Things, people, and poetry

It's been quiet here on the blog for the past few weeks. I wish I had some glamorous reason for that, but I don't -- just many small but pressing tasks that have kept me from sitting down and posting. Things like

• marking assignments
• getting things ready for my spring-summer online course
• renewing my health card
• taking kids to the dentist and other places
• going to parent-teacher interviews 
• gathering records and reports for a big appointment in May
  
• trying to get our leaking dishwasher fixed (what a "comedy of errors" that has been for the last month or more!)  

It hasn't all been mundane chores, though. I connected with some old and new friends; I went to meetings of my book and writing groups and church groups; I attended the memorial service for a close friend's father; I went to a concert and a seminar on anxiety and a poetry reading. I enjoy talking (and listening) to compatible people about interesting ideas, and I've had many opportunities for that in the past few weeks.

And though I haven't been blogging, I have been working on my writing -- specifically my own poetry-writing. I found an excellent book in the library called The Art and Craft of Poetry by Michael J. Bugeja, and I've been using what I've learned from it to go back and revise old poems.

Since spring is supposed to be FINALLY here this week, after a short-yet-tenacious winter, I thought I'd share this poem that I wrote about a year ago. I really enjoyed experimenting with the shape, the words, and the emotion of it.

******

thaw 

The last time I walked this way, the ground was covered with snow.

Weeks of cold had hardened the surface so that my boots made no impression. 
The sun shone, but its glare seemed brittle and thin,
Its efforts futile against the snowbanks’ glacial permanence. 

And I felt a wintering chill press upon my soul as well, 
Numbing every thought into a solid drift of resistance.

But today the ground yields underfoot as I walk this

Same yet different

road. Banks that looked impermeable are

now porous,

granular, no match

for the sun’s warmth. they must

know it too

the way they shrink timidly

back from the edge 
of the path

likewise my

heart

melts with every

step each squish

of boots in thawing

earth each soft

slow sign

of

relenting

 

 freeimages.co.uk