Spring is a teenager
Energy surging,
Wet and windy,
Filled with noise.
What a season,
Lively and changeable
Innocent and treacherous
Filled with roses.
Spring goes its own road
Takes no direction
Blows hot and cold
Filled with red noses.
Spring is a believer
Whatever you think
I will yield to months
Filled with summer ploys
A story of mine came out in a book.
I couldn’t believe it, wanted to hide in a nook.
I used a fake name, protecting from shame
But then I wondered, at what cost comes fame?
Opportunities presented and even more as well.
My work was recognized and I felt swell.
Some readings, a radio show, even a New York literary award,
Suffice it to say, my inner critic was floored.
***
Pieces of me float everywhere “out there” and beyond.
But wait. Who am I? Am I lost, or am I found?
Is my pen name really me, or different as syllable and sound?
My words upset, shake down, maybe even more.
But still they’re my truth, born straight from my core.
As a writer, I think, my story should be pure
I must present the truth and not be demure.
The time has come to reclaim my name.
Leigh Stuart will retire; she will suffer no pain.
Barbara Straus Lodge is here to stay.
She’ll say goodbye to her pen name,
come whatever, what may.
Radio, radium, rays, radioactivity. Quaint, quiet, quick, quashed. Roseate, russet, radiant, rusted. Energy, enlightenment, evasiveness, entombment. Plutonium, Pluto, plumb-line, poison. Iodine-laden, invisible, inaudible, invidious. Wind, water, wildness, winter. Icy, inclement, iridescent, indecent. Human, hubris, hint, hollowness. Promising, pellucid, pallid, porous. Trembling, towering, trumpeting, trampling. Dubious, doom-laden, disastrous, dismal. Murmuring, muttering, mastering, moaning. Mutation, misery, mystery, mockery. Authority, augury, agony, anger. Politeness, pragmatism, pontification, procrastination. Tradition, trust, tsunami, tragedy. Handful, hope, heaviness, horror. Rushing, running, rowing, raving. Dim, darkness, drama, downfall. Trees, trucks, trains, tables. Cars, cables, clothes, children. Traveling, traipsing, trailing, tumbling. Regular, rocking, roiling, rickety. Walking, wandering, wasted, wailing.
Words slip onto the page quietly
A little unwilling to be pushy when
So many around the world wonder
How long they will live?
How high the radiation?
How long until the government helps?
What is coming tomorrow?
Might it be water? Food?
But they often give thanks
That humans reach out to
Each other in spite of all the
Negative news and complaints.
That there is a tomorrow.
That we can survive.
That we love each other.
That families help.
That strangers, even strangers
come through.
I wonder if the keyboard feels to me the way the
quill felt to the writer of centuries ago. My fingers
find peace in the constant dance, t to h to e – the
rhythm drum of the space bar . The pointed
quill would have dipped and then brushed
against the parchment in similar song
but perhaps without so much clattering.
An intersect of Art and Authors
A suggestion a day from the Williamsburg Regional Library
A group of writers that come together The Last Sunday of every month to write and talk writing
about the craft and business of fiction
A group of writers that come together The Last Sunday of every month to write and talk writing
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TLS Writers 