Saturday, April 13, 2013

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Spring in the Pacific Northwest has it's nasty side, especially during the early part of the season.  The sky is blue with a few cotton balls for clouds,  in the 50s, not counting the wind chill.  It feels like 35 degrees.  How bad is it?  I wore anklets with my clogs and capris to the grocery store.

Just so you know.

Met with my home team for coffee this morning.  I might be the youngest of the bunch; maybe.  Last birthday I tacked on an extra year and told people I was sixty-six.  I was off by a year.  But these gals, they have more publishing credits after their 60th birthdays than before and even better memories.

Oh.  So.  Impressive.

The other thing that happens is that ideas just pop.  Somebody sets the original task, the original writing. That leads to another idea, and then another.

Our task this morning was to write from the point of view of a real historical personage, gleened from a old photograph.  Ellie wrote a letter to an imaginary sister in a mid-western state. The letter was the discovery of the depth of fun and freedom women were discovering West of the Rockies — and what  it meant to have a real place and a real function in our little city.  It was such a wonderful piece of work and so true to the spirit of the West that ideas on how to use it, how to present it bounced it off the tables and the walls right, left, and center.  

Stay tuned.

Or we could write poems about spring.

So Rita and I wrote poetry, poems being a momentary stay against confusion.  Spring poems.  Here's mine:

Yet

This spring, early days yet,
teases, without mercy,
like a reluctant lover,
fresh fleshed, eager,
and yet, and yet.

Some days are so cold,
today perhaps,
although the evidence is
yet to be.

The tulips have yet to open,
The daffies tilt their heads.

Yet to come: salted asparagus
and strawberries, unendurably sweet,
still a promise,
not yet a sigh.












2 comments:

  1. Nicely done! Good post. And marvelous poem.

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  2. Thanks, Mary, for your great encouragement. It's wonderful.

    ReplyDelete