The Life and Musings of Karen J. McLean
Let's Go The spring sun shines My dog is hopeful She noses at my keys But there isn't time. My dog is hopeful The tail is wagging But there isn't time "Let's go," her eyes plead. The tail is wagging She noses at my keys "Let's go," her eyes plead. The spring sun shines.
This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Susan at Soul Blossom Living.
This is my first time taking part in Poetry Friday. Many thanks to Molly Hogan of Nix the Comfort Zone for hosting this week. The Poetry Friday hosting list can be found in the sidebar at A Year of Reading.
I have wanted to take part in this activity for a while now, especially since I have begun writing my memoir. The harder I try to write this specific work of creative nonfiction, the more poetry starts to insist on coming out of my head. I’m sure the Universe is amused at this.
Here are my two poems.
Superintendent He walks the halls like He owns them These halls, these walls, These doors, behind which Tenants cower. Jangling keys, Steel-toed boots, Stride of a mission. Roof leak on Rent day. Quintet Five graves on a cedar knoll Roots twisted around stones, The writing eroded. In the surrounding pasture, The cows, oblivious To the nameless dead, Flick futile tails at flies Clustered to drink In the pools of their eyes. The sun shines down, A light in August, While life lolls on.
Every month in the Time to Write Community (part of Teach Write), we have a challenge or two to get our creative juices flowing to areas they might not have considered.
The challenge for February is “My Life in Five Sentences,” and since I’m usually trying to pull something together on the last day of the month, I thought I’d take an early stab at it.
Well, everything came to me as images, and as poetry instead of prose. I wrote it and shared it with my fellow Time-to-Writers, and then debated sharing it here. It’s pretty personal, and a little bit raw, but hey. That’s — literally — Life.
My Life in Five Sentences I was born a half-century ago In a centuries-old city of Fog, smokestacks, wharves, And old brick. At ten, I was dragged off to Lower Suburbia, Different Province, A community of cookie-cutter houses, No ocean, few friends, And too many bullies. My intuition led me to safe places In the forms of teachers, And books, and libraries, with My own words pouring onto the page. My twenties and thirties meant Home, Back to my city of bricks and mist, Marrying my mister, rocking an empty cradle, And countless days assuming different names With the front of the class my stage. My forties were a blur stirred up By a noon crosswalk and a Ford Focus, Relearning to walk straight, to think straight, And a slow regenesis of Self, With my words being the last to return, At the age of fifty.