Happy Mothers Day

I'm back at the Applebox for a writing/gabbing date with the Pointy Pals. It's another overcast day, which is odd for May, but makes it easier to be inside. I brought both of the poetry books I bought at the reading last week with me. I need to get more poetry back in my life. I'm feeling very blank right now, so hoping that I'll be able to take Billy's advice that blank times are the best for writing; perhaps my annual poem might make its appearance today. It's been a year since my last one, which I still haven't finished editing. On the bright side, I want to edit it still--I think it has a lot of potential, and that makes me happy. There's a fair amount of dross, but I don't think it's one of the 300 bad ones Billy Collins thinks that poets have to get out before the good ones come. The other thing I like about the poem has come with the passage of time: it has an Easter-ish/renewal theme since that's when I wrote it. A friend makes an appearance and in the poem--I imagine him letting go and finding love--and he just got engaged! It's going to be hard to edit that part wisely, not let knowing what I know now interfere with the moment it was trying to embody. We'll see how I do.

Here's one of Kay Ryan's poems:

Hide and Seek
It's hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It's
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone's come
around. It's
like some form
of skin's developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.

*****

Early morning view from the Intercontinental, SF, May 2010
Originally uploaded by suzipaw

I spent Monday through Thursday at a conference in San Francisco. It didn't seem as draining a show as it usually is, maybe because my stay was a day shorter than it has been in the past and I only attended two evening social events rather than the usual three or four. I stayed in a new hotel, and though my room was most pleasant (nothing quite like having the toilet adjacent to a floor to ceiling window) I just didn't sleep well. One thing was very nice: When I left home, the roses were just beginning to open. When I pulled into the driveway four days later, they were ablaze with color. The pink Victorian Spice is particularly abundant this year. I have my two largest vases filled with flowers, and the living room is quite odiferous, as M might say.

*****

I'm looking forward to my travels this month. I'm off to Washington state to see Grandma next week, then Washington DC at the end of the month for another show. I had been toying with the idea of spending more time on the East coast, but I'm gone so much this month, I ended up booking a flight back the evening the show ends, something I've never done before. That's going to be a long day, but I know I'll be glad to wake up at home rather than spending the whole next day in transit. And then there are those birthdays this month--brother turns the big five-oh, and Sophia will be just plain oh, so there may be more festive journeys around those milestones.

I need to start knitting again. The purple baby dress isn't getting any larger, while the baby it's intended for is…