a poem in my pocket

(Link to dVerse Poets)

summer thoughts flutter

capture words like butterflies

netted poetry

My love of poetry began with a book ordered from Weekly Reader in late elementary school, Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle. I read and re-read this collection of contemporary poems. Besides being a voracious reader, I enjoyed writing. I remember writing my own chapter book about a dachshund named Brandy.

In high school, I delighted in the poetic words of Ogden Nash, e.e. cummings, and Shel Silverstein. I memorized the lyrics of musicians like Neil Diamond, Elton John, and John Denver (living in Colorado). Words fed my dreams.

My paternal grandfather loved poetry. He could recite Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith” to us. When he passed, I treasured his timeworn volume of Edgar Allen Poe. Inspired, I purchased the complete works of Emily Dickinson to read.

As a young mother, I submitted a few poems to Welcome Home magazine. Later,  I discovered the blogosphere through devotional writers like Ann Voskamp. Then I followed a friend who endured a difficult foreign adoption process, blogging her feelings and experiences. While reading her blog, I contemplated writing my own.

With a busy farm and family, I wanted to keep my posts brief…a poetry blog! I dug up and tweaked a few old poems and published them as “a poem in my pocket” on WordPress in 2012, the same year I became a grandmother.  For fun, I signed up for an online poetry writing class. I read Billy Collins and Luci Shaw.

My ears like rhyme and rhythm but my ideas usually flow as free verse or haiku. I feel compelled to write my thoughts and challenged to try prompts from various sources, particularly d’Verse Poetics and Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. I hope my blog is a spot of beauty in a sometimes ugly world. Poetry is a creative outlet for me, a personal retreat from the busy mundaneness of life.

“There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind…So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself. ”   — MARCUS AURELIUS