8th Anniversary!

A couple of weeks ago I was aware that the anniversary of my blogging at stickpoet was nearing an then I got busy and plum forgot about it until I read a comment from a reader this morning wishing me a happy blogaversity.  There is a small countdown tab at the lower sidebar that alerts readers the number of days till the next one.  It is obscure enough that it only catches my attention every so often.

It is true... this is the 8th anniversary and the 2,922 post and I look back and realize that anyone who blogs for any length of time invests a lot of themselves into the process.

Over these eight years poetry has not only been a passion but become a part of my daily fabric.  I am a true believer in the concept of a poetry lifestyle. I means you are constantly aware of things about you in a way others aren't. It means you are always looking for the language in pictures. Always trying to simplify the complex and sometimes look for more then there appears on the surface. I think there is a certain spirituality between the poet and the universe that just doesn't exist otherwise.

To those who stop by on occasion to read stickpoet or those who subscribe to a feed, a big thank you.  I especially appreciate those who leave comments & become part of a dialogue. Non-spam comments are always welcome. Spamers however, don't waste your time, due your existance the comments are moderated and those posts never see the light of day.

I have a few ideas for some posts and topics for the very near future that I hope many of you will find interesting. So thanks again and keep coming back!

Magpie Tales 80 / Poem: Promises

An hour clocked

in the wet footprints

cast upon past

each fleeting step

measures an instant

a crack     a mother’s back

a broken promise

I will do well in school

I will not stray

trouble will not

be my downpour

raining in some dark alley

hunkered under red

umbrella from showers

there are no guarantees

otherwise

Michael A. Wells

Magpie Tales 80

Questions to ask when...

Dana Guthrie Martin asks the poignant  question, "Why does this poet live in my house, and is this the best place for her?"  Her Poem here

Confession Tuesday - Fleeting Edition

Come Along with me to the confessional…

It’s not only Tuesday again but it is almost the end of August ~ uh, what’s up with that?

Dear Reader:

I confess that I’ve absolutely no idea where August has gone. Seriously! It feels like it has been dwarfed by February… There just seems to be no accounting for the days. Has someone taken them while I was not looking?  And I know summer is fleeting because I come home in the evening and these little kids in helmets and John Wayne shoulders are practicing football on the baseball diamond across the street.  That is just not right!  I confess that I find such encroachment unacceptable. I’m sure that there is some sort of Capricorn justice in my logic.

~0~

I confess that a blog which I read often and have found to be creatively stimulating had dropped off the radar and it saddens me.

~0~

It seems there are a lot of people who are operating with something less then a full deck mucking about in this country these days. I’m sure the United States doesn’t hold any exclusive lock on such people. And to be sure, not all of them are Christians, but there seem to be a disproportionate amount of them that call themselves Christian fundamentalists.  Now, I’m not an atheists but it seems to me that the Florida pastor who has called for the creation of a National Registry of atheists could do better pasturing his flock then stirring up hate for absolutely no justifiable reason then his own lack of good judgment.  Perhaps doing so would prove to be too challenging to him. I confess the more I read thing like this, the more I am convinced such people have no concept whatsoever as to what Christianity is.

~0~

I confess that I have fleeting thoughts about self-publishing a manuscript. I confess fleeting is a word that has been hanging around me lately.  I confess that I worry that one day all my thoughts will be fleeting.

A Pleasant Find

I was looking through some of my sent mail and cleaning out stuff tonight when I ran across a draft of a poem written in July of 2009 that I sent to some poet friends that were sharing drafts back then.  There was a draft that I had forgotten though reading it after all this time I realized it was a remarkably strong draft to have since been overlooked. This was a surprising find and I promptly moved a copy of it to a working draft folder.

This likely is not an isolated incident for me.  I'm pretty sure I've a trail of promising drafts that have become neglected orphans. I need to revisit my old journals and old e-mails more often.

Do you have rough diamonds languishing in your sent folder, an obscure file folder on your computer or hard copies stashed in a drawer someplace? 

Journal Bits this week

Bits of notes, thoughts, quotes and drafts in my journal this past week...

• Aug. 19, 2011 - The morning glistens off the wet grass. Remnants of last night's storm. Do people ever glisten as a result of some natural phenomena?
• Aug. 20, 2011 - "It possesses a resilience/foreign to most people/a hundred times I chop it down/a hundred and one times it grows/back up against the house/sways against the bats and boards/waving to the sky as if to say, I'm back!"
• Aug. 20, 2011 - "While the night vaporises/I languish a secondary or lesser./A burning ember of a star."
• Aug.25, 2011 - I so love the geese and there were a group in the field this morning. One of the things about them I so like is how they seem to fit into the world around them. The traffic, noises, I can even walk toward them and they are largely unshaken. I have to get right on top of them before they seem to acknowledge my presence and move on.
• Aug. 27, 2011 - "...I sit sipping Colombian, dark, no sugar no one/to cut the quiet of this/conversation not happening// ...yesterday on the floor/your side of the bed/where a sock had rolled/self up to account for loneliness - its mate nowhere /to be found. 

On learning & perfection

We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.  ~Angelina Jolie