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Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Paris: A Tuesday List

Writer friend Lynn Fisher (her blog:  On and Off the Page) refers to 'the Tuesday list' and I find myself forming one as I read hers, a brief one coupled with a picture of her visit to Paris...which fuel
a list of my own Paris memories:

Paris...a list...hot chocolate that was just that, retro restaurant with heavy red velvet curtains, sidewalk bistro, large train station with pay toilets and no coins, walking a mere fraction of the louvre, hot August day at Versaille, Mona Lisa, train to Normandy, peering up through the legs of the Eiffel Tower, night barge on the Seine, streetside art kiosks, non-English-speaking airport, marrow bone appetizer, meditated in and on the structure that is Notre Dame, sated rainspout/gargoyles brooding over the city, bought a marionette...

I think I'll share this Tuesday/list thing on my blog too :-).  Thanks for the idea, Lynn,

Saturday, November 17, 2012

November 17, 2012

After reading only a few pages of Mark Doty's Still Life With Oysters and Lemon, it's already as though my vision has been equipped with a wide-angle lens.

On my way back from Northwords Writers group this morning, I think of a revision for my poem we'vs just discussed.  Pulling the car into the first public parking place on my way, I reach for paper and pen, and begin to write, only to glance up and notice a tree, park, and river setting more picturesque than I might have expected.  Thankful for the prompt, I throw in a less-than-amateur sketch of the tree.  Its branches diverge like fantastic fingers, leaflorn twiggy appendages spread like a sigh, or a welcoming cry, toward the sun-pierced, November sky.  (It's all in how you look at it, right?)


Sunday, November 11, 2012

A Curiosity I

What happens when a poem enters
your head while you're ill?
Does it chill and shudder while
you yawn, tired at the thought
of the hard work that you know
must come before the sickness leaves
or the words are written?
Or must it stand there, waiting
             to be invited in,
hat in hand, and coughing slightly
to get your attention?
Are you willing to risk the germ,
to sow and tend, water and reap,
gather up the fragments for later,
until, finally, you
           and the poem
lie down together,
spent, and flat?
What happens when a poem
enters your head?
A Curiosity II

What happens when a poem
enters your head when you're ill?
Does it come warily,
asking how you are today?
Does it stand, hesitating,
in the doorway, hat in hand,
waiting to be invited in?
(And do you say wait, or come in?)
Does it swell in your brain
until you get a fever,
or shrivel on the spot?
Does it chill and shudder,
already tired at the thought
of the work that is to come,
sowing, tending, weeding, reaping
until you both lie down, spent
and flat, together?
What happens to a poem
that comes to you when you're ill?