – definitely – I’m right where I’m supposed to be. For now. Or for good.
What matters is the connections.
Sometimes I will share something on my photography website and manage to reach people in a way where I get replies, people saying “yes! I am feeling this way, too!” When that happens, I know it’s good to keep going. One tiny connection with one person, and I know why I keep at it.
Thanks for being here, readers. Let’s not compete, let’s just create.
photo by author (canon digital, lensbaby burnside 35 lens)
as the archer, you point arrows, fulfilling some sacred oath elastic and flying, half-transcendental, seeking mending from thistledown, they bloom brighter than merciless skies finding the line in the sand while seashells bleach and the 150 year old banyan tree tells how to withdraw a sword from a backyard stone
This poem is a Cento, made from the work of the other poets that participated in the August 30/30 Project with me for Tupelo Press. A centois a poem created with lines written by other people. The link on the word “cento” will explain it better!
I was blown away by the work that my fellow writers shared this month. Honestly, it made me feel like I didn’t belong in the project – I was so impressed that I felt ridiculous being among them. Please, if you get a chance, scroll through and read some of their poems
Today, Lucie Chou published a cento for the group on the Tupelo Press site. You can read it at the link above, but here is a screenshot of it also:
This is our official cento for the project; she composed it from lines we all selected and sent to her.Because I initially misunderstood the instructions, I wrote my own cento that I sent in, thinking for some weird reason that she was going to make a cento out of our centos. Inception! So I had this piece already ready and I figured I may as well share it with y’all here.
It’s a satisfying relief to have completed the month-long project! It was a good experience, and I would recommend it. The hardest part was the fundraising, but if I – who suffer acutely from imposter syndrome and want to hide instead when it comes to asking people for money – if I can do it, you can too! Tupelo Press graciously provided us with weekly “craft talks” that were like mini workshop sessions, so there’s a lot more to it than you might think.
I’m grateful to Tupelo Press for their choosing to include me in this project, and for their support through the process. I am grateful also to everyone out there who read along, shared my poems, and donated to the fundraiser. THANK YOU!
Caprock Canyon State Park, TX | polaroid photo by author
there’s something sacred about a canyon how the land gave way to river power water’s carrying works will never be done
some majesty gets measured by the ton lips that graze are busy every hour in their bones they understand the canyon
acknowledging sacredness in action where rainfall meets land, and time empowers the water to carve and never be done
geology gathers runnels, functions godlike to determine weather’s dour realty, while the sacred canyon
goes on, sheltering the new herded spawn whose old roaming gave way to manpower restoration work will never be done
at least someone is trying. wisdom runs down hill, delicate as prairie flowers in the sacredness of the canyon apologize to the land and be done
This is the villanelle version of a prose poem that I published today on Tupelo Press’ website for the 30/30 project. It was a hard decision which one to send them: this, or the prose version. You can read it here:
The Poetry Patio 