I’m so pleased to have learned of Snowflakes in a Blizzard (Separating authors from the herd and giving them one-on-one time with readers), a blog hosted by Darrell Laurant, who contacted me a couple of months ago. I’m grateful for the kind surprises in life. Here’s the site. And here’s what Darrell says (excerpt):

I hope you enjoy it. And if you’d like to be included, contact me at writersbridge AT hotmail.com.

Best,

Darrell Laurant

Note: I am a 40-year veteran of journalism who retired two years to do freelancing full time. My first novel, “The Kudzu Kid,” was published last October, and lots of people are not buying it. A more recent book, “Inspiration Street,” is doing considerably better. Maybe I’m learning something.

I had occasion the other day when someone said, “the holidays are usually the hardest,” to respond, “For most people, yes, but it doesn’t bother me.” I have reflected on my glibness and wondered if that’s why, ever since, he has placed himself so center, as if to say, “Really? You’re not troubled just a little?” Here we all are (most of us), preparing to gather with family and friends, to celebrate according to our traditions. It’s a time when we try to include everyone. Sometimes we run ourselves ragged, catching a few hours with this family member, fighting traffic and avoiding holiday accidents (drunk revelers), just so we can give a hug and laugh a little.

And that’s good. Laughter is. But then we notice a tinny quality in our own voice and that’s when the missing person’s absence pushes us against the wall, even years later. We’ve had no choice but to accommodate, but we’re not “over it” and the trite “closure” they keep talking about is more to satisfy a narrative than to describe reality. The wound doesn’t close, though we may go months with the seeping so subtle we don’t notice until all of the sudden the pool is full and flooding behind our eyes.

That is one way we fool ourselves, the glib wave of the hand–but it should be a warning, anytime our answer comes so fast and easy: get ready for big dose of humbling.

More reflective now, I am missing being able to see and touch two sons. In the next 10 days, I will love (and touch and laugh with) my oldest and our two granddaughters and my family. But I will honor the sadness that comes when we’re supposed to gather all the ones we love into our wide embrace and can’t. I will stop saying, it doesn’t bother me.

So this poem is for that. It’s a modified ghazal, “Ghazal by a Thread.” If you’re listening, given them a hug.

I wrote this poem to mark the way we continue to see a beloved who has died–in other people, in the way someone walks or the shape of a jaw. It’s been seven years and I still turn back, just to be sure, when someone has caught my eye for some little thing that reminds me of him. In that moment the possibility of him rushes back. In “Minor Chord,” I wanted to start with the idea of “if” (if only) to try to express the longing that comes whenever we see someone who shares that little piece of him–that gesture–and how this merging of stranger with beloved is like the merging of song and painting.

As part of the PBS Outside the Book show here in Bowling Green, David Lee interviewed me at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest. Here it is:

As part of the PBS Outside the Book show here in Bowling Green, David Lee interviewed me at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest. Thanks, David!

Interview about Seeking the Other Side with David Lee.

Recently, my students in SRSC 525 Place and the Problem of Healing, submitted their self-portraits, designed as woodcuts using black and white paper, most of them. They then photographed their design and shared it using Voice Thread (my class is online, so this gave us the opportunity to step off the page for awhile and listen to others’ narratives). They were all so wonderful I wish I could share them here. Two of them featured trees and roots as part of the design, and they reminded me of my own “tree forms” poems, so I told them I wanted to share one of them, the one recorded below, “When I Fall.” I haven’t read or thought of this poem for awhile, so it pleased me that other elements of my students’ self-portraits came up–stars, for instance, and mountains, and stepping stones, or in this case a path that was once the tree.

Since I haven’t posted on my blog for awhile (which makes it seem as if I don’t care about poetry anymore). . . . sad face . . . I am back, if briefly, with this: