I can’t believe how pleasant it is to be home and in my office looking out to my garden. A huge squirrel stopped by for a drink in my lily pond, and just a second ago a gray bird took a sip as well. A new lily leaf is popping up, and the other mature, flat ones serve as little islands for the birds to skim across. Even though the sun isn’t shining, it’s just glorious out there – so calm and green. I feel so blessed to be able to look out my picture window and take it all in, and I feel so cheated when I get so caught up in work that I don’t get the opportunity for days at a time. Which reminds me, I need to get that Buddha. It needs to sit right out there where I can see it and watch it watch over me and my house.
Other to dos while I’m off for the next nine days:
Submit to the Things I Never Told My Mother anthology – due by November 30
Organize my poems for submittal to the 2008 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition – due by February 15, 2008
And now for a challenge: write a poem a day while we’re on our Thanksgiving trip to Portland.
And, that’s just about enough pressure. I’ve been under enough for the last 10-1/2 months. It’s time to relax. It’s time to stop waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. It’s time to let it all hang out.
Speaking of poems here's one about another beautiful day:
Normandy Beach
I walk along the beach
on a stone path with huge Norman mansions
shuttered for the winter on my right
and an old brick wall on my left.
The beach is wide – the tide is out.
The sand is clean, white, smooth,
except for little worm-like swirls
and empty mussel shells.
Out near the sea,
are the beached remnants of the floating piers
built in 15 hours for the D-Day landing –
an idea Winston Churchill conceived
to save the allied troops in June, 1944.
Still the sun on my shoulders,
the blue sky streaked with white,
the gentle warm breeze
renind me of a day in Manhattan Beach
and home.
Both places are fine.
Only Normandy is mine for today.
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