Wordless Wednesday - 1

Poetry Train Monday - 2 - The Poem of You

Here's a reworked poem that first drew breath in 1981, but which I edited this morning.

The Poem of You


I feel a poem starting in me

Silken spider trappings
Fall gently in my breast
At your soft breath

Music fine and clean
Shepherd minding flocks
Stretching sky holding my world
Wide as life
Your voice tinged with morning haze
Settles itself about my tingling skin

The darkened depths
The coves and eddies
Teeming in your eyes
The secret hiss of foam
I dive and lose myself
Among the folds and swirls
Of water worlds uncharted
Ringed by stones
Alight with salt and age
Your gaze promises
The endlessness of sea

I float on the kiss
Your touch brings fanfares
Banners flying long and true
My willingness
To step outside this moment
Trampled under hooves that tear up ground

Your sighs fell the flimsy forest
Rays of warmth break through
Slanting rays shine on fern and moss
The untread ground
The magic wood
Of me

Voices whisper
Unseen hands guide my pen
Words flow over
The imagery of you

The poem of you
Dazes and stands ready


Copyright 2007 Julia Smith

Treasure The Journey

Friday night when I got all my stuff done, I finally collapsed onto Mom's couch to sit with Gram for a bit before she went to bed. I looked over at the little endtable and picked up the book sitting there. Don't Sweat The Small Stuff For Women by Kristine Carlson, which Mom had picked up a few weeks ago when she went with my husband and me to the annual library book sale. I flipped to the back - of course. The last section is titled "Treasure the Journey."

I thought about Mom on her mad spree to feel as much like her old self as she can this weekend. That was how I felt last November when I spent a week in Toronto, saw my old friends, went to the ballet and had a chance to just be me.

My Mom is a person who prefers spontaneity, so having to build her days around her elderly mother has been very wearying to her spirit. In the six years that we've all joined our households together, I've shown Mom how making advance plans to get time away can prevent her from burn-outs and meltdowns. She's been resistant to that idea, mainly because she finds plans restrictive, even if they're plans for her own freedom. She'd rather get an urge to do something and go off and do it. That would be true freedom for her.

But I take regular time for myself. I have done this consistently in all of my caregiving. With my husband's bipolar disorder, taking time for myself is of paramount importance, for both myself and my ability to be there for him. Over the years, Mom has started to do the unthinkable. Plan! Last year she went on a two week vacation to Newfoundland with her two friends (the ones she's with now). Just making the arrangements for the trip made the first half of the year feel lighter.

So as I looked through the passage in the book, I paused over these lines:

"Before your mind skips to the fact that today your life might not be what you had expected or hoped for, take the time to repeat these words to yourself: Today, I will treasure the journey."

I think my mom has begun to refocus her attention to that journey. I got a real sense when she decided to take this weekend off, that she was not so much fleeing her day-to-day rut as she was embracing a chance to connect with everything she cherishes that she also misses. I feel really proud of her. It's still hard for some women to say straight out, "I need this." My mom is unconsciously waiting for someone to sweep her away for that Calgon moment.

But I don't wait. I take the time I need. I tell her, "I'm going on my writer's retreat," and she writes it on her calendar. We've got into the habit of going over our schedules so we don't get double-booked, making sure we've got grandma coverage and our own stuff taken care of. And over time, Mom has begun to schedule herself on the calendar.

One small step for Mom. One giant leap for womankind.

Meanwhile, tonight as I helped Gram into bed she said, "I'll do like today," thinking about tomorrow morning. Talk about planning! "I'll sleep as long as I want."

"If it gets too late," I said, "I'll come and get you."

"Unless I'm gone," she said with the most hilarious smirk.

"Well, if you are," I said, "I'll make sure and wake you up, then."

"Ha! - Me Moving Like a Turtle"

My mom headed for Yarmouth this afternoon to spend the long weekend with her friends. So I'm on Grandma duty. The relief pitcher heads up to the mound.

I came home from work and went over to Gram in her rocking chair, like I always do, but this time there was a big lipstick kiss mark on Gram's cheek. When I kissed her, she said, "Don't lose my kiss. I'm going to keep it there till she gets back."

I'd joked yesterday that we should have a party. So as I took my sweater off and set down my purse, I said, "Okay, let's start!" But we agreed we'd have a quiet night to start off the weekend, and the only revelry was my dog Xena's. She got the okay to come up to the main level while Mom's away, and for Xena it was like roaming through a three-level shopping mall. Loads of new smells! Lots of different nooks and crannies! A mesmerizing new person to look at!

Gram used to be too nervous around dogs for me to have Xena come up. But my dog is very mellow. Gram likes her, now. She said, "I know why you say you love him (she thinks all dogs are 'him'), when I look at his face. Look at him, looking at me!"

Later on, after Gram's eyedrops were put in and I'd given her all her puffers, when she'd got herself ready in her nightgown, I helped her swing her feet up into the bed and settled her covers over her. She looked at me with a cute smile.

She said, "Good thing we didn't have our party, eh? Ha! Me - moving like a turtle. How could I pass around the drinks and the cakes?"

Thursday Thirteen - 6 - 13 Flowering Trees and Shrubs I Adore Besides Roses

See what modern technology can do? Squee!

Here are my favorite make-me-swoon blossoming trees and shrubs:

1 - Rhododendron

2 - Japanese cherry tree

3 - Flowering crab tree

4 - Japanese flowering quince

5 - PeeGee hydrangea

6 - Lilac

7 - Golden chain tree

8 - Hawthorne

9 - Serviceberry

10 - Forsythia

11 - Heather

12 - St. John's wort

13 - Potentilla

And there you have it. My heart swelling inside, singing joyously in visual form.

Happy TT!

Must vs Can't

I was checking out Kristin Nelson's PubRants blog this evening. Of course I multi-tasked because I was eating supper at the same time. Agent Kristin wrote about encountering complication masquerading as conflict in manuscript submissions.

Then in one of the comments, writer Linnea Sinclair shared an inspiration for her workshop which she got from noted SF author Jacqueline Lichtenberg. In a nutshell, the hero/heroine MUST complete a task that the antagonist CAN'T allow.

I've been working at internalizing Goal, Motivation and Conflict since the retreat, opening myself to eventual gene mutation so that I will become one with GMC. The soil was ready for the seed. I read the blog comment and 'bing'! Insta-sunflower.

I turned to my husband and read it out to him. He said, "That's just like an acting exercise we used to do. One of us would be told privately by the teacher that he HAD to stay on the stage for the upcoming improv scene, no matter what, to do a specific task. The other person was told he HAD to get the person to leave the stage no matter what."

More 'bing' 'bing' 'bing'! Just like a slot machine. Suddenly my WIP seems more accessible. Suddenly my lungs inhale the heady scent of GMC as never before.

Thank you to all the previous workshops I've had on GMC. Thank you to Christine's most recent one. Thank you Kristin, Linnea and Jacqueline. Thank you to all of my teachers. The student was ready.

Hopping Aboard the Poetry Train - 1

Well, it was bound to happen. Let me dust the notebooks off and see what I can dig up.

Oh, here we go. Something I did for my grandparents' 45th wedding anniversary, the year after I graduated high school (24 years ago!) This is the grandma I live with, who plays piano and had the fiddler and guitarist come over for a kitchen party a few weeks ago.

My grandfather was a portrait photographer, oil painter of landscapes and Cheticamp rug hooker.


The Artisans

Time fashions its pearls
Beneath crusted grey shells
The milky white salve
Lifting sand from the tender flesh
A simple act of survival
Creating precious jewels
To be opened
Polished
Strung together
And displayed
A wonder of time preserved

Spears of light pierce the trees
Penetrating the transparent pane
Of transformed sand
The grains quickened to molten elixir
And frozen in a thin sheet
Looking in on two
Who greet the day
As two living pearls
Their time together, creating treasures
From the grains of the world

Two hands that clasped on a morning
Two faces that turned to a future
Overlooking a sea
They jumped into without answers
Waters that raged
Inlets becalmed

Two pearls who emerge from the ocean of time
To see with the eyes of that morning
The wonderful ripples their plunge could create
To feel the remarkable pulse
Of those whose existence
Began first with them
With the smiles they gave each other
With the echoes they felt
When they first looked in each others' eyes

Days spent
Time shared
Lives fashioned
From the grains of the world

Copyright,1983 Julia Smith