Happy New Year!

Thanks so much for being here!   I hope your 2015 begins with a lovely surprise and turns out to be as wonderful as you imagine.

We've got big plans for this year.   At the top of my list is a stairway that goes from the first floor to the new second floor - on the inside of the house.   Right now we're using a ladder - from the outside of the back of the house [and over the mudroom roof] and it's rather hard to move big things up that way.  

In the grand tradition of the blog, here is a New Year sonnet.   Because every new year should start with some bad poetry.     Don't you think?  [Others  sonnets are here.]

Sonnet #5
A quiet silken winter day of ice
And snow. So still. Devoid of any burst
Of movement, any fluttered wing. Twice
A liar is a frosty day. The first:
A blanket, wove of fallen snow. But one
most frigid, stilling life into a deep
Eternal sleep. The second: winter sun.
The harlot star does not her promise keep
To warm and nurture life. She offers nothing
But an icy, blinding glare. Or shrouds
Entire behind the mourning drap’ry swathing
Sky. Yet ice will melt. Below the clouds
Sleeps deep, not dead, with expectation rife,
Yes, there, beneath, inside, at last, still, - Life.

Late Summer Sonnet

It's late summer, the time when a gardener's heart turns to sonnets.

Yes, this is a poetry blog, too, and as you know, I am freakishly fond of sonnets. See the others here.

I can't help it. I love them.

It's ok if you don't like them though - I am no rural Shakespeare. That's for sure.



Rural Sonnet #4

Late summer bursts with color near my gates,
On roadside, hill and woods. The yellow blaze
Of daisies short and tall illuminates
The quiet edges of the woods when days
Grow hotter still and August sears. The grass
Blooms by the ironweed’s bright fuchsia knots
And bluing pools of mistflower as they mass
In lower spots beside orange touch-me-nots.
The golden rods of goldenrods sway high
Above lobelia’s lovely violet spires –
And asters’ paling pinks intensify
the almost hidden arum’s burning fires
‘Til jealous trees in autumn’s chilly nights
transform their own limbs into fiery brights.

Happy New Year!

I hope you're not too hung over after last night's festivities.    We really partied here!   There was music and sushi and eggnog and fizzy water and we finally dropped into bed around 11pm.  Or maybe it was 11:30.   It was really really late.

Yeah.  We're real partiers.  It'll take us a couple of days to recover. 

I've been thinking a lot about sonnets lately.   Partly because of the Christmas sonnet I wrote you last year and partly because I'm teaching a homeschool co-op class on poetry.   I've mentioned before that I am no poet.  In fact, I didn't even get poetry at all until after I had my first baby.   Then, magically, one morning I looked into her beautiful face and she smiled at me.   And wha-BAM.   I understood poetry.

That is a true story.

It may have had something to do with hormones.

Anyway. I have discovered that I really like writing sonnets.   Who knew??   The trick for me is getting the first line.   Once I get the first line, I can wrestle with the rest and end up with something interesting, which is all I'm after.

So I wrote you a New Year's Day Sonnet in celebration of the junk so often seen surrounding our rural homes.   I hope you enjoy it.  The poem, not the junk.  Though you're welcome to enjoy the junk, too, if you like.






Rurification Sonnet #2     Rural Yards

Our yards are full of things we don’t need yet
but might, some time, need right here close at hand,
like last year’s papers (good for mulching). Let
nobody touch them there! Yes, I have planned
a dozen ways to use the mower that
expired in ’10 just past the giant yew,
and other ways to use the one the cat
likes sleeping on. You see?! We need the two!
The piles of wood, junked cars and trucks -- the goats
and chickens live quite happy in the mess
of wires and bales and windows from the boats
My cousins got the year the cider press
became ‘antique’ instead of just plain old.
All fine just where they’re at, till used or sold.