Loose Leaf Notes

1. There are places of comfort / at the tops of trees / where the tulips turn like bells / but never ring / Where the lost and found mingle / but don’t tell their secrets / They hang like our childhood / just out of reach… Read the rest of I Look Up, a poem for my sister Kathy who passed away in 2015, HERE.  It was published in a recent Artemis Journal. 

2. I write because I’m not as good at talking and writing gives me time to think. 

3. I’m not verbal as much as I’m vocal.

4. My 8-year-old grandson Liam likes the swoosh sound that starts the Beatles’ song “Come Together.” Ironically, it’s actually John Lennon saying, “shoot me.”

5. “Stink bugs are boys and lady bugs are girls.” – Liam

6. I take the disrespect of nature personally.

7. I couldn’t help thinking when the Notre Dame cathedral was burning about the lack of response to the Arctic ice shelves melting and falling into the sea.

8. Saturday Joe and I had a Darkside Experience, listening to a Pink Floyd tribute band and dancing in a laser show of lights.  Pink Floyd’s words still hold true today:  Mother should I build the wall? / Mother should I run for President? / Mother should I trust the government? / Mother will they put me in the firing mine? / Is it just a waste of time? See HERE.

9. “This is what poets are paid for, to look at clouds, watch chipmunks. Someone has to keep an eye on these things.  I try to write a good line and then another good line and another good line. But you’re not a good line machine.  There’s a lot of staring involved.” – Billy Collins

10. Last week I was Zoom interviewed by Scott Perry of Creative on Purpose and gave a shout out to the 4th annual LITTLE RIVER POETRY FESTIVAL, coming up this June 7-9 at On the Water Kayaking in Floyd. Mara Robbins and I have been writing and sharing our poetry with each other for more than two decades.  As past members of The Floyd Writer’s Circle who oversaw a local monthly Spoken Word Night for seven years, we have a history of engaging in poetic conversation, riffing off each other’s work.   On Saturday June 8^th (3:00) at the LRPF, we’ll be reading poems as conversation and engaging the audience in the “call and response” writing of poetry.   

11. Joni Mitchell is the Emily Dickinson of songwriting.

12. Over the Easter weekend, I went in search of tulips to make up for the ones that the deer ate in our yard. I had been missing Monet’s Garden like a lost lover after our fling in Paris last August and had a strong desire to see tulips. We hit the tulip  jackpot at the  The Hahn Horticultural Garden in Blacksburg. Check out my “Tulip Tour” HERE.

13. As kids we loved playing with paper dolls. We made our own and made clothes for them but never thought of THIS!

___________Thirteen Thursday