Write...Edit...Publish : January 2014, New Beginnings

Nothing that can't be broken.  Take it as it comes.  Let it go and let it be.  Those have been my NY resolutions for pretty much every year for the last decade or two. 

The past year’s been more good than bad – writing-wise and otherwise, chockfull of changes, of milestones.


I wrote my 1000^th poem last year, earned the right to call myself a poet, methinks. I moved into my 20^th, and another stopgap home.  I also knocked off, with great relish, two long-hankered-after journeys/destinations from my bucket list.  Okay, make that three.

A poem of mine got published and  I won a couple writing contests – the Get Published one run by Harper Collins India was the biggie. It’s a different story that it’s taking its own sweet time winding its way from my dubious epiphany to a concrete story-in-a-book, but it’s all about the journey rather than just the destination, so I am thinking positive, trimming all lamps within reach and keeping hopes well supplied with fuel.  It’s been a learning experience, the whole past year, 2014 will have its work cut out to top all that.

Now to get to the point.  The prompt this month at  Write...Edit...Publish is “new beginnings”.  My entry is a short verse.  Not that a shorter verse means less agony over the right words to use, but I am working on that agony bit.  There is a long tradition of form poetry both where I come from and where I live, and one of the rules in many of the forms is that each stanza must be self-sufficient and independent, yet string together as a whole.  As I get older I find this not only attractive to write to but good to weave into some sort of weird lifestyle philosophy.  Ah,  forgot to mention - maybe it will help to explain the verse better if I told you that I hit another big milestone last November, an age where I am supposed to count my blessings and shop for spectacles.  I find I have more than enough pairs of both.

Generally taking it a little easy on the writing front right now, I shall pretend that too is a new year resolution – less panic, more chill. Less of the agony and drama, more about stillness and satisfaction.  On all fronts.  Write it as it comes. 

That is going to be my personal new beginning.  A tiny change in attitude, but I'm hoping to go big places with it. 
 
Happy New Year 2014 to you. What are your new beginnings this year?



Winter Harvests


Some fruits only winter brings.
The lake fills up with migrant birds,
the far shore a shimmer of wings;
the same routes nudge new beginnings -
harvests can't be neatly stickered.



Fire beckons when the courtyard's cold,
much time has been spent outside.
Love shows up subtler when it's old,
silver streaks among what's gold
and there's no need to have it dyed.

Just two stanzas can be enough

to make a poem, just two words
can be a couplet off the cuff.
It’s time this winter to learn to love
pared back poems; and migrant birds.

 

The fledglings fly, they come and go;

shorelines change, bird wings or green
keeps them filled; it’s time to know
that stillness can weave to and fro,
that meanings migrate unforeseen. 

 

The courtyard’s paved and windswept;

the lakeshore's choked on wild, dried grass.
Stillness, love in the time that’s left;
less frantic and more in-depth
views on fruits that come and pass.

 

 

WC ~ 600 approx

All feedback welcome

 

Read the other entries and/or sign up for posting your own here: