An Update: Poetry

An update is long overdue. My writing has changed and I feel like I, myself, have changed.

I stopped working on my novel, A Beautiful End. My life is very busy, so novel revisions are difficult to fit in. But I didn’t stop writing. I wrote more poems. And in the process I have become more confident in my poetry writing and more ready to share some poems.  I recognize that poetry writing is an important part of my life and every bit as valid as novel writing.

I have looked back on my novel writing and pondered on my lack of desire to pursue revisions. In my last two novels I’ve tried to imagine what it might be like to live in the near future of ongoing climate changes. My novels consider a possible future that is constantly changing. And despite my willingness to address these possibilities head-on, changes are happening more rapidly than I could imagine. It seems like no amounts of revision could fit my novel in its entirety to a more likely reality than I had imagined.

In my poetry, I live in the present, stopping only to consider how future possibilities impact us right now. This is how I am living my life right now: in the moment, as much as I can.

In light of that, it is my intention to post more poems on my blog. For me, poetry writing is a deeply personal process, and it doesn’t allow for frivolity. In other words, my poems come from my heart and from my inner wisdom.

Many of my poems reflect my process of learning how to live in a world that is in so much change. They are particularly about learning how to accept the acceleration in changes to our planet that can no longer be halted.

I hope you enjoy my poems. I hope they touch your heart and in some small way help you to find your own way in these troubling times.

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For today, I wish to share a little poem I jotted down while in the park. I have promised myself to explore the concept of death, that it might not be limited to the big scary picture of a human suffering on a death bed. 

A Fleeting Visit

An insect lit down
On my arm
Revealed its delicate beauty
Yellow-jointed brown legs
Transparent veined wings
Compound eyes
Then flitted away
A death to me
Such a fleeting visit
Here and gone