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.