Spring is here, nagging me just like that black headed chick-a-dee
in back that keeps calling to its mate his fee
bee call. I imagine him saying “You-hoo, you-hoo.” Her answer, “I’m here, I’m
here. (Kind of comforting) Still, I put in my time at the computer, ignoring as
best I can the lusted-after sun and warmth and green stuff.
Winter was a real bear this year. Gray and dull, with snow
on the ground way to long, but the daffodils are blooming and I have an old
canning jar; I’m happy.
Working furiously on poetry. It is, after all, Poetry Month.
I decided to put aside my editing on Heart’s High and take the month to work on
my chapbook. I have made huge strides adding to my goal of 20-30 polished poems
that will fit into a book.
Some poems I developed into what I think will be good
contest entries, too, others I’m struggling with. That’s all right, though. I’ve
found the poems I have the hardest time carving into what I’m trying to say,
please me most, in the end. Now, that is not to say, they are my best poems.
Funny how that happens, the poems I like best are rarely the
ones that strike a chord with anyone else. I guess that is the nature of
poetry, though.
I’m not done, by no means. There are several poems in rough
state, still in need of a lot of work—finding words and rhythm and rhyme. The
work has saved me, though. Life has been a rough patch for some months. Nothing
everyone else isn’t going through, but instinctively I reach for poetry work
when I’m struggling with work, home, money, the blues.
Every time, it has saved me. The blessing of that, the
reward of that, is that I don’t have to win a contest, get the book published,
have a one of my poems reach the light of day. I just need to work them and let
them save me.
And isn’t that the blessing of being a writer? I knew there
was one.
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