I've let this blog languish again. I have photos to add, but have yet to find the time to add them. I've been busy, yes, but will go easy on the excuses. I will say that there is excitement and momentum in the air, dampened slightly by schedules and over-commitment; only slightly, but it's the writing that's feeling the slighting most at the moment.
And here's a true, and truly strange, side effect of so many thoughts and so little writing time: I've been composing nighttime poetry. The way one might count sheep or play back the day, as I drift toward slumber, verse after verse assembles in my mind. A readership of one is all these poor poems are afforded: just me, composing, and considering, and then, as sleep comes, forgetting.
A few random lines have found me in the mornings, but only a few. This one, however, which I have come to think of as Purchased Grace, has stayed remarkably intact:
She moves with this sort of purchased grace
Something I can never buy, for the shop is not open
Never was, not for me, not even for her, really -
This grace was purchased not by her, but for her
Paid for by parents and grandparents
An inheritance that provides a polish I can identify but not embody
Something cultivated and refined
Something confidently attractive
A sophisticated ease that makes me uneasy, knowing
I am clumsy and patch-worked
Always awkwardly behind,
Always so last season
Yet she looks at me as if there is something
Something about me
Unpurchased and not for sale
Something missing from her closet
Something she wants to acquire
Something overlooked, then stumbled into, under-valued
A perfect fit in a thrift store, a remnant that became
Unexpectedly, tentatively beautiful.
What poetry will visit me tonight? I don't know, but I'll take a little solace in it, and then work to have more daytime writing time, to craft words that I can share rather than be haunted by words with poor circulation, very little patience, and an apparent obsession with verse.
