Stephen and I were cleaning out our bookshelves this weekend, and I stumbled upon a couple notebooks full of poems I'd written, from junior high through college. So much of the verse was solemn and dark, but I that's what I'd needed to express in those days, when melancholy fit well and felt good. Here is one I wanted to share with you.
April 9, 1999
How hard is hard?
Squeezed eyelids thick with sea-salt
Some that splashed to the cement
Some that still melts in the corner of your mouth
--Lips hot with firecracker feelings
(Like the words you wanted)
Good thing you were all locked up.
Good things that used to go forth and multiply
In the nighttime now are lost
In the morning will be left
Fragile, trembling
Hidden among the flowers
--Dead blooms stuck in frozen puddles
On the sea-salt-stained cement.
So in addition to being a gifted singer/songwriter/artist/superb wife and mother, now a published poet! That's as good as or better than anything I've read in the New Yorker.
That's wonderful! Keep up the good work on your site. Katie and I always enjoy keeping track of your site. Always very refreshing!