What Better to Write Of

than this love for you and for summertime

A poem for your Friday…

---

Progress….

I wrote this via Voice Memos during a run on Monday morning. They were breathy and broken. Often a few words were followed by a 15 second pause before cutting off entirely.

I usually write while I walk, but mostly through text messages I send myself. To stand in the middle of the woods and speak my incoherent poem aloud felt very vulnerable. Then, to go home and play those recordings back, to hear the pauses in my words and remember the gears spinning in my mind as I panted — that was strange. I would recommend it though. There was a good kind of rawness to the whole process.

I did something a little different with this piece, and painted the paper blue before beginning. After the fawn and trees were drawn in colored pencil, I went back and added green watercolors to the remaining background. I always underestimate how much colored paper can add to a piece of work.

I’ve typed half a dozen paragraphs about writing this poem and what it means to me, but I’ve deleted all of them. I am a firm believer that good work can stand on its own without explanation. However, if there’s one thing I must say, it’s that I wrote this poem as a thank you to the universe, as a way to slow down and capture how lucky I feel. I am in the peak of my favorite season and 9 days from being married. What could be better than this?

---

More poetry for you this Friday…

I Stop Writing the Poem
Tess Gallagher

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.

---

Idea
Kate Baer

I will enjoy this life. I will open it
like a peach in season, suck the juice
from every finger, run my tongue over
my chin. I will not worry about cliches
or uninvited guests peering in my windows.
I will love and be loved. Save and be saved
a thousand times. I will let the want into
my body, bless the heat under my skin.
My life, I will not waste it. I will enjoy this life. 

---

After Many Springs
Langston Hughes

Now,
In June,
When the night is a vast softness
Filled with blue stars,
And broken shafts of moon-glimmer
Fall upon the earth,
Am I too old to see the fairies dance?
I cannot find them any more. 

---

Tin Bucket
Jenny George

The world is not simple.
Anyone will tell you.
But have you ever washed a person's hair
over a tin bucket,
gently twisting the rope of it
to wring the water out?
At the end of everything,
dancers just use air as their material.
A voice keeps singing even
without an instrument.
You make your fingers into a comb. 

---

Thank you for reading, as always.