Birth Day

Celebrate!

Promises of cake

& candles

light this morn

flush with spring rain & lilac;

a lone tree frog sings.

(a shadorma to celebrate--why not?)

Peace...

Chit-Chat at Flash Fiction Chronicles

Thrilled to be Interviewed by Queen of Flash Kathy Fish over at Flash Fiction Chronicles. We chat about writing small stories and the genesis of my story AFTER THE TSUNAMI, upcoming at Every Day Fiction.

Thank you Kathy for the provocative questions! Peace...

Life Comes at You Like a Wave

I am trying hard not to let what happened in Boston sink me deeper, sink me to the point where I give up on the goodness of the world. On the inherent goodness of people. This latest attack on people (I won’t call them innocents—aren’t all of us innocent to some degree?) makes me want to flee. But to where? Is there a safer place to live? A saner place?

I know that the horror I felt on Monday night, watching the news unfold, will fade. The images will blur around the edges, the facts become murky, the way a pond darkens as autumn leaves fall on its surface, then sink, rotting, to the bottom.

After all, what can I recall of Newtown?

I have hardened. I don’t like this quality, but I think it is part of human hardwiring, part of the armor which lets us survive. It is how we humans are evolving. In 100 years, or sooner, we will be a species with dexterous thumbs and a missing empathy gene.

After living half a decade I can discern good from evil, hopeful from hopefulness. But my children cannot, or at least not so well, and I can only imagine how the continued onslaught of horrible and ugly and villainous and tragic affects them. It makes me wonder if the decrease in our mental health--and the increase of our drinking and drugging and gunning—is our Darwinian desire to not feel the pain. Peace...

Hmmm...

It has been awhile.

I have written my Daily Poem.

I traveled to North Carolina, to visit family during the kids' spring break, and then entertained more family who came to visit us.


I returned to work, the children back to school. Back to routine, which comforts.

I managed to enjoy the warm days and cool evenings, which lightens my mood.

I heard the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra play its wondrous score for Fantasia seen on the screen.

I found some peace and quiet in my heart, much needed.

I breathed.

What have you been up to these past 10 days?

Peace...

If It Is the First of April

Then it must be National Poetry Month.

No fooling.

My favorite month, for what brings more joy than to read and write poems every day for a month?

Here, one of my favorites from William Carlos Williams. It reminds me that spring is coming, the earth cracks from its cold and the green spears of life will soon poke through.


THE RED WHEELBARROW

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.



So spare, so elemental, our attention drawn to a single object. This is Willams' gift--to paint a still life from an every day item using fewest words.

And now time for me to contemplate my daily poem. Every year I join the April Poem-A-Day (PAD) group over at POETIC ASIDES, the brilliant poetry Writer's Digest blog moderated by Robert Brewer. The theme today: new arrivals.

Pull up a pen, and play along. Peace...