Faulty Wiring

“Varnish” I said aloud, rolling the word over my tongue as if we were new acquaintances. “What’s that you said, Mom?”  My daughter, breezing through the kitchen, found me standing at the counter, gazing out the window.  She was gone before I could answer. They were used to me by now, my family.  How long […]

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How Illness Improved my Writing

It’s no mystery that stripped of all obligations and confined to a bed provides the coveted time to pursue writing skills, however; it is the actual experience of illness (in my case ME/CFS) that provides the platform for expansion.  Although I have been a ‘writer’ since my early years, the past four have marked a […]

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Another Open Mic

Here’s yours truly reading Absence and They’re Just Family, After All at an Open Mic (only my third).   To see the full poems, please click on the links.

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Blogs I Count On

Every morning, I open my email to find a slew of new messages indicating that my fellow bloggers have been busy.  Typically, I scroll through and prioritize.  These are a few of my must reads: Soul Gatherings is my first go-to place.  Theresa offers a dose of daily inspiration served up with beautiful graphics. cookingforthetimechallenged, […]

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Why Write Poetry

First, a disclaimer:  I am in no way an authority on poetry; it is just something I happen to do… a lot.  In fact, my original blog, One Woman’s Quest, is dedicated to my poetic escapades. A cancer scare prompted me to start writing a blog in the first place – I needed somewhere to […]

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Creative Process

Originally posted on One Woman's Quest:
Routine, I find, is both a comfort and a discomfort.  Stripped of all routine when I first became ill, I floundered about looking for some order to the resulting chaos.  I longed for a routine, like a navigational device, to help me define exactly where I was in…

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The Vortex

(Note:  Much of my inspiration for writing comes from dreams, which I typically interpret in the form of poetry, but recently I have been challenging myself to write prose.  A Bee’s Perspective is the poetic response to the dream behind this piece.) Even as the floorboards beneath her heave and crack with a thunderous roar, […]

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Broke the Ice On Open Mic

Just arrived home after attending my first poetry open mic session and am still buzzing. Yes, I got up on the stage and performed! In fact, I volunteered to go third – having never experienced anything like this before.  It was a rush! The organizers were very welcoming, the crowd wonderfully warm and receptive and […]

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Composing Poetry

I’m going to let you in on a little secret:  my technique for creating a poem. First, I pluck an image from the Dreamtime: …trying to break the door down, mermaid legs…. Then, I pull the words apart, like petals from the flower and line them up in a column: trying to break the door […]

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Knock, Knock

A hot August haze hung over the early morning hours, as I sat perched on a kitchen stool, tea in hand, watching our host clean the rather large, concrete swimming pool in the backyard.  The day would be a hot one. I had risen early – a habit of mine instilled by a military father […]

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