after words

Counting Aprils, I come up
with sixty-one and see
three lovers I have yet
to meet.  And nine friends
plus a grandchild, my 6^th,
that may be a boy, or
a girl (not yet conceived). 
All the Aprils I’ve known
have been in- and exhaled
by trees in my path and
ducks.  On roads east
of China my whines will
wake dogs, bats, cats, gnats,
hogs, all manner of fish but
I will keep it up, longing
for whining to turn into
songing and walking to
turn into dance.  A waltz
across Asia’s not out
of the question - spin me,
cowboy, spin me.  Hear
spurs in the paddies going
to rust, in the tulips going
to flowers for bouquets
on birthdays and graves
and graves -

and birthdays.
Let’s leave it at that.

 It seems a Six Word Memoir Game is afoot.  From the blog of Suzanne Francis, I borrow the following instructions:

Borrowing, with permission from bookbabie, the following fabulous idea: 
What would you say if you had to summarize your life in only six words?  Bookbabie got the idea from a book written by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, Not Quite What I was Expecting: Six Word Memoirs by Famous and Obscure. It is a compilation based on the story that Hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in six words. His words were- For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Here are the rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4. Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

My six word memoir is:    Found: full bookcases inside empty nest.

And the five blogs I’m tagging are: Rick, Cati, Lavonne, Sheri and Maggie

Who would’ve thought a celeb like Sherwood
would be felled by a bit of toothpick or that I
would find Winesburg, Ohio bookmarked
with a napkin embossed with white bells
and May 7, 1966, the date Al said “I do” to me,
marking the place I left off?  Or that I
would stumble across a quote from
Heart of Darkness by Joe Conrad:

“We live, as we dream, alone.”

Slick paperbacks pass through my hands.
Cloth bounds and the leather bounds,
brushed-velveteen covers pass through my hands
to the shelf, back again, to the table next to my bed,
to my lap, the shelf, the chair arm-

I roll on my side in the night
and wake in the morning with an indented
line running like half an X, temple to chin,
from the hard edge of a book slept upon.

Who would’ve thought I would dream as I live?

C.S. Lewis would’ve.  Would’ve said to me,
if he knew me and could, “We read to know
we are not alone.” 

I would’ve read less, loved more. 
I would’ve, if I had known.

[After reading an article on The Poetess in America by Annie Finch]

No sooner do I put out a request for information on Crime Stories and How To Write Them, but I find a source!  The BBC has any number of wonderful links for writers.  The “source” link provided here connects with Crime fiction and information offered may be found in Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced writing skills areas. 

I came across a blog [it's going to lay me low, this blogging business] late yesterday, something like WriteHereWriteNow [will check that out when they send me a first newletter], Scotland based and BBC in the works somehow, and I signed on for their free newsletters and prompts to write a thousand words of Crime Fiction a day.  I don’t know if there’s a prize, have no idea what the prompts will consist of, and have never, ever written any Crime Fiction but, hey, maybe it’s time?

So, on the outside chance that someone stumbles across this post and knows of other blogs or sites with Everything You Ever Need To Know About Writing Crime Fiction And Then Some — could you share the info?  Thanks.

Twice. 

Twice today I fell in love all over again with writing. 

My writing. 

I wish there was a way to put little streamers and trumpets and tinny drums and such around “my writing” because as I was falling for stuff I had written, I felt sparklers inside, earlobes went all warm, and I know if I’d looked in a mirror I would’ve found them crimsoned red with heat.   And it should be an embarrassment to fall so madly in love with your own work.  [Not all of it, and certainly not often . . . but man-oh-man, just when you figure you'll never experience that feeling again, it's amazing, if only for a few minutes.]

How large a world is it that I greet?  Bigger than a bread box?  I wonder.