still life with rabbit fur

i like taking still shots because they are just that--still. what's wrong with being still, anyway? Sometimes that's the best thing to do is just be still and do nothing.A poem may emerge uncaught by the brain but sent right through the keyboard. An old friend might call unexpectedly. Maybe someone will knock on the door to deliver a poster of the Eiffel Tower in snow. A cup of coffee might appear at the front door, as well as a book, perhaps. So being still has its merits. I spend too much time being still, I think. But I like to hear birdsong and that comes from being still.

the nature of a poem

I got the bad news about a poem I have spent a lot of time on. One of my poet friends doesn't like it, doesn't think it resonates, doesn't think it's finished. I'm not upset about the fact of his critique, just that I had spent so much time on it and was happy with the progress and evolution. Now I have about five different revisions of the poem, different versions from when I cut and pasted and changed and moved and re wrote. I think the next step is to give out the two most finished versions to several different people and see what the reaction is. After all, it's not just one person's opinion or judgement that matters, right? If that were the case, who would ever get published? Who would keep trying? I need to let that poem see the light of the day, get into the public's hands, be read by eyes other than mine. That's the nature of a poem anyway.

Sweet Dream Poem

is this a sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare? song lyric by Beyonce'

Pinch me cause I don't feel like what I feel is real
My heart is like a rock all heavy and full of crevices
where things hide and aren't visible to the human eye

Won't you take a sledgehammer and break me apart?
You can do this; I trust you.
You have navigated and hiked and traversed through worse
It won't be that bad! We might even find my heart
is made of cotton candy and things can be real real sweet.

Not full of the old hurt, the suitcases stacked high
to the ceiling busting through and going halfway to the moon.
I thought I dropped those hurts long ago
But when I think of you and how my heart is like a rock

I have to wonder if this is a sweet dream
or a beautiful nightmare. Glue my feet to the Earth
for a while so I have a chance to see if I can stand.

The Yellow Truck Easter Poem

When I see this yellow truck, I think of Sunshine in the mountains, of gorgeous rivers, streams, creeks, drybeds, and the ocean. I see animals everywhere riding in the back of the truck like it's a circus wagon on the way to the train station. These wheels can take you anywhere. To the moon if that's where u want to go. To your friend's house for Easter Dinner that was made by people in bad moods so you aren't even sure if you want to eat the food. You can get away from everything and everyone in this truck, just go, just be, just fly. It's a yellow poetry truck, another one, and in the bed lies a little poem:

Easter Sunday in the Fountain City

I think I am walking boldly around on dangerous ground
But I like it so I won't take myself away for now I won't run
Like I'm used to doing, wanting to go fast with every fiber
Of my delicate being, afraid, scared like a spider on the wall.

I have forgotten how to be a woman because I never really knew how
in the first place, from the first time when i wasn't ready and never could
catch up from that. In my fourth decade, I can imagine, but not remember.

I feel like slicing a piece of wind from a bear's paw.

Cats and Poetry

People are like cats and cats are like people. I might drink some dandelion tea tonight to detoxify my liver. Maybe I will go look for a wild bird nest for to decorate my living room bookshelf with. I might have to drive to the creek. Maybe I will make some more coffee. I will visit with friends, think about the movie I just saw and ask myself, too, why I feel right now that my poetry is worthless. I love to watch my cats more than revise my poetry. I have to find a way out of that hole. I'm already crashing down off the beautiful happy feelings i had the first of National Poetry Month. I'm sure this is just a temporary state of mind.

the red poetry truck

Gotta go somewhere in an old red truck on the second day of Poetry Month! It's time to go to the river, to the creek, to the sandbar, to the islands, to a carnival, to the circus, to the woods where in O Great Nature we can be alive again and really breathe. Let's go find poems under crystally rocks, under shrubs, hidden in the bunches of daffodils all over this beautiful little town in such a big big world. Let's pack our lunch and sit on the cliffs of Washington State Park and then drive to Potosi to a Taco Bell for dinner. Poems are waiting everywhere. In fact, we are each poems. We are alive and happy and there is much to look forward to. In a red truck you can see the whole world through rose colored glasses. In a red truck, you can find peace and tranquility. In a red truck, you can eat the World like it's a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie. Why is the thermos full of coffee empty?

rooted in poetry

Sometimes happyness is so beautiful it hurts like the sun when it shines in your eyes by a lake, by a bus stop, by a tree branch or a limb. Why is it that when we flow with happiness it gets stopped by a worry that everything is going to fall apart? Today that happened to me. As I was out driving in the early morning, everything I saw was gorgeous. Sunshine threw its light everywhere and fell out of the sky like a huge window of yellow. I saw a bird. I saw a squirrel running with a nut. I saw the creek flow blue. I heard the sound of beauty and felt overwhelmed. I try to remember to stay grounded, to keep roots close to the earth so I don't just fly away with all my wondering thoughts but it's hard especially on a day as exciting as the kickoff of National Poetry Month. My plan is to work on poems all month. That means writing new ones, revising old ones, typing old ones into the computer and getting ready to submit. The prospect does not seem daunting; in fact, I look forward to the work, the real work ahead of me. I feel, now, today, at this moment, like what the poet James Wright wrote in his poem "The Blessing:"
Suddenly I realize/That if I stepped out of my body I would break/Into blossom. I feel like I could live on just air right now, that nothing else in the world matters except living for this very moment of beauty on this earth. Dramatic but true!