Getting the Hurt Leg Fixed, Chapter One can be found here.

For Christmas, my son gave me a membership to Chestnut Hill College’s Logue Library, a place I’ve come to love. I’ve done a lot of Poetry Marathon-ing there, and now I belong to the library. For $30, a miniscule sum for the advantages gained, I thought, he got me a library card and so — I now can check out books, and I can visit as much as I want.

I plan to make a donation to the library as well, because, as I said, I think these privileges are worth a lot more than thirty dollars. But I digress.

I had decided, before my husband’s accident on Christmas Day, that I would spend one half-day a week at the Logue Library, devoting myself to poetry writing of any kind – sort of a slow-motion Poetry Marathon lasting all of 2017. But, that idea is off the table for right now, since my schedule is in flux with caring for my husband.

Anyway, I had bought two books to celebrate this plan – a new thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary. I could read these books like novels…and flipping the pages of the two, before my husband’s surgery on January 6, I thought: Maybe I can stay on track with the once-a-week idea, with a little creativity, until I can get back to the library.

All right. First week of January, and I packed up my red and black plaid bag to take to the hospital on the 6th, my bag that holds my sketching supplies and now some poetry supplies. I knew I would have a lot of time to wait (and as it turned out, I had more than a lot of time to wait – the surgery schedule fell about three hours behind…)

I spent some time in the cafeteria, writing.

It was hard to settle in at first, but these two books put me on track. I wrote two poems, and I’ll explain how they came about.

First one, “Uncertain Travel”. I saw a man sitting at a nearby table making notes in his appointment book.

Uncertain Travel

The forefinger extends
touches the page in the appointment book
on its outer margin
rests there
light on the thin white paper
Pauses
Then
presses hard on the date printed in squared-off bold-face type.
Draws up the lined page and flips it
to the next week
Once, and then again, again
faster each time
The days flying by
full of potential
skipped over and turned into the past
Just like that
The finger arrives in the future
landing on an anonymous day now marked
for specificity
the finger
gentle over the unfilled space about to be given purpose.
A destination only envisioned as yet
An appointment made. Will the promise
be kept?

The next one, “The Light”. I owe Jane Dougherty a big debt of gratitude for introducing to me this poem form (I have forgotten the name) that is set up this way – 5 lines, each of ten syllables, the end word rhyming. It is for this specific purpose I bought the rhyming dictionary, but I think I might try more rhymes now that I have it.

The Light

The idea. The small flash of brilliance.
The heroine making her first entrance.
The knock on the door breaking the silence.
The receptive bee waiting in patience
alert for the first hint of strong fragrance.

Now we are into another week. I am restricted to home right now. So…hmmm…how will I fulfill this week’s section of the plan? I’m not sure I’ll write about what I do every week, but it seemed important to me to do so this time, to cement the idea of persevering in my head…