beginnings

my hiding place
stood silent
I climbed up
sat in the fork of two limbs
reached for blue sky
in our old oak tree

a purple cover
adorned with sisters
vivid sunlight through branches
wind honeysuckle sweet
a sparrow alights up high
she sings to me

Jo high in her garret
me on a leafy perch
an apple each and some ink
a jumble of words
tears on the page
wondering just how things will be

for whatever it's worth

I published a little piece of writing. A little piece of writing about someone else's big piece of writing. About their brilliant, important piece of writing that boasts hard covers and a dust jacket. A lovely, real book filled with beautiful, sublime art which I never even bothered to mention. I wrote 715 words reacting to someone else's luminous, difficult, gorgeous, almost tragic life story.

It is unbelievable really. Astounding. I have clicked that link at least a dozen times. My name in cyberspace. Not the name I sent them, but still...it's my name.

I sent the review to the managing editor on January 18th. By the time I received a message telling me he loved it, the review had already been posted for a day and a half. Had I bothered to look, I would have seen it sitting there, right on my hated Google Reader page. But no, I did not look at all on March 7, 2011.

Until I received the news, I had been writing. Stories. A little journaling. A bit of poetry I used to destroy a perfectly good piece of paper (thank you, Betsy Lerner).

Yesterday I managed to write a journal entry. About the review, of course. Then I worked for an hour on a story about a boy, his sister, the big oak tree in the back yard and what happened there one sunny, bright day. There wasn't a word I deemed worthy of keeping. So I deleted it all and promptly left the house with my children for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory.

I'll write again. I know I will. But I can't help looking at that damned review and wondering if I will ever publish another thing. Nearly every word I choose seems wrong or repetitive, every adjective superfluous, every verb weak. I am, for the most part, okay with my nouns. Maybe. Well, not all of them.

Is this a crisis of confidence? Crippling fear that from now forward someone will actually read the words I write? Worry that the editor hasn't gotten back to me because he changed his mind about wanting to review more of my work?

Whatever it is, maybe it's on its way out the door. After all, I am getting ready to hit "publish" on this blog post. Maybe. I think.

Hmmm...

I write like
Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

After trying this with a post I wrote a while back, I decided to try two or three more posts. The results of the different writing samples were: Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen King, and James Fenimore Cooper. Apparently, I have a split personality as a writer.

a bit more poetry

Much of the poetry I've been writing is raw, emotional, and not really fit for public consumption. The class focuses on the telling of personal stories through poetry. There are two I think I can share here. Both were written during the course of the class and have been whittled and reworked and thought half to death. This one turned out lovely, I think, and brings back sweet, precious memories.


wisdom

he told me once he couldn't claim to know
the meaning of life but he thought it involves
finding someone who makes happiness real

he told me once he had little idea
if there truly is a God, but he thought
the best evidence is in my dark eyes

he told me once I should live for today
concentrate on being in this moment
because nothing lasts, time erases memory

*******************************************************************

The memory this poem is based upon is an old one. Even so, the finished poem seems immediate to me, as well as just a bit ugly, just a bit violent.


Seeking Control

She never could stand secrets
tried to strip them from my mind
with tricks, bribes, pointed questions,
searching for answers I wouldn't spill

She crept into my room
dumped my purse on the bed
violated my privacy
as easily as she smiled

writing poetry

I began a poetry class this week. Like everyone else, I wrote the requisite haiku and rhyming verse in school, but I've never made a serious attempt at writing my own poetry. I've been reading lovely books by people like Lucille Clifton, Robert Bly, Ted Kooser, Dorianne Laux, and Marie Howe. Our first assignment was to write a piece about the way that poetry came into our lives. The first poem I remember really affecting me in an emotional way is a short piece, long since committed to memory.

The Amulet

Your picture smiles as first it smiled,
The ring you gave is still the same,
Your letter tells, O changing child,
No tidings since it came.

Give me an amulet
That keeps intelligence with you
Red when you love, and rosier red,
And when you love not,
Pale and blue.

Alas, that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession;
Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last expression.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I thought about the day I first read this poem and how I came to own the book of Emerson's poetry. It is odd what comes back to you holding an old book in your hands.



"The Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson", Copyright 1900

Mother filled my late childhood
With auctions and farm sales.
She drove miles and spent long hours
Eating cheap barbeque sandwiches
While bidding a few dollars on boxes
Packed with someone else's life.

One hot June day under a Redbud,
She picked among the tables and the piles.
I dragged along bored behind her
Until I saw a box of books near the house.
They smelled of leather and age,
My idea of heaven.

In the corner, covered in brick red linen,
I saw a volume not much larger than my hand.
I was seventeen, immersed in unrequited love.
I opened the linen cover, looked on yellowed pages,
and as I read "The Amulet",
Poetry spoke to me.

Home Sweet Nowata

I spent the better part of an hour talking to an old hometown friend on the phone this morning. While our conversation touched on home only peripherally, it started me thinking about my recent near-obsession with all things Nowata. I’ve had lunch recently with a couple of schoolmates, ornery boys who’ve turned into wonderful men. I’ve been thinking of Nowata often in the past few months. Perhaps it’s the upcoming all-school reunion and all of those pictures I’ve been uploading from old yearbooks and from inside an old metal box I’ve had since middle school. Maybe it's following what's going on with the children of old friends who live around Nowata, seeing pictures of them going to spring dances, FFA events, showing animals in the spring livestock show, or playing baseball in the frigid Oklahoma spring. Perhaps it’s the contact with so many old friends from home since I joined Facebook last summer to keep up with my lovely daughter as she attends college. I could blame it on Joan-Marie and her lovely descriptions of life in small-town Oklahoma. But honestly, I think I am simply homesick.

Just look at the countryside. Why wouldn't I be homesick for lovely Green Country? There is nothing prettier to my eyes than a pond in a cow pasture when the grass and the trees are lovely and green. Part of what draws me is knowing that underneath that beautiful grass and on the edges of that pond, the dirt is a lovely, rich, dark color. Not red. Dirt, my friends, should not be red.

Lovely old buildings in Nowata are more than just lovely old buildings to me. So many memories float into my consciousness from looking at this picture of the courthouse. My great-grandmother lived down that street to the north when I was in elementary school, right next to Sheila Stinnett, my life-long friend and distant relative. There was an organ in Grandma Bonnie's formal living room that she played by ear and a cellar that I spent many an hour in during the spring, staring at a bare bulb, jars of home-canned fruits, vegetables, pickles and preserves, and listening to an old transistor radio for the all-clear. I obtained my first marriage license in the courthouse after Anita Folk drew my blood out at the hospital, the only woman I've ever known who could do so without bruising or hurting me. Mrs. Folk also happened to be the make-up artist from the dance recitals of my youth and the mother of my old classmate, Dee Ann. Free association leads me to thoughts of Miss Vicki, dance classes in the basements of the Savoy, and Noweta Lodge, a summer writing course with Joyce Hifler in one of the high school annex buildings, and my 1974 red-and-white Chevy pick-up, the one with a 454, chrome running boards, dual wheels, and a chrome cow catcher on the front. I wish I had a photo of that truck. All that from a picture of the county courthouse.

There's nothing prettier than Nowata County in spring. Other seasons have their pleasures, but for me, spring has always been Nowata's best season. Warm days, cool nights, vegetation turning green, the gallardia, butterfly peas, and coneflowers blooming in pastures and alongside the roads, and the daffodils, forsythia, and lilacs blooming in the well-manicured town lawns. Nothing prettier.

I've been thinking about taking a drive north, an hour past Tulsa up Highway 169. There are people I'd love to see, but the main draw this time of year, for me, is the natural beauty of the place where I spent my childhood. There is just something about that little town that's always gotten under my skin. I said to a friend recently that you can't really ever go home again. And I suppose in some ways that's true. But if I ever loved a place and thought of it my whole life through as home, it's a little town called Nowata. It is, simply, home.

*Pictures are all Google images. Really. I just searched Google Images for "Nowata County". Try it. There are pictures of the bowling ball art, the motel signs, Ironman sports, and Main Street. It's kind of awesome.

Good Luck for the New Year, Southern Style

As we approach the end of the year and the end of the holiday season, I always reach for one certain pantry staple.

If you grew up in the South or your family has Southern roots, you probably know that black eyed peas are considered lucky in this region of the country. People serve them on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in many different ways. My mother used to make black eyed peas with ham and serve them with cornbread. My Southern grandmother served Hoppin' John with hush puppies.

According to my family, black eyed peas should be the first thing you eat as the year changes and we leave behind the old to take up the new, which is the reason I always serve them New Year's Eve. I have made my mother's recipe and my grandmother's recipe. My children would never eat them, not even a bite. Come to think of it, I didn't eat them readily as a child, either. I experimented to find a way to prepare black eyed peas that my children might enjoy. For the last five or six years, this recipe has been a staple of our New Year's Eve celebration:

Black Eyed Pea Salsa

olive oil

1 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped ham

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 15 ounce can black-eyed peas, drained

1 14 1/2 ounce can diced tomatoes, undrained

1/3 cup minced fresh cilantro

1 tablespoon seeded, finely chopped jalapeno pepper

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion, ham, and garlic. Saute until onions are tender, about five minutes. Stir in cumin and next three ingredients; bring to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro and jalapeno. Spoon salsa into a bowl; cover and chill one to eight hours.

Serve at room temperature with pork or chicken or as a dip with crusty French bread or tortilla chips. Yields about 3 1/2 cups.

Those of you who have recently indulged yourselves (you know who you are) will be happy to know this is a healthy, filling treat. Plus it's tasty and lucky to boot.

Happy New Year to you and yours!