Hello Again

***

The Dallas Self-Publishing Group (of which I am now a long-distance member) is about to have a meeting devoted to blogging. Their announcement of that topic reminded me how sorely neglected my blog has become.

Ethan and I are still struggling to regain balance after being caught in an RIF layoff by Texas A&M earlier this year. My daily poems phased out as we began to deal with refurbishing and trying to sell a home in Texas, while locating, renting and moving to a home in Arkansas.

With Ethan's strong encouragement, I have lately returned to the daily "pomes" which are my combination journal and therapy. From now on, I will start including more commentary.

081127

GOOD GOAD!

Ethan cracks the whip at me.
That’s how these pomes came to be.

For this journal entry, I will select a few pomes from the last couple of months. I consider everything posted here to be drafts. That indirectly means that I harbor dreams of someday publishing some of these.


081119

LIFE NOW

picking up newspapers
peed on
by the terminal cat

pausing
to read the comics


081116

JUST ASKING

Where is there
to go from here;
what do I not know?

Am done,
or just begun;
why is life so so?


081110

DOWNTURN UPSIDE

I failed at this, I lost at that;
but headlines are my vindicator.
Markets worldwide took a plunge.
Now I’m a leading indicator!


081106

ETERNITEASE

All the time there is, or was,
I gave to you because
because.


0081101

SAID TO MY HEART

Trust only this:
trust your bliss.
Only as it shows you, go.

Trust it fully; overflow.

In the torrents, trust it still.
Resign your fear.
Align your will.

When none other can or do,
I, through bliss, take care of you.


081031

SPOOKED

Turn off your house lights
and lock your doors.
Pretend you’re not at home.

Those roving trick-or-treaters
will pass you by.
Pirates, monsters, and ghosts
will rove elsewhere.
But honestly—
witch of you is most scary?
You Halloweenie!


081029

POME PROCESS

Some wail.
Some rail. Some merely flail.
Some pose a test,
or jibe, or jest.
Honestly, most fail.

But in gestation,
as a quest;
in the doing—
each is best.


081025

ROOMINATION

Six, seven years of writing poems,
and I never began one with the title before.

I was clearing weeds when Scout announced,
from the edge of the woods, capture of prey.

He dropped the chipmunk from his mouth
to let it run, so that he could enjoy capturing it
again, again and again.

I had no wherewithal, I thought, to intervene;
but when the death-play slowed,
I removed my t-shirt and approached.
Scout pounced. I pounced. We both missed,
the first time.

I unwrapped chippy on the kitchen table,
beneath an overturned wire basket;
I was as thrilled as he was scared.
Such magnificient miniature perfection:
tiny paws, shiny eyes. tail aquiver!

It was after the release,
when Ethan and I continued our drive
onto unexplored country roads,
that my hiatus from daily poems
came into awareness and into question.
This episode would likely go unremarked
and eventually unremembered.

Similarly,
my half-year of lapsed poem-making
had bequeathed no words of legacy
for the stressful, strenuous,
and security-stripped transition
my life had become.

Nonetheless, I decided; all was in accord.

Poetry's purpose and effect
is to expand the soul—
creating enough room
for its occasional absence.

Tomorrow, I hope to welcome some new NWAR networking friends to my blog. Hello to you specifically.

And to everyone else, "Hello again."

***