Nice way to start a week – apparently the fourth Penderwicks book, The Penderwicks in Spring, is due out next March.
Also, this, drafted on the lake last Saturday:
Puddles fade behind us
and a distant mountain rises
to overtop the tall tree
on which I center our stern
as we row the lake’s length.
I say “we” –
my boat possesses her own soul.
Like a lover,
All my work is to be worthy of her.
Maybe it’s because work has been busy and challenging lately; it feels like my well of poetry used to overflow, brimming with lines I could pull out at will, and now ia torpid, brackish puddle, more a remnant than a living thing. It’s not painful or terribly depressing; I have mental challenges and have even been making things. (I’m having a knitting pattern published in the book that will accompany next February’s Portland Yarn Crawl.) It just feels odd, as if something that used to be there isn’t. Maybe I just needmore time when I’m not really doing anything, like working or reading – these days I listen to audiobooks on the erg, so I don’t create poems as I did when I rowed on a lake several times a week. I did get out rowing on Saturday and kayaking Sunday, which is where the above poem grew). Maybe I need to be having more new experiences – I certainly wrote a lot both in junior high and when I was in Taiwan (though I also found work/school boring in the latter places). I don’t know.