The Art of the Moment

an artist sketches

on the texture of the wind

pensive butterfly

I have started a photo blog at my Postcard Art site.  Not sure I am excited about the layout, and so am wondering if a different blogging software specifically for photo blogging might work better.

Tags: haiku, poem

A lot of my on-line photographer acquaintances have made a move over to RedBubble since the initial troubles with JPG Magazine, a year or so past, and so I also set up an account there, the middle of the week. It has several advantages over my JPG Magazine pages, including a set-up that facilitates replying to comments made on one’s entries, photos, art, and writing. Also, when one uploads saleable pieces to one’s account, they are made available for purchase. Fulfillment’s always been the dreadful thing about selling art. Well, submitting poems to those what publishes ‘em is more dreadful: finding out who publishes the particular genre and flavor; their submission guidelines, schedules; gathering paper, envelope, postage, printed copy, and writing a cover letter (yes, I know I do that part of it for a living, but still…); and keeping track of what has been sent there, when, how long to wait before sending a follow-up inquiry; etc., etc. While the response rate has been very good, that’s not been sufficient to prompt me to go through the process more than a dozen times over the past thirty-six years.

I would then suppose that seeing my work accepted by edited publications is not one of the reasons that I write.

Sometimes it’s really nice to have more than one park to play in…more than one place to write. I have been digging through my old archives, and I found some recipes that I used to have on the web, years ago. I’m thinking that it would be fun to save some of my 15-minute soup lunch recipes on the web, too, so that I can find them, again. Anyway, I uploaded three of my gluten-free dessert recipes to My Kitchen.

April is poetry month, and I have not decided whether I really want to write a poem for each day. Didn’t make it for November, but I came close. If I don’t get one for each day, perhaps I will upload all of them at once to a dedicated “Poetry Month” page. Take some of the pressure off, to write one every day.

My youngest sister is doing well and should be ready to go home, soon. Our mother will undoubtedly feel much more relaxed, once that happens. She was right, evidently, when she said that one never quits being “Mother.” It never ceases to amaze me that so many people are willing and able to commit to parenthood and see it through for almost all of their adult lives. What a calling!

I’ve uploaded a page of photos taken in my home town, mostly older ones. Still hoping to get to family pictures, this spring. Putting some up for my mother on her site has inspired me.

I am so very pleased that I finally have a computer to replace my old laptop, which has suffered greatly over the past few years. Especially, I missed the “x” key, which Samantha jumped on, just a few months after we brought her home, and broke entirely. The nice thing about tax refund time is having all the resources gathered together at once, enabling one to address the larger or more costly lacks in one’s life.

My list included notebook computer, replacement battery for the old Lenovo, a winter parka or hooded coat, shoes (my having worn out and tossed away all but my “funeral” shoes), a frying pan and covered wok, and undergarments. I’ve now purchased all but two of the categories on my list, and I am pleased.

I am surprised by how much larger the notebook computer seems. The keys are large, and there is a real keypad, for a change. I had missed that on both the netbook and laptop. Not that they’ve all come home to roost, mind you! UPS tracker shows my battery as wandering the streets of Salt Lake City, looking for eastern North Dakota.

It’s odd, though, what one will do without for the sake of immediate convenience. Priorities are not always as one might expect.

RL has intervened, but only for a little while longer.

“Waiting for Snow”

The old crescent moon

shrinks, hiding among branches

stripped by winter’s winds.

Tags: November, poem

one more card to say
that mere words cannot express
the depths of his love

And to think that at one time I was convinced that marriage was not for me. Mine is the most wonderful husband in the world. Yes, really!

Tags: birthday, November, poem

Filtered autumn light,
speak to me of summer, gone,
and winter yet to come.
Color my vision with golden glory
and fill my nostrils with the scent
of those last flowers
clinging to vines
close by the window.

Speak to me of time past
and time that’s yet to be,
tomorrow’s promises.

Tags: November, Photo, poem

Ever changing, the faces
and the names of people
at the dinner table on
Thanksgiving Day.

New husbands, wives, and children,
and their own families of the heart,
find their way into the folds
of Great-grandma’s quilts
into our lives and homes.

Large quilts, warm
and welcoming…

Always room for more.

Tags: November, poem

Going through my papers, here, I’ve once again come across a notebook with loose sheets of all sorts—poetry from the 60’s and 70’s that I’ve put aside for one reason or another. Some published, long ago, but mostly not. I’ve never been much for submitting poems or short stories. Only essays that were published on-line at Moondance and some in paper publications, and those were much later—within the past 20 years.

I put my name and address at the top of some of the typewritten sheets. An apartment dweller until my marriage in the 90s, the address helps in pinning down when a piece was written and what my circumstances might have been at the time. Some…most of the poems were written in my journal (lately called, thanks to The Artist’s Way, "Morning Pages"). When I came to the end of a journal, I saved the pages with poems and essays, and the makings for the same, and shredded the rest. A habit born of having known too much about the wrong things and the wrong people. Fortunately, my having a "roll-up" memory, none of that remains to burden me.

Anyway, I’ve chosen two of my poems to share in this post, both written on March 13, 1977.

Tags: past, poem