Still Waiting...but in the meantime...

Hey, folks. Well, we continue to slog away over here. Many things have been going on, some good, some not so good. It is still Lent. And I think it still does make me feel pretty crappy a lot of the time, but I do think that it's worth it. I do think I'm getting somewhere. I'm having new thoughts. New ideas. Sometimes I feel like our backyard looks right now, squishy and muddy and full of dead leaves that should have been taken care of last fall and weren't, so now they're just sogging all over the place. But soon. Soon. Soon we'll dig out the fire pit so we can have bonfires and sangria. Soon we'll start seeds for the garden. Soon I will plant my sister's cosmo daisies along the back fence. Soon new life will start over. Sigh. Oh, please, let it be soon.

Anyway, one of the exciting new developments is that one of the art groups I work for is starting to do an interdisciplinary artist critique once a month. We had our first on ever this past Thursday, and it was a big success, with a photographer and a painter doing in depth presentations, then others just brought in one piece of work and we left comments on sticky notes. It was a great night. But, for a while, I thought that I was going to have to share some of my writing, just because it was our first time around and we weren't sure who would volunteer. So I was going through some of my old stuff that I haven't touched since graduation, almost three years ago. It was quite the walk down memory lane. Some stuff was "OMG, I can't believe how bad this is!" and some stuff was, "Why did I ever look down on this? It's so much better than I remember!" Especially the fiction. I always insist, whenever I mention it, that I can't write fiction at all, that I tried and it was terrible. But looking back on it I can say, yeah, this isn't perfect, it's not wonderful, but it's not that bad. It's actually pretty okay. So, I'd like to share. Here is a poem I wrote way back, I think in my junior year. Approximately 1 million years ago.

Need to Know

At my grandfather’s funeral,
I waited until no one watched
the casket very closely.
And then I sidled very near,
finally getting a boost from the kneeler;
so I could touch the pale hand
that lay on his chest, clutching
the gold crucifix.

The hand was stiff, and waxy as
the candles that lit our vigil.
I pulled my hand out quick
and turned around slow.
To see if anyone had noticed,
But no-all of the adults still pulled
their long faces and talked
in hushed voices about how
much we all had lost.

My cousins were all too young
to dare me, so I had dared myself.
There was no trace of mourning in me,
just sheer, ribald curiosity.
To touch the hand of death,
to learn to know the feeling,
and to pull back quick, and not get caught.