Poetry Friday: A Poem About When They Met

Happy Poetry Friday! Man, has it ever been a long time! I am sharing a small,original poem today about a couple I know, first finding each other. Love is no respecter of schedules or personal reservations, that's partly what is so wonderful about it. It has this capacity to sweep us out of our limits and logic and there is a great beauty and power there.

Here's to those who love us and love each other....

Smitten In Northern Michigan

He had hair like last summer's beach grass,
Pale, joy-pinched blue eyes and skin
Like the warm sweep of a sand dune.
He wore flannels and worn jeans and
A smile like the unclouded sun.
He drove a pick-up with doors that fell off.
And she wondered why she felt like a living meteor.


Happy Weekend friends! Hope Saturday finds you with a tall iced coffee and a lazy morning start so that you can head over to our host site, A Year Of Reading, for Poetry Friday and check out all the other contributions this week. People share all kinds of stuff, their thoughts on new poems they just found, favorite poems they admire and also original work (which is my personal goal). To read the rest of my poems from previous Poetry Fridays....check out the tab at the top of the page labeled "Original Verse" and have a gander through the accumulating pile.

The Rythmn of the Rails

There's something about trains. Little boys especially are obsessed with them thanks the bizarrely popular show about Thomas The Tank Engine coupled with the importance of the wonderful wooden train sets now so ubiquitous in toy collections. I was never a little boy, I never had a Brio train set and as a child I had never hear of Thomas and yet from my early childhood till now trains have been a  romantic notion.

We had a day trip recently, while Nana and Grandpa Alan were visiting to take in the Essex Steam Train and Riverboat in combination. I do recommend the outing if you get the chance. It is a bit expensive so it was a special splurge gift from the visiting grandfolks. If you are trying to trim costs, feel free to cut the riverboat section. It was nice to be out on the cool river on a blazing hot day (100 degrees at our house further south) but the actual boat itself didn't offer much in the way of a unique experience. I think you get the same feeling from any boating experience. The train is where its at.

When I was a little girl I remember being pretty impressed and swoony about the freight train that ran behind my grandparents house. Even though I didn't grow up anywhere near a rail I never found the sound of the train going by annoying or disturbing, it was all about romance. As an adult I found out that my maternal grandpa was a genuine boxcar jumping hobo for a while in his youth, riding the rails to California to seek his fortune. After that I always thought of him when I saw train tracks curving off into the distance. I still do.

The rides on the Essex Steam Train vibe exactly how you want a nostalgic souvenir train voyage to feel. They keep it short but long enough to feel real, they use original cars with original seats and decoration (albeit updated with modern lights and such) and the giant engine is painted black and belches smoke exactly like a painting. The boys were open-mouthed walking past it to board.

One of the things I love about train travel in general is the way you feel genteel and historic while partaking. Even Manhattan's modern trains run on rails and rock you rhythmically, and the conductor still walks through the cars taking tickets just the way that Laura Ingalls and Heidi describes. There's little something about rail travel that is so unchanged, so elementally the same as in "the olden days" that it seems completely possible that we could really be in Anna Karenina or The Orient Express.We ought to all carry valises and watch for our trunks at the station!

I love the surreal view out the window of an airplane at the Cloudland above it all but the running visual commentary out the window of a train is an integral part of the trip to wherever you're going. Trains take you past waterfalls and deep into canyons, smoothly through quaint town centers and along the sides of mountains. I don't think I'd ever nap well on a train or get any reading done....too much to see. And lots of it untouched by car travel or billboard advertisements.

When Nana and Grandpa Alan went home they left the boys a large box full of new wooden tracks and cars for their train set, so much so that a new giant box had to be purchased to house them all. I am not a toy collecting queen but I don't mind this one. Link those cars up boys and squint down the squiggle of tracks you're arranging on the living room rug....I'm all for dreaming in that direction!

wooden toy train bridge (Photo credit: uccemebug)

Related articles

• I Love Trains (the Big Adult-Sized Ones)

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• Wooden Train Dining Table Redefines Playing With Your Food

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• Train Rail Hypnosis

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• Trains in the Attic

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Poetry Friday: Married Love

Happy Poetry Friday one and all! I hope you've survived this chilly week in style and are launching into a weekend that will treat you well. I am a walking stereotype, the biggest thing I'm looking forward to is a grocery shopping trip to fortify the house with all my food cravings. Heh. That's what you get when a pregnant woman tells you about her inner life.

Image by Jennuine Captures via Flickr

Sharing a love poem today. This is only the second one I've ever written and although I aspire to emit bodies of amorous verse it doesn't come easily to me. I am very wary of mush and trite sentiment and also of untruth both of which seem more icky than sweet to me.

 Carving Our Initials

Here in our tenth year of marriage, Love has arrived

Gently swooping in to roost in the dormer over our heads.

It came when we traded totems, I saw you let go of your

Iron plans and glinting thoughts to consider and hold mine,

Smooth in my hands like beach stones, well worn and loved.

I have seen you open your mind like a creaking Dutch door,

Allowed it to sag agape, not closing out the interior glimpse.

You have seen me halved like a avocado, showing you my

Damp pit, and you have looked, open eyed on my green center.

Love has been born in our mutual loss and in the tender

Hope that grows up like a bright shoot pressed between

Two people feeling powerless in each others arms.

If you would like to sample the other contributions for this week's Poetry Friday celebration, click over to Wild Rose Reader where our host Elaine is compiling a list of participating bloggers.

A Locket Gift

I swear, I don't live in a novel. That said, I did, indeed find a beautiful old locket this morning, tucked into the floorboards of my attic.

I can't complain. Sometimes life hands you ridiculous doses of romance even if it does amount to an absurdly little thing. This is the sort of thing dreamy girls like me want to buy old houses for. I imagine scenarios like this but I don't think I know anyone personally that this sort of thing has happened to.

First there was the long curved bladed, etched filet knife, then the mother of pearl crucifix and now beautiful old locket. A locket for crying out loud! The only way it could get better was if the inside contained the grainy black and white photos of wartime lovers and the necklace was wrapped in a love note promising undying affection. The locket is completely empty save the tiny heart-shaped frames meant to hold photos in, but it is beautiful and it's not every necklace that comes with a story like this.

It feels like personal, lavish Divine Love in tangible form sometimes for these stunning little life gifts to appear. I have to say that I sure feel like I have been beamed upon. I know that may sound trite or hokus-pokus or even vain but I mean it in a truly grateful, honest way.

Related articles

• Hang My Locket Around Your Neck (debbie915631.wordpress.com)
• Police seek owner of unclaimed locket (cbc.ca)
• The Locket (classicsparklers.wordpress.com)
• Afraid of Losing My Locket (boobykizzy.wordpress.com)

Poetry Friday: A Love Poem

 It is after valentine season so, a love poem seemed about right. I have written really only one other in my history as a writer. I have either been too busy being intoxicated by the experience of being in love or else jaded by the difficulty of the struggle to stay connected to another person to really do much in the way of love verses.

Then last year sometime, A's brother Miq was kind enough and brave enough to share some of the love poetry he had written for Penny (of which there were copious reams) and I got inspired. I think my hangups lately have been more technical. I'm scared to write about love because just like painting autumn trees or flowers, it is so easy to do it badly. Cliches are rife and thin, plastic versions seem all to likely to be what would come pouring out of my keyboard.

But, like I said, it is valentine season and a girl has to try, doesn't she? I'd hate to have never really tried. Here's to you A and to married love.

 

                                                  A Circle

I remember driving in staggering circles around the black rim of Tahiti

So bone-tired after our wedding that we could hardly see the road ahead.

We held hands, slouching into each other’s bodies over the wee stick shift

Staying awake by tracing circles on each other’s palms and thinking aloud

I was your sidekick Bonny and you were my knight with the shining desktop.

We were skirting the rim of our future, dipping our toes into life together.

Now we’re several revolutions into marriage, all knee-deep in shared history

And I can’t remember the last time I kinked my mid-section over the console

Just to feel the warmth of your shoulder, my fingers tangled in your hair.

But last night, grinning in the dark, I traced a warm circle in your sleepy palm

The baby was standing up in bed between us using your ear-lobes for handles

Since it was 3 AM, we were so bone-tired we could hardly see the road ahead

The forgotten desktop glowed down the hall and I was too tired to think aloud.

This circle on your palm is my love note to you, a little whirling symbol of hope:

And I am here, keeping myself awake, circling the rim of our future in my mind.

You can find more Poetry Friday participants at Rasco From RIF today.

Related articles

• The best Valentine's Day love poems, as chosen by Slate's writers and editors. (slate.com)
• On Inspiring a Love of Poetry in Children (seapoetry.wordpress.com)
• 7 Sites To Find Great Valentine Poems For Your Date (makeuseof.com)
• John Stammers's top 10 love poems (guardian.co.uk)

A Christmas Date

A and I are taking time out tonight to go out alone together and get a little couple space. It's really good to do this anyhow, in normal life, but right now...when I am doing daily battle with the holiday gremlins of chaos, it's even more important.

 I need to remember that I love him, even if he drive me crazy. That we can enjoy being together. That love is the deepest, best good in life. That we are a couple, not just parents, employees, homemakers, schedulers, packers, bakers, cleaners, policemen, caregivers, creators, and homeowners. I hope this will be a new tradition. Our own, window of love in the madness of the season. A time to be still together, to step away, to absorb the beauty around us, and to purposefully make a small memory.

I'm not sure where we're going...we haven't had time to plan anything, so we'll make it up. After we go somewhere fun to eat and hopefully laugh a little bit, we're going to try to find a special Christmas ornament in a shop somewhere, for each of our boys, one that we can label with the year and their name and hold in our hands and imbue with all the warmth and richness that this year has held for our family. A small way to remember this time and try to help ourselves stir the aroma of purposeful hope just before we rush wildly out of town.

Poetry Friday: A Noun List

Today I am sharing a poem I wrote five years ago...the year I was 25. This poem is sort of a word game I challenged myself to. I decided to have a go at writing something personal and slightly vulnerable that included the top 25 most common nouns in the English language. All the nouns are in capitals.

I've included a few shots of my circa 2005-6 for your enjoyment, give you a little image in your mind of the "me" that is speaking.

My Uncommon Experience

I have found my PLACE in the spiral of TIME
My niche between WOMAN and CHILD
I am hovering in this 25th YEAR
Breathing in my fully fragrant LIFE
I savor the WAY I fit snugly with this MAN,
Our love a snapping, tender THING
But just broken-in enough to leave a
PERSON feeling warmed at the sight of us.
I cherish the pizzazz of youth under the
GOVERNMENT of a new womanly knowledge.
I love this DAY when I cup them both in my HAND.
And, I am pausing here, at this comfortable POINT,
Young enough to still have a robust NUMBER of elders
But old enough to have developed a mothering EYE,
Respect, keeping COMPANY with
A cozy amount of irresponsibility.
I am suspending animation for just this WEEK,
Just long enough to WORK this GROUP of moments
Into that fat CASE of files marked “Great Feelings,”
I will chew slowly, nourished on the delicacy
That is this minute PART of my life in the
WORLD distilled into a fleeting seasonal dish.
The great PROBLEM is: The FACT of Time's moving on.

If you would like to see more Poetry Friday participant posts, head on over to Random Noodling for the full list.

So Far This Week....

We've had our first local sweet corn. Its been ripe before now but, I just finally got a chance to pick up an armful and haul it home to douse with butter and salt. YUM. It was really, really good. Am contemplating making some corn chowder in the near future. What else do you do with fresh sweet corn besides eat it on the cob in volumes? I'd love to hear your ideas.

We watched Nib coo and gurgle and chortled together over his increasingly charming almost giggle. He is so close people...so close! Argh! He's an incredible little morning bird. Wakes up full of little wet and cheery things to say, all wreathed in smiles. He's a darling dear. No other word. We continue to be amazed at his ability to sleep at night. I am a fervent co-sleeper but, with this baby I really haven't because he wakes up once a night and seems to prefer his own private slumber in a little basket on the floor next to our bed. Quite incredible. I am very astonished at this phenomenon and have never really seen anything like it before although of course you read of such urban legends in books. (I thought they were lies, all lies!) We are having far more trouble at nighttime with his big brother Dee. I guess they don't call it terrible two for nothing.

Also, there was baking. I realize I am supposed to be savoring the chilly last bits of my air conditioned existence before moving into a big house with no cooling mechanism of any kids BUT...I can't go on a very long baking fast. I love to bake. So, I fell prey to a dreamy sounding recipe for pound cake...a classic that I had never made (Can you believe it?). And it was just okay. I'm not wild about pound cake I guess, I'm all give or take about it after the experience and a little reflection. Yes..but LOOK!!!! Isn't that beautiful? That was my very favorite part of the whole event, right there...that beautiful creamy, smooth, angel wing batter. Mmmmmm......stunning, no? 

And we had a date this week! Its been an age. We're budgeting out money and trying to be careful not to spend any more than we have to (house down payment) and one of the things that took a serious cut for a while was our babysitter money. That meant no dates for a while which was kind of hard to swallow but, oh it felt good to go out again. We just paid for the sitter, no dinner, no movie...we went for a walk on the foggy seashore instead which fit my romance bill. Yay New England!

Meltdown Music

Yeah, *cough* so, it was just yesterday that I was beaming generously out to the world my recipe for chocolate cake and telling everyone that I was whizzing along so well....heh.

But isn't that the way it works? Cloudbursts yesterday, meltdown today despite the golden morning sunshine. Well, now I've had the meltdown out of the way so lets hope I'm just on my way to normal again and have the bumps out of my system...I know its just part of rolling with the punches and really, really getting the engine humming.

Today, a video link of a new group I've discovered recently thanks to the wonderful magpie skills of my friend Alison. Please enjoy this extremely fabulous German band who do a wonderful collective peppy Elvis impression. I can't stop toe tapping when I play this song. I'm dedicating this to my patient husband who listened to me rave and cry all the way to his work this morning and then hugged and kissed me extra as he got out instead of cold shouldering me for even a minute. You're a gem dear, and you can stand under my umbrella anytime.




XOXOXOXO