“Take a Breather”

I was thinking of doing so, but then remembered there were a couple of things that would go against this.  Age for one.

I am getting older.  Not old/old, but old enough.  I think of what I want to do, and write is on the top of the list.  I am supported in this by my husband who only asks for paired socks, dinner and that I continue to write.

I add things to his  ‘wish list’, but I write now for my ‘profession’ or at least that is what I am trying to see this time  set aside as.

I am still piling up corrections on “The Zar Tales” but dear Bill has guests so I know he won’t be getting to them soon.  LOL!

THAT’s my breather.  Calling Mary in Ohio was another one as we gossiped and had a good time on the phone.  Email is fine, but a phone call is much more fun.  Especially with a long term girl friend.

It’s Spring, and the Spring Forward Festival is going to actually happen in Perkerson Park this Saturday.  It’s the brainchild of Vern, a great guy here, a social worker who goes back up to his farm and drives his deceased father’s tracker around and around  the fields.  That’s HIS breather.

Vern is a hoot.  Half country, half urban man with a lot of golden heart gilding his insides.  I have composed and will read the “Spring Forward” poem to open the Festival.  I will also be wearing a formal black kimono, with a pink under- kimono, and an obi sash that is a riotous mix of spring flowers and colors.  I am supposed to wear a crazy Spring/Easter Bonnet….but I think it would insult the kimono.  Perhaps I will go home and change into jeans and sheepskin boots and then wear the bonnet.

A less complicated cultural statement.  LOL~

It’s Spring, though it is dark and gray outside with a few snow flurries this morning, but I am turning my energies to “White Cranes of Heaven”.  It’s to be an all poetry venture, and I am curious.  I am curious to see all the poetry of the last 2 years at least in one place.

Over the year I have moved from erotica to more poetry.  Of course, sex still figures in my stories and novels….God Forbid that ever stops….LOL!….but I realize that striving for an erotic content in most writings is a bore…and not really a good thing.  I think thinking with our heads between our loins will limit our view of the world.  There is erotic poetry, and there is poetry that expresses other things….views.  I’m doing something different now, and I feel a sort of liberation.

I made the break from some sites where I learned a lot about the craft of writing…..but the sites were (rightfully so) limited mostly to erotica.  But a class is over in a few years…and you have to look up and outside and find other things to write about.

I feel a sense of freedom.  Liberation.  I have left an old stomping ground and I have made a precious handful of friends.  They are the core of ‘respected writers’ and a great influence and hell…just damn good friends.

Spring is a time of rebirth, and right now…..I feel a quickening.

Lady Nyo

Opening Poem for Spring Forward Festival

Hush! Listen!

Do you hear it?

It is the sound of Winter limping off,

Ice falling from desiccated limbs,

the rattle of old bones grown too brittle

To support  further existence.

—-

Look up!

Do you see the azure sky?

How clear and fresh with  promise!

—

Come!

Let’s go knock on doors,

Ring bells,

Call out to neighbors,

Gather our dogs,

And head into the soft, spongy

Grounds of Spring.

Let us marvel at the tight buds tipping  branches,

Tender greens that harken to a mysterious seasonal code.

Let us fill our lungs with fresh air,

Not stagnant with the too- close months of Winter,

But  a wind which blows away

The sadness and loneliness of our seasonal hibernation.

—

Let us welcome Spring, and spring forward

Into a season of rebirth, renewal and hope.

Let us welcome with upturned hearts and faces–

This great, promised turn of the Earth.

—

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010