Poetry Friday: A Moving Tribute

Happy Poetry Friday! I have a poem this week, digesting a bit more about my move to The West Coast from The East Coast.

Its been about 2,000 years since I had a good poetic wander. Feels so good to get back to my principles and be stepping back into a rhythmn of creation and personal, reflective thought. Love writing poetry.

Poetry Friday is a product of KidLitosphere and is a chance to share and mingle together suggestions, original work and sometimes even whole books that feed that poetry section of our brains, help us to think in lyrical form and assist in giving us imagery that is crisp and reflective of experience.

I try to write an original poem once a week to participate, pushing myself to try new ideas and to capture in verse the impressions that slam or waltz through my mind. See the tab above for a collection of all the poems I've spun out thus far here.

Poetry Friday is one of my favorite things to consume on a lazy Saturday or Sunday morning. A mug of tea and the host list of links is great early morning brain food to help your inner self uncurl and blink awake. So, incredibly cozy. Try it out.

Our host blog this week is Poetry For Children. Click through and enjoy all the offerings!




New To California

I am camping in a house with a blow-up mattress, four boys and a sea of pale gray carpet.

I wonder what dark January looks like with prickly pear ripening on the side of the freeway and mariachi on the radio.

I hear basketball echoes in the back courtyard, the neighbor kids shouting in Spanish and the gentle hum of the refrigerator in our tiled kitchen.

I see the golden sunlight slanting through the office blinds and the sly Dirt Devil doing the tango along the living room wall.

I want new girlfriends,
luscious, ridiculous ladies
laughing in a circle around me,
arms skyward
bellies full.

I am camping in a house with a blow-up mattress, four boys and a sea of pale gray carpet.

I pretend that I will become a willowy, silver-haired chef in a teeny seafood cafe with open geranium windows.

I feel elastic,
spicy,
full of the buzz of the shift and the high of spontaneous, aromatic creation.

I touch the soft
inner bellies of scallops and the stringy stems of thyme
beaded with tiny, rough leaflets.

I worry about drug culture, pot heads and psychedelic mushrooms eroding personal drive.

I ask the world, if I wasn't scared what would I do Out West, in this new life.

I am camping in a house with a blow-up mattress, four boys and a sea of pale gray carpet.

I understand that the bright, blue of the sky, over the gold hills is an illusion of light scattering selectively.

I believe that avocados are verdant medicine and fall from their trees on cords like gifts being lowered to us.

I dream of playing that fiddle that is in a box, on a truck, on the highway and
making it sing past the beginner tunes I learned in high school, 
revving on into huapango, zydeco and bluegrass.

I trust that all things are a lesson, that nothing is without use and that God is filled with compassion.

I hope for rain this winter
green hills and a season of growth.
I am camping in a house with a blow-up mattress, four boys and a sea of pale gray carpet.

A Sudden Jump!

What a very strange thing it is to open up my own blog and see that it is almost exactly two months since my last post and so much has happened in our life without any notation.

We are no longer New Englanders! We've taken a leap, pulled everything together madly and flown to the other coast. We are now official residents of Northern California. It's so strange to say that we no longer live in that big house in Connecticut and that it also feels completely natural.

Moving like this (we still don't have any of our things beyond suitcases with clothes) and we haven't sold our house yet and we still don't have a new homeschool group) is a little jarring to consider but ultimately very freeing. It's light and open and full of nothing binding. I cried and agonized and kissed the house and friends goodbye and then just leapt. I am astonished at how perfectly at home I feel in our new home (a little one bath, one story cottage) and how "Friends To Get To Know" keep piling up warmly in my Contacts list (everyone seems to know someone that I need to meet).

This is not to imply that everything is ideal; we are camping out in the house with no beds or chairs or other fancy goods. The cottage comes with no dishwasher and although we've been here for three weeks without a washer and dryer (on order!) and there's not much in the back garden besides dry California dust around a giant concrete pad and some fruit trees. The window screens are torn, there's ivy climbing up inside the walls of the garage and the time difference is a lot tougher to negotiate via phone calls than I anticipated.

But still....still things are lovely. We are happy and warm and lucky and safe and having all kinds of adventures. This afternoon, for example, on our afternoon walk around the neighborhood my boys dragged home a giant banana leaf to play with! A banana-frickin-leaf!!! It's amazing.

That's our new place!

There are pink and yellow and red and orange rose bushes in the front yard that bloom more every day. When I had a sore throat the first week we were here I made myself lemon honey tea with fresh lemons off the tree by the kitchen door. A pair of doves just raised three babies and launched them from the back patio. One bathroom is unspeakably easy to clean. It's real and zany and fabulous! I recommend adventures, every time. Viva California!