Confession Tuesday.. Er Wednesday

Dear Friends & Readers:

Another Tuesday has come and gone. This one slipped through my fingers and I didn't realize it because being off Labor Day made it feel like a Monday. That’s my story and I’m sticking by it. So here I am heading to the Confessional a day late. At least there is no line.

I confess that it is hard to believe that it’s September. Hard to believe because it seems like the first pitch of spring training was just thrown out yesterday. Hard to believe too, because I usually make some provision for coaching/mentoring in the fall and I've done nothing towards that end this year. This I just realized today.

I've been so busy writing and submitting that I confess that I have in some ways been less aware of the world around me. Oh, I’m not neglecting to interact with my family. I’m not hold up in a room writing and forgetting to eat (though that might be a way to shed a few pounds) and I know about Syria, I know about sequester, and I’m aware that poetry & the world lost Seamus Heaney. It’s perhaps the more subtle things around me that are racing by.

I confess that days seem long and months seem fast. Does that make sense? Is this what getting older is like?    

True, time is an arbitrary measurement created by man but I confess that I wish it were more arbitrary to me personally. I’d like to stop the clock at times or at lease slow it down. True, I’d probably speed it up weekdays between 8 and 5 but I’m sure that as soon as I realized that I couldn't get all my work done I’d be more responsible or judicious in how I allocated it. At least I could make sure I got my confession done on Tuesday and not Wednesday.

Amen!

Slipped Out Of Her Jeans - Liquid Imagination

LIQUID IMAGINATION Issue 18 is live and I am fortunate to have one of my poems with so many other really outstanding works.

You can catch Slipped Out of Her Jeans HERE and an additional treat is that there is an audio read of the poem by the vary talented Nic Sebastian. Here voice gives depth to the poem and I was thrilled to have her share in this publication with me.

LOSS

Seamus Heaney 

13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013

The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

Confession Tuesday on Wednesday

Dear Reader:

I confess to being absent minded yesterday. Yes, yesterday was Tuesday and that's Confession day here except my mind was, we it was somewhere else because It didn't even remotely think of  confessing anything.

Some days I think about it and I'm too tired and just put it off a day. Sometimes I'm out till late and by the time I'm home it just seems like it can wait. Not yesterday... yesterday was out of sight and mind.

                                                                ~0~

I'm starting to realize that summer is not long for this year. Of course today the heat wouldn't agree, but the shadows that fall across the yard this time of evening, the fact that schools are starting and this weekend is labor day weekend, these things are a reminder that the season of color is coming. Maybe an even stronger indicator is the fact that baseball is at that stage in the season where people talk of magic numbers. The number of games remaining till post season nearly half my age and a melancholy umbrella seems to shield me from exuberance. I confess that I'm feeling fall in my bones.

                                                               ~0~

My wife is a bead artist. Some days she will tell me she doesn't feel much like an artist but some days I feel like it's a stretch to call myself a poet. Don't all artists do this to themselves at times?  I've shown some pictures in past years of work my wife has done and it you would look at it you would likely agree that there is artistry in it. Every once and a while I get to thinking that I wish we would collaborate on something - maybe an abstract bead-work with a poem.  I confess that I realize there are real challenges that couples who are artists have in dealing with each others artistic approaches and work itself. Cathy is not particularly a poetry person though she is very supportive of me. The one art issue we most would butt heads over would be when my work tends to be more abstract. I confess that I love working in abstracts. I confess that I have no hope of convincing her to work in abstract given how she feels about abstract poetry.  Still, I can dream.

                                                           ~0~

I confess that lately I've been challenging my own tendency to want to procrastinate over things that I am anxious about. I would not say that I'm in danger of getting kicked out of procrastinators anonymous but I'm sure the general membership would disapprove of some of my minor successes of late.

That's it for this week.

Amen!

   

Letting Wonder Come to You

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever. ~ Jacques Cousteau

Everyone  would do well to find the poet deep withing themselves that allows wonder to come, take hold of their life and change it. 

Recomended - 4 for Sunday

It's Sunday and I've realized that I have not been posting nearly as often as I used to. That's not necessarily a bad thing if you really don't have anything interesting to say, or you do but haven't the time to get it said right. It's often been one or the other. I have however seen a lot of interesting stuff this week that I thought I'd share case you may have missed any of it.

Martha Silano at Blue Positive posted her Ten Poetry Rules and while there is a slice of humor in them there seems to me to be a heap of wisdom in there too. Martha is the author of The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and one of my favorite reads this year.

Then there is Jeannine Hall Gailey the Poet Laureate of Redmond, WA who writes Feeling Discouraged about Poetryworld?  First let me say that I like hearing a Poet Laureate talk about discouragement and poetry together. It's comforting to know that even a laureate can feel the pain of discouragement. I also like that she used the word poetryworld as I do feel like I live in that world.
Jeannine is the author of several books the latest of which is Unexplained Feavors which came out this spring and while it's on my list to read I have read earlier books and enjoyed her work.

In interesting read I found this week was Wolf Girl by Nic Sebastain. I love the second stanza.

And finally, a poem by the late Denise Levertov titled The Secret. What I lovr about this poem is the amount of depth she achieves in relatively simple verse.

If you missed any of this, not you have no excuse not the check it out. 

Confession Tuesday - Going Goats

Dear Reader:

It's been another week. How does this happen?

I'm headed to the confessional, care to come along?

Yes, it's been a week since my last confession.

My daughter takes this picture on the right and shows it to me tonight. This is one of two pygmy goats that my daughter informed me are at the shelter where she works. I confess I want a pygmy goat. I know with the pets we currently have this is not really an option. The neighbors probably would not take too kindly to it either but it's sooo cute, isn't it!! I don't know their genders but  I can just picture a boy goat named Gruffy and a girl goat named Greta.  I think we could probably stop mowing the back yard.

I confess sometimes I have a vivid imagination. That's a good thing right? I mean I think it's paramount to an artist's work isn't it.

Thinking back to my childhood, I have a history with goats.  I'm mentioned here before that as a child I had four imaginary goats that I used to keep alongside me on leads. If I needed to make a trip to the bathroom I would hand them off to another to hold for me. Looking back on this I see now that I man have been more suited for artistic endeavor then I realized until later in life.

I confess that I do wish at times that I had approached my writing life differently. I would certainly have begun it at an earlier age and perhaps the trajectory that I took might have looked different.

I confess too that I have learned in life that it really isn't of particular value to focus on regrets. Nothing positive really comes of dwelling upon what could have been.  It seems much more important for me to redouble my commitment and efforts towards my writing and utilize what time and what knowledge I have to move forward. So I will I will hope that Gruffy and Greta find good homes and in carry on writing with my four invisible goats in tow.