We, the Impressionable

I'm always thrilled and honored when a new poem comes out in a journal. This time I have one in Issue 2 of the lovely One at Jacar Press. It's full of moving, challenging, gorgeous, and even funny poems you'll want to read slowly. My poem, called "We, the Impressionable," came from a prompt I gave to my poetry workshop to write a poem in the community voice, a "we" voice. First, each of us needed to discover, identify, or choose a community to which we belonged, and one we felt we could speak for. I often feel slightly outside all the groups or communities I'm in, because I'm a writer, standing at a little distance, because I can't help it, I was born that way, OK? But I could strongly identify with the "impressionable," those on whom experience leaves a significant, er, dent. In positive terms, I am sensitive and full of empathy. In negative terms, I'm gullible and, well, in some people's eyes, weak. That's annoying. On the other hand, I'm OK with that, as I understand my deep reserves of strength.

As a child, I believed what I was told and/or had the imagination to make the fictional very real. Like, um, a child. Lots of people who grow up to be writers, artists, actors, musicians are, of course, like this!

And we had a lot of mice in our farmhouse.

And mousetraps.

So, there's also some mystery in the poem, as there must be, but that's how it got started. And out in the yard, the pale yellow coneflowers have opened. And bright yellow volunteer snapdragons continue. As do the day lilies. And prairie blue eyes.

(And here is a blossom of aubergine.)