Part Of The Journey

The path today had slushy spots, icy spots, snowy spots, and bare spots.  I did my walk run jog thing which felt very nice and saw some chickadees and what I thought might be red-winged blackbirds, but could just have been grackles.  Still.  Yesterday there was sun birdsong and gurgling water. 

This next week I'll be going to AWP here in Boston.  I am scared and nervous and super-excited and just plain curious.  This is my first year going to an AWP and I'm quite sure I'll be overwhelmed.  I can't even decide what panels I want to go to, what off-site readings I wanna be sure to go to, or what books I want to buy at the bookfair.  I will try and keep you posted on what all occurs there and all the things that happen.  I'm hopefully gonna be meeting some wonderful writers I've only "met" on-line so that'll be nice.  And nerve-wracking...did I mention I'm nervous about seeing all the poets I'm crazy about?

Today I sent my manuscript out to like four or five contests.  Cha-ching!  That's expensive, but hopefully will be worth it.  I'm still tweaking the book, which I've titled Her House Of Matches, still trying to get that perfect poem order happening.  I realized today that I've sent it out for about a year and a half.  I know it can take years, and that this is all part of the journey.  And since I'm not writing any poems, at least it's fun to play with those poems. 


Estrangement
       
Better if the chickadee gave up
its sweetheart call,
or the embrace eroded against the trellis
of amaryllis, or was lost
in the arbor of grapes clustering
like gossip.

A shame, its insistence
on clarity, clear pitch sailing over beds
of oleander, over the clarinet
branches of juniper,

so that its hoarse offer
goes unanswered, ricochets
off the crumbling wall at woods' edge
where the mint parts
from the jasmine.


Paula Bohince
Verse Daily