Mainely Write

Poetry Friday is here at last. For so many, it is time for back to school.  Enjoy, this, one of the last of the summer Poetry Fridays!  It is hosted today by Catherine at Reading to the Core.

Last year was my first year doing the Summer Poetry Swap that Tabatha Yeatts created, and initiates and organizes each year.  Thank you, Tabatha, for doing this.
I enjoy receiving the poems from such talented poet friends.  It is always a surprise, always a little mysterious and definitely makes going to the mailbox a whole lot more fun!
I've shared my poetry gifts received from Keri Collins Lewis, Diane Mayr, Tabatha Yeatts, and Heidi Mordhorst in past posts.  These have been wonderfully thoughtful poems, and accompanied by beautiful illustrations.  I have them on my refrigerator right now - my favorite place to post treasures! (I can see them from where I sit and write.)
Refrigerators can tell a lot about the person who uses it.
Refrigerators can tell a lot about the people the …

It's Slice of Life Tuesday - Join others and read more snippets of life on a Tuesday at Two Writing Teachers!

It's been too hot in Maine recently.   On Sunday it was 88 degrees with 95% humidity.  That is totally unacceptable to me, but not unexpected. 

I know, I know, some of you have had over 200 degrees and 195% humidity - and in summers past we have had that, too, even in the years when we were told that another Ice Age was imminent.  Please don't tell me you don't remember that.  If you do, you are too young, and you probably have air conditioning and not fans!
The thing about Maine is that we get lots of different kids of weather all the time.  That's the predictability of Maine weather - that it is unpredictable.  Some would like to attribute EVERYTHING that happens nowadays to climate change/global warming/ etc.  But if they were really looking at the weather over the years in Maine, they would find that ANYTHING has ALWAYS happened here - and really ever…

Last week, I was excited by the arrival of two more poetry swaps in my mailbox.  I'm beginning to like getting the mail...

Both poems today, have a very "Made in Maine" feel to them, maybe because they aren't from so very far away - one from Heidi Mordhorst (of My Juicy Little Universe) in Maryland, and the other from Diane Mayr (at Random Noodling) in New Hampshire.   I really enjoyed the images attached to these two poems, too.   They, with my recent picture taken at the beach nearby, prompted my own poem which I am posting at the end.

Here is the swap from Heidi Mordhorst, who has written an Ode.  I believe if you click on the image you will see it larger.  I've written the poem below, just in case that doesn't work.
Ode on a Grecian Yearn                      for Donna JT Smith Get thee behind me, Keats, thou sire of purple-passion'd phrase and exclamation! Who hath spoiled the joy of Poesy? O flowery Romantic, it is thee! My Grecian urn is plain red clay …

Hello, Poetry Fridayers!  Our hostess for the roundup this week is the lovely dudette, Tabatha Yeatts, at The Opposite of Indifference.  Go there for some links to good poetry fare.

Today I have a poem I wrote last October.  Here's why I wrote it:

Good friends of ours are adopting a boy in China.  He is 13 and has been waiting forever for a family.  He is getting one now! I wrote this poem for him when they knew he would be their son sometime - but he did not know yet that there was a family working hard at preparing to adopt him.

It seemed so strange that someone so far away could be suddenly nestled so deep in your heart, and that so much work was going on in the process of adopting with approvals, home visits, classes, paperwork and finances, without the person being aware of any of this -  all this flurry of activity, all the pictures on friends' refrigerators, all the prayers.  But he is left out of the process for months in case anything were to fall through and the a…

I have been quiet recently because my daughter came for a visit and brought my two grandchildren with her.  I cannot write when they visit.  It is much too busy and when it isn't busy, I am much too tired.  Consequently, the writing suffers.  Too bad for you writing.  I'm otherwise engaged, body and soul.
We had a wonderful visit, and worked on a project together for almost two weeks.  It required working a couple of late nights, with Grampie babysitting the "soon to be four year old" making trips to the shore and Cabela's (their favorite place to go).
Today (the 4th) they went home.  What an quiet, empty house after the giggles, squeals and screams (mostly good screams, though we had a few mishaps!) of the last two weeks.  I could use a good scream.  It's pretty quiet here now.
There's nothing quite like the cold ocean, salty breezes, rocks, shells, seaweed, and a little boy loving it all.  What a beautiful time we had.

if i could hold the sky if i could…