Spring Cleaning

I can feel that spring cleaning urge bubbling up inside me, and when it reaches full boil, I will clean, or, if the weather cooperates, get back out in the garden, but it's also possible I will just hunker down and read. Reading has been my comfort and my downtime for a long time, but is lately a bit like water, something I need to live. So it might be a Slattern Day for me, a Saturday of reading and writing poetry, chores only as they arise, and keeping an eye on my husband, who had the back of our Ford Escort fall on his head yesterday. It's a 1991 wagon, and we have to prop open the back loading door as the appropriate replacement parts...no longer exist? But yesterday was so windy, the box he was unloading was whipped against the prop, dislodging it. "That'll leave a mark," said the hubby. A dent.

The car pictured looks like our car, if it was newer, shinier, and lived in the mountains. And had all its parts.

For National Poetry Month, I am, as usual, writing a poem a day and providing prompts for such in an online workshop, where I commune with a bunch a lovely people, most of whom I have never met. For many years now, we have gathered in April. It's a joy. I am also celebrating by reading and reviewing poetry books by EIL poets over at Escape Into Life, most recently a selected works gathering by Keith Taylor, whose bird poems have delighted me in the past. This is a life's work! 

The title of this one comforts the slattern that I am, re: spring cleaning vs reading: All the Time You Want!

And, a delightful surprise, a cento I wrote recently for an art exhibit and artmaking workshop--a local gallery/library collaboration--also appeared in a column by Sarah Carson in Bold Cafe. She had asked for centos to use as a poetry prompt, and used mine! A lot of my poems are about my mom these days, and "Grief Cento" and its sources helped me process and depict aspects of my grief for her, and how that's somehow everywhere in the world around me...

Poetry Month

It turns out I'll be celebrating National Poetry Month by catching up on my reviewing for Escape Into Life. The first review up in April is of Karen Weyant's book Avoiding the Rapture, which I loved from the start, thanks to its title and cover...and reading her work over many years!! I will probably be avoiding the Rapture for as long as I can.

Today it's been snowing on my yellow tulips, my white bleeding heart (tiny but already blooming!), and the various blossoming trees outside my workplace and on my route to and from. I might be a little grumpy about this, making it another Cranky Doodle Day in the blog, as well as the Hump of the Week. It's only Wednesday, but it feels like a Friday, and I'm doing laundry, so it feels like a Monday. Clearly, it's April, the cruelest month.

I am, almost an afterthought, writing a poem a day. It's something I do every year, providing the prompts at an internet site I participate in. This year, I almost forgot, distracted by too many personal things. Now, it is its usual absolute joy, and I am grateful.

Did I mention that clematis leaves have appeared on a trellis?! That daffodils I forgot I planted continue to surprise me by blooming, lately in the snow? That soon, possibly, my backyard will be overtaken by white anemone, coneflower, and oregano. It just keeps happening. Again, I am grateful. Maybe this year, in August, I will again read a book of poems a day outside on the glider. I don't know what will happen next. But I am grateful to have a baby in my life. She has found her foot!