Category Archives: poetry

my poem, in print

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It’s been a long while since I’ve published any of my poetry. It’s been a long time since I’ve written any poetry.

Early last spring I ran across a request for submissions from the Ballard Street Poetry Journal, and I took a chance and submitted one, which was published in the current Summer 2010 issue.

I find the poetry in many journals rather inaccessible, either for reasons of language or subject. But I loved all of the poems in the Ballard Street Poetry Journal. Here’s mine, which appears on Page 21:

The Gravity of Gardens

They gave me a garden the size of a grave,
so I filled it with raucous reminders of sense:
riots of marigold, lavender, sage
rosemary, basil dianthus, rue.
And waving madly above them all
spears of brazen Jerusalem artichoke
that perplexing garden gypsy
that blossoms and burrows,
grows up to nine feet tall, and
in the harsh summer storm
dances her defiance
to the grim arrogance
of gravity.

I need to plant that garden again.

so, I won this book

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book

The book, which contains free verse and reprints of prayers and bits of prose, features lots of Corita’s collage art, which contains lots of cut-up words from ads and headlines, sometimes reconfigured, sometimes not.

The description above is from a post on the site from which I won the book — Killing the Buddha. It’s a site that I find always stimulating.

I never win anything. I mean it. I think that this is the first thing I every won. Well, I came in second in a Swing Dance contest once. Even got a trophy. Usually I don’t even make an effort to enter any kind of contest. Never play the lottery. Because I never win anything.

But this time I did. And I did because I remember the 60s. I didn’t remember Sister Corita, who created the book, published in 1967. But I did remember the Berrigan Brothers, and I remembered that Daniel Berrigan was a Jesuit.

I recently read online somewhere (can’t find it again) that the story was that Daniel Berrigan kept a photo of Sister Corita in his shower with a note that said “no one should shower alone.”

Thinking of Berrigan, I am remembering another activist ex-priest who was a good friend at one point in my life. He has grown immensely as an artist in those past 25 years, although he was good even back then. His paintings, as he is, are larger than life. I just love his new stuff.

I have been fortunate in my life to have had some closeness with some truly unique men, who have inspired me and moved on and left me with the kinds of memories that will keep me smiling someday as I retire to a rocking chair in the sun.

(And I’ve been just as fortunate to continue to have a group of close women friends whose constancy and candor, humor and heart, help to keep me smiling — well, most of the time.)

So, now I wait for my prize, a book by a creative woman, to arrive.

It’s a good day.

a poem I didn’t write but wish I had

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Lesson In A Language I Can’t Speak Yet
by Rita Gabis, from The Wild Field;Alice James Books, 1994

The jellyfish lies naked on the sand,
a circle I can see through to the bright harvest
of stones. On one side of it is white foam,
on the other black seagrass.
A gold line of sunlight circles the bay.
I don’t know how the life of a jellyfish begins,
I don’t know where its sex is,
or why the circle is its shape among
all the shapes in the world. The flesh-colored
armor of crabs dries on wet sand.
The snail retreats when I touch it.
The footprints I leave here are full of the vanished
weight of the body.
The heart of the jellyfish is clear,
I was born deaf to the sounds it makes, its cells that shine
next to the rough arms of the starfish,
the starfish that can regenerate
its severed limbs. I have entered
another country, where lost parts of myself re-form;
hatred from the same salty center as love,
desire that had been torn from me.
I have to be open to powers
I know nothing about.
Identity in small things,
the jellyfish that smells like the sea,
the sea that touches all corners of the earth at once,
holes in the sand where mussels breathe.

writngs from a workshop

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Having strayed so far from my poetic roots, I am taking a brief writing workshop based on the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. Blogging has given me plenty of practice with the first person essay; but it’s poetry where my heart is. I need some help getting my brain to follow.

The writing “prompt” for the exercise was the word “breathe.”

She does not swim –
afraid to breathe against
the weight of water, afraid
of those breathless wet depths.

But she goes to a sweat lodge
where steamy smoke rises —
thick breath steadily blinding
a clear winter sky.

She lets herself be led into the wet
dark already slick with steam
and sweat, cool water hissing,
smoking stones.

Thoughtless with dread
she stumbles out into the cold,
blinded by water and smoke
and a clutch of fear that sends
breath into memory:

— a child’s cry for breath stunted by fever
lungs rattling beneath a tent of steam
thick as smoke, heavy as a depth of sea.

Well, its a start.

toe dipping

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I finally have begun dipping a couple of toes into the waters of life — at least the waters that are not to deep, since I can’t swim.

I have sent poems in to two contests being held by regional poetry reviews. They are old poems, but they might be good enough.

I have enrolled in a four-week poetry workshop based on the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. It’s a start.

I took my first water aerobics class today — just the thing for elder women, and there are a bunch of us. My plan is to go twice a week.

It’s a start — at loosening up my social skills, my once writing talent, and my tight back muscles.

It’s just too easy to just hang around here and be entertained by my 7 year old grandson. Here’s what I mean.

I need to create the life I want to have at 70 (which is only 7 months away). It’s a start. And it’s about time.

as above, so below

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Early in my marriage, I tried to grow some house plants and they all died. My once-husband used to say that I could kill plastic plants.

I grew up in a city-space house devoid of greenery. What did I know.

Later, when my own nuclear family moved into a house on a rural hillside, I started a garden. About the same time, I joined a writers workshop. Things started to grow, inside and out.

Today, the jade plant I’ve been nurturing for years is on its last leggy legs. Even the ivy in the hanging planter is drying up. My garden outdoors is wilting. This blog hasn’t been faring much better.

And so I’m on a quest for a Fall writer’s workshop. I need to get that green thumb moving, need some seeds, fertilizer. Need to stir that dirt, above and below.