There is No Hurry I pour tomatoes and chop sweet onion, snip parsley frills and crush some basil, dash salt, sprinkle sugar. Stir. I race against the clock. Hurry. A tasty sauce takes time to simmer, but hungry stomachs will arrive at six. I rattle glasses, bang the stainless, wash and wipe. Outside a silver needle […]
A Random Act of Poetry for #raopoetryday
Four years ago, a still unknown someone gifted me a writer’s retreat at Laity Lodge in the Texas Hill Country. I got the call while sitting outside at a nursing home with my mom who had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor following a fall. The only workshop still open was a poetry […]
Dream Poem #4: Dreaming With Darwish
Well, things have been a bit quiet around here (the blog) for several weeks, and I don’t know where the summer has gone. My daughter is still displaced and dealing with insurance after her house fire. We’ve been working slowly on some house projects, and there have been a few trips out of town, […]
Still Saturday: Shut Up
“Sandra, shut up and vacation!” Orbitz sent me an email with those words in the subject line. “Seriously, get going!” they continued in the body. “Go somewhere!” Seriously, how does one ignore that? We are going to get going for a few days… “Each of us needs to withdraw from the […]
Still Saturday: It Is Time Now
Swimming, One Day in August It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings. Something had pestered me so much I thought my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part. I went down in the afternoon to the sea which held […]
Becoming Mindful in Place: Proof
Proof If I’d not glanced out the window at just that moment, I would have missed the flash of blue against blue. I wouldn’t have seen it dart onto a crabapple branch and then light on the backboard behind the net, unmistakable in its orange vest. I scooped up my camera and […]
Dream Poem #3: Laura and I and a Ferris Wheel
Laura and I and a Ferris Wheel Laura had an emergency at work that morning, but first we–she and her husband and I– took a spin on a giant Ferris wheel, once known as a “pleasure wheel,” but today a playdate wheel. We went up, up, up… but at the top, just before the descent, […]
Dream Poem#1: Hog Stew, Krispy Kremes, and Ann Voskamp
Hog Stew, Krispy Kremes, and Ann Voskamp The quicksand tried to swallow me. Then the train came and an elephant held out his trunk. When I grasped it, it wiggled into a rainbow’d snake that flung me into the red Corvette convertible in Canadian National auto carrier #1000 graffiti’d with gifts. We snaked our […]
Still Saturday: Murmurs
i find myself thirsty for plain sounds that whisper, glory. sure words resonate where i can hear, once again, God moving through broken lines that murmur with tenderness. but at the heart of poetry, silences. ~Laure Krueger as quoted by L.L. Barkat in God in the Yard In the stillness, Sandy […]
God, Are You In . . . ?
At the end of chapter 12 (“Hospitality”) in God in the Yard, L.L. Barkat suggests a writing exercise. Begin with a simple jotting of the objects and people around you . . . Choose just one of the images and make a second list, focused particularly on the item’s attributes . . . Next, try […]
