From your hospital bed
you stare out the window
at the empty bird feeder
unaware that the chirping you hear
comes from your satellite radio.
poem- love sick
The dog has been slurping in the toilet
He saunters down the hall,
water dripping from his muzzle,
stops beside me, gazing adoringly,
and kisses my arm with long wet strokes.
As he flops to clean his privates,
I go off in search of soap.
poem- nestled June 15, 2014
I crawl between clean sheets,
inhaling crisp scent.
You snore softly on your side,
then reach out and pull me
against you, our ankles entangling,
fingers weaving together
your snores still filling the
dark, dancing with me
in your dreams.
Another milestone June 14, 2014
How exciting!
Today I passed one hundred fifty thousand visitors on the blog!
Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
poem- half a year
Six months ago
you were fighting to play pickle ball
laughing on the small court
stretching your racket to hit the ball
stumbling and crashing onto the court,
filling your head with
flashing white fireworks,
exploding star bursts.
Now
you are fighting for two more weeks
laughing with guests in the small room,
stretching your life to see your children
stumbling and crashing against time
filling your belly with fluid,
flashing white pain
imploding your life
.
.
.
For Auntie Linda
poem- wind June 13, 2014
Change blows in
on the wind
on the sweet scent of honeysuckle
and the stinging tang of chicken manure
Sort the good from the bad,
and set your sail
to catch the breeze you need
for your new direction.
poem-blue
New covers
for old chairs.
Pieces of summer sky
cut, sewn, and stapled
Fresh summer days
contained within a frame
set in the living room.
poem-ten thousand June 12, 2014
“No one
in the publishing industry
takes a blog seriously,”
said the presenter
“until it has at least
ten thousand followers.”
I thought about my three hundred
loyal followers and sighed.
I would never manage that.
For six months I thought
about her words, knowing what
WordPress said to do,
and how I wasn’t doing it.
So one April, two weeks
before I gave a social media workshop,
I tested their theories.
In two weeks, 444 followers
became a thousand.
Hmm. I thought.
If I keep doing this,
I could have ten thousand
in a year or so.
So I visited other blogs,
commented, and liked their work.
Introducing myself, and noticing others.
It’s the old mantra
‘the only way to have a friend
is to be a friend.’
and here we are!
14 months later,
ten thousand people
see my posts, leave their comments,
share my words, welcome me into their world
laugh with me
offer suggestions,
and make every day
interesting.
I send ten thousand
thank yous to each of you.
I’m grateful you’ve joined my journey
that you share your lives and your time.
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you.
quote-ghosts
“The odd sense of calm with which he’d waked was still with him. Something had changed in the night. Maybe it was sleeping…among the ghosts of his own future.”
Diana Gabaldon
Written in My Own Heart’s Blood.
These lines resonated with me. While the character in this scene is being literal, I think we sleep among the ghosts of our own futures on a frequent basis. For example, you know how they say men carry within them the seeds of their own destruction. The ‘hamartia’ or fatal flaw of literary characters occur within our real lives, and who we will be is created by the decisions that we make.
Destinations require both journeys and beginnings. We go to bed with a decision, and we rise with a spectre of our future self as a result.
I suppose this also works in reverse. If we have a ‘someone’ we want to be, we can only get there by the conscious and sub-conscious decisions we make toward that image of ourselves. Just like if you want to be a teacher, you volunteer with kids, graduate from high school, study at university, so there are steps to every image.
If you want to write a book some day, sit today and pound out two hundred words. Tomorrow pound out five hundred. Get your rhythm, Keep writing. Eventually you will have a book, and eventually, you will have readers.
poem- deep June 11, 2014
This isn’t silence
This is you
thinking
cogs whirring
thoughts stirring
trolling the bottom
of the ocean
for the solution
to your dilemma,
resolving the conflict
with yourself.
Shawn L. Bird 