In response to Karen’s excellent poem about writer’s block, The House of the Poet, I began to pine about my lack of anything beyond a haiku in recent weeks. I know I am busy doing other things, but nothing gets to the bottom of my soul like writing a poem does.
Maybe one reason is that I kind of decided to start writing and submitting poetry for publication, so I bought a Poet’s Market book, which is sitting there looking nice in my living room, I did open it, once. But since buying the book, and deciding to write less poetry for the blog, I’ve been surviving on minuscule helpings of haiku. Haiku is tasty, it’s kind of like dim sum, but I want more. I suppose I should begin psychoanalysis as to why I haven’t started upon my self imposed task of submitting for publication, yes I could write it off to ‘being busy’ and that wouldn’t be false, but it’s not really the reason either. I also can tell you that it is completely within my personality type to say I just haven’t felt like doing it yet. But really, it is the remains of paralyzing self doubt that I still haven’t quite been able to kill dead despite being a world traveling superwoman, able to beat off masses of descending rickshaw wallahs with a single ‘back off’ glance. Yet, even though I’ve masqueraded as a brave conquering superwoman, the demons live. And thrive.
Recently, during the few attempts when I have set myself down to write a poem, words just presented themselves out of my mind in such a jumbled state of garbage that their fate is to remain as scrap piles in my journal, only to be surprised in 10 years when I go back and look to see who I was then.
GARDENING HEALS
These pictures are the before and after shots of the planting beds I just made in front of my house. The first picture, I had dug out about two feet of lawn already before I took the shot. The shots are not great shots, I’m only showing you for documentary purposes.
I don’t know if it is that you have your hands on the ground and are playing with your pet earthworms, (trying to save them from the violent shovel instigated earth disasters that disrupt their little earthly abodes), or whether you are co-creating with the faeries when you are planting, or whether it’s because you are working your lazy ass off for the first time all winter, but gardens heal. Body, mind and soul. And newly invigorated from the spa of hard work, I decided to TRY to write a poem, and here it is, with the help of the structure of the time honored sonnet.
Calliope Goes Off to Play
A simple sonnet, that is all I ask,
To place upon the stacks of empty shelves,
Now set down on the sofa with the task,
Enlisting help from literary elves.
If I can’t write about the things I see,
Those things in grips of shadow hidden light,
I wonder then what night’s befallen me,
What’s crowded o’er the tendrils of my sight?
Calliope has fled into the fields,
I see her playing yonder with her friends,
While I, with shovel, dig for crops to yield,
The ground will fail if I don’t make amends.
Perhaps she’ll visit here for just this task
A simple sonnet, that is all I ask.
I thank you all for your abundant support, you have all inspired me hugely and vastly, and in gargantuan fashion.
Three Graces Night and Day by Cat Vibert
20X24 oil on canvas
