Ummm. Nevermind (March 25 post)

Well.
So much for pouting and feeling sorry for myself. (Shit, I was sooo enjoying it!!)
I woke up this morning to an email telling me that not one, not two, not Three, but FOUR of my five poems submitted would be published. It's pretty incomprehensible. I really thought the deadline for finding out had passed--because.........I'd been told if I was to be included I would have heard the previous week. It's not like I made up the timeline; I had it on good authority.

Maybe spring-break pushed it to later. Who knows??! But I am dumbstruck that 4 of these are getting published. The fifth poem happens to have alread been published in a magazine: "Alaska Women Speak." But they print just about anything. This university publication is done through 'blind-judging,' so there is an element of merit.

I'm pretty stoked.
I also haven't written a poem in about a year. I always get to a point where I think that anything and everything I have ever written is crap! Maybe this will resurrect my muse from her puddle of muck...

I think I am pouting...

Well, this is totally damned random, but if I was going to get another poem published like last year, I should have heard by now. I have not. Sigh. Sometimes it helps to punch out of a pout by doing something physical. So I am typing up my poem that got published last year in hopes of it giving me a placebo effect. Maybe I can convince myself I Really Didn't Want to have another poem chosen for publication. It is greedy to hope for two years in a row. Sigh. I'm a greedy girl. So here goes:

Sunday Afternoon 3:30 to 3:31

A tumbleweed Coke can clunks down the street
while bus-stop tired eyes gaze to
the water-spotted sidewalk, grey
and darker grey, just like the sky.
The red neon SUSHI sign
Flashes
in a dark window opposite
the direction the bus is to come.
The church on the corner
wears yellow caution tape
around its fire scorched entrance and
a three-legged dog, ignoring the warning
relieves himself there, while his man
with a red vinyl shopping bag and
black umbrella waits, his head bowed.
A skateboard riding youth
Ssssssizzles
past the SUSHI shop and
the bus-stop tired eyes follow his
silhoutte......Till a diesel rumble
set them to shuffling towards the curb
One
behind
the
other.
Cigarettes tossed,
their red embers
fade in the rain
as the bus pulls away.

(the end)

I realized while typing this (decided not to do a cut/paste) that my purposeful use of colour sort of mirrors a band I would come to adore years after writing this piece: The White Stripes. When I wrote the piece I wanted to only have: Red. Black. Grey (white/black). Yellow. as snapshots for the reader. I totally understand the concept of painting yourself into a corner; simplifying and creating 'rules' in which to expand creatively. It is the reason I used to like working with formula poetry. Strict syllable counts and such. The rules act as a trampoline and are the opposite of restrictive....Hey, I almost forgot I was pouting just now....It's working!!!

Dear diary....ravens....

Well, I just want to put this down before I forget...and this is one place I know I won't lose it...and besides, no one reads this but me....

So about the pair of ravens I have been feeding for a couple of years...
Last spring I caught them doin' it in the road (just like the Beatles' song) in the spring, but I'm not sure which month it was (dammit). Edit: Feb 26 last year is when I witness the notsohot raven sex...Don't know the gestation time for the laying of eggs, though...

A short while ago I looked out the window and there was one of the ravens waiting patiently for me to notice it was there and toss is some vittles. Sometimes the other raven is waiting in a huge pine in my backyard and comes swooping dramatically down after her mate has sealed the deal (for some food); sometimes she's off doing other stuff (whatever ravens do in their spare time). So, I toss out a handful of heart-shaped dog biscuits to the one raven in the yard and start to head back in, when I see her landing across the street on the long arm of a 2x4 holding my mailbox...not so unusual Except that she has in her beak a couple of foot-long sticks with little twigs here and there. She sees her partner is getting some food and shakes the sticks, looks at her partner, bobs her head up and down and makes a decision to put them down on the board, breaks off a twig that was sticking out of the works, picks them back up again (now I'm wondering if she is going to choose nest building or dinner) then she flies the short distance across the street depositing her nest sticks on their usual hangout: a berm of snow at the end of my driveway. She leaves them there on the berm and goes to get a dog cookie. I see she thinks about trying to manage a cookie and the sticks and to my dismay, she opts for cookie only and flies away. Her partner (I'm pretty sure it is the male who is left) finishes his cookie, picks a couple of them up and tamps them into the snow hiding them for later...climbs up the berm and picks up the sticks his wife left. He did this weird shaking of them, backandforth, like he was measuring something, then he took off with them in his beak....so he did pick up where she left off...and I stopped feeling guilty about interrupting nest building with a tasty snack.
I find them endlessly fascinating.