New Look

Buy my Book!

My little debut is ON SALE NOW on Amazon.com. You can purchase the Kindle edition for the reasonable price of $2.99 in the USA.

THIS is the link for American readers.

And THIS is the link for British readers.

Light Leaving

Goodbye to sunshine. Goodbye summer. These days the light goes earlier and earlier and I find myself slowing down, curling in.

I struggle with sorrow every autumn. The final days of Indian Summer are so much more poignant than midwinter--because now midwinter is all before me. The solstice still approaches. Next spring is so far away: another calendar year, hardly even imaginable.
Despite the cold, the dark--I love the seasons. I even love winter, that it forces me to mourn, forces me to confront some of the darkness inside myself, darkness I was able to ignore while the days were hot and bright. When circumstances change, when my life is not easy, so often the veil is suddenly stripped and I find myself again - - weak, selfish, angry, afraid.
Light is leaving this November. There is mist outside today and stillness. The tops of the trees are blurred. I hear crows. On my front porch the squirrels are eating our Halloween pumpkins. I read somewhere that wild animals know when a winter will be particularly long, hard, cold. They feast accordingly.

Announcement!

Earlier this year I was shortlisted for this competition conducted by the Ravenglass Poetry Press.

I am pleased to announce that Ravenglass Press will be publishing my first collection, entitled Blue Wasp, which will soon be available as a kindle edition on Amazon.

Be sure that I will keep you posted on any developments!

Coming Home Again

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

-T.S. Eliot “Little Gidding”

Growing up, my parents took us up to Weston, Missouri, each October. We picked pumpkins and looked at the animals at Red Bard Farm and spent the day at Westbend State Park, which sits above the bluffs above the Missouri River.

The trail at the park is a three mile loop; my brother and I rode our bikes around while Mom and Dad walked. Sometimes, if we were feeling particularly strong, David and I would ride around again and catch them up from behind.

This year we took Harriet with us for a second time. Last year she was just a tiny baby, and Devin carried her around the trail in a sling.

This year she isn’t a baby anymore, but though this loss of baby-dom at times makes me unutterably sad, it was delightful to watch her interact with her surroundings with her boundless toddler energy and insatiable curiosity.

For me, going up to Weston is always a lesson in memory and nostalgia, and taking my child to my old haunts adds yet another layer to my experience of the place. This year, as I looked over the bluffs and down the river, the forested landscape pristine, turning gold, I thought about our childhood bike-trip around the Westbend Loop.

Now, I thought, I’ve really come full circle. I have caught my parents up from behind: I have become a mother myself. I’m bound to watch my daughter experience these places that are mine.

There is something rich about moving back to the place where you grew up. Richness and a strange kind of sorrow in watching a new child in your old place. Sorrow because you know you can’t be that child again. Sorrow because your daughter’s childhood is—though *yours* in one sense—in another sense completely inaccessible. Hers.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am so glad to be home, biding here in these familiar parts. Home, I find, is not the dull wasteland I feared it might be. Your house is, after all, your castle and your hometown a country of terrible beauty.

Announcement

And now for an announcement!

Earlier this year I was shortlisted for the Ravenglass Poetry Press Competition.
The competition was judged by John Burnside.

Ravenglass Press is a small press based based in England and edited by Julia Wallis Martin. Every year they publish an anthology highlighting those poets shortlisted in their competition. And, behold! I am one of them!

You can buy the anthology on Amazon UK. For my American friends, there is not, alas, an American addition. But everyone likes getting a package from abroad, yes?

Purchase the anthology by clicking HERE!

I Don't Need No Professional Photographer

"We should hire a professional photographer," my husband said. We were perusing old family pictures and I was ooo-ing and ah-ing over an adorable picture of my maternal grandmother when she was about Harriet's age. (Precious, yes?)



"Professional photographer? Why do we need a professional photographer? I'm a good photographer!" I retorted. "Well, you know," he responded sheepishly, "a professional photographer would have a studio, the right lighting, you know...and a really good camera."
"We have a good camera!" I countered, "and I can put up a sheet and take a shot just like this--" I held up my grandma's photo. "I'll put that silver cross around Hattie's neck. It will be great."

The next day I proceeded to hang a sheet in the dining room and a necklace around Harriet. I plopped said babe down in front of said sheet and started shooting. "So far, so good," thought I.



Of course young Harriet is mobile now, so...




...she soon left the sheet behind.

Then she discovered the drawers in our china cabinet.



Then she discovered her necklace.





So I took the necklace away.

Then...



...she became very angry with her mother.



So much for that.

Any recommendations for [professional] photographers?