I’ve got some time off now.  Well, not exactly.  Is there ever really any time off when you are a writer?  While I am between the spring and summer semesters at the college, I have all good intentions–really I do.  Here are some of my priorities: organize the garage and one of the bedrooms, work on the garden, read a book which is written in Spanish (can I still do it?), become a wine connoisseur (I bought a book!), and read the stack of novels I have waiting for me on the bookshelf.  Oh yes, one more thing–WRITE, WRITE, WRITE! (Okay, three things).  These tasks, I admit, are not always the easiest things to accomplish, especially on sunny days when virgin beaches of an early summer await.  Well, so far, I did get some clean-up and garden work done, and I have tackled some of those books.  Writing is a bit more daunting, though, especially with revision taking up so much time.  However, I am almost done with my first book of short stories entitled Three for a Dollar. I hope to tell you more about it in the weeks to come.  I want to share with you a poem which I recently wrote.  I think you will see why reading the works of great poets like Mary Oliver is so inspiring for those of us who aspire to a writing life.

 

READING MARY OLIVER

 

I thought I had forgotten

until I saw the movement of words

tenderly opening their treasures

but never hidden really

not if you look around.

 

And even the shadows casting dark lines

on the silent grass are beautiful .

The cloth of blue that is the sky

holding up the whispers of clouds.

The trill of bluebirds calling its young to spring.

Simply breathing I am enveloped

by the patient bouquet that is life

The mother’s palm of sunlight against my cheek.

 

Each time language is a birth

which exhales the earth

A holiness which even now makes the heart tremble.

It is all still there–

I thought I had forgotten .

But then I remembered.

I remembered joy.

–Shirley Russak Wachtel (5/17/12)

Till next time, I urge you all to attend “The Gathering” of second and third generations at Mercer County College on June 10….http://nj.gov/education/holocaust/programs/061012shoah.pdf.