Blowing out the lights

It seems this year is a year of letting go. With my diagnosis in January, I had to give up the teaching that I love for the time being. And now Three Candles, where I've been an editor these past few years under the direction of Steve Mueske, is taking down the shingle as well.

I should think opportunity, more creative time, more free space. But, I'm feeling like the last person left at a party, blowing out the few candles left before walking aimlessly out into the night.

It's been a good party. That I can take with me.

Another's Skin

I'm reminded today (again) that we can never know what it is like to live in another's skin. We try hard with poetry at times to make that deeper connection with others, yet still, still we cannot know. We that remain can only speculate.

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance;
pray,love, remember: and there is pansies,
that's for thoughts.

Our world is smaller, and poorer, today.

In his words, here.

At the Summer's End

I'm finding it hard to believe that the last post I made was in June. The summer has flown by on the wings of parental responsibility. Yes, I have three boys. And two of them are now taller than me.



When summer does come to the end, I feel a bit of relief. The heat has killed many of my herbs, yet the bindweed and Witchgrass flourishes. I am ready for the school supplies in the aisles of the stores. The promise of lined paper and freshly sharpened pencils. I think Roethke got it wrong in Dolor. But, his is the office and the institution. Mine is the schoolroom and the artroom, where crayons still wait in their green and yellow boxes in twenty-four shade of possibility. And watercolors in their plastic trays evoke the shades of the sea and the skies at sunrise. I am ready for the routine of early morning coffee and lunch-sacks, backpacks, and yellow buses. I am ready to return to my books and poems and the clean promise of white paper.