Love Apple Alley

As I spent Wednesday morning pulling up out beautiful-but-dying tomato plants--no longer able to withstand the encroaching London winter--I thought it would be appropriate to write about them this week. I am already missing their leafy tops peaking over the bathroom window sill.

Also, as I've embarked as this poetry month long adventure with one particular, tomato-growing sasqitoon, this is also in honor of her inspiration.

An excerpt from today's rambling:

Then May, you came into view.

Slava peaked its head first, followed by
Black Prince and his brother, Krim.
Young Flamme came with an
unpronounceable Christian name, and
the German we nicknamed Blondie.

Sebastopol was the most surprising,
offering little to start other than a reminder
of home, but when the summer months blew in
and you each received your own room--
boy, did you blossom a plenty!

Haiku

I can still remember learning to count syllables in primary school, and then being taught to write haiku. I loved the challenge of getting the 5-7-5 just right.

Today, I am quiet, reflective, noticing the changing season and the changes around me--taking them in with their emotional weight, letting them wash through. And so, haiku felt oddly appropriate.

To share:

Daily, the dustman sweeps.
Wrappers receipts, sweets and butts.
And now, also, leaves.

After you have cried,
your face looks as if it's washed
with rose water, pink.

She asks me to list
the feelings I hold within:
sadness, despair, fear.

Your Big Big Heart

'Underdeveloped organs'
is the phrase that stuck
as your mum recounted
the story of your miraculous birth.

Chasing Leaves

"She's chasing leaves," says the man

next to me with the white Yorkie

and the purple cravat.

Today I thought of you, Pumpkin Queen!

If Only - A Poem a Day in November

Hello, there. I've missed you.

It's been three months, maybe more. I've gotten married--twice. Gotten a promotion and a raise. Been in three different countries. And the writing, well, the writing has gone by the wayside for a bit.

And that's OK. Sometimes the creative outlets go by the wayside, life gets in the way. But, well, November seems the perfect month to re-kindle it.

At least that sort of appears to be the idea behind 'A Novel in November'--a national project to write a novel in a month. But I don't write novels. I write poems. And, thankfully, I was inspired by a poet friend who is joining her husband in writing a novel in November by writing a poem a day in November. So, with the clocks 'fallen back' now and the skies dark before I leave my office at 5:15 in the evening I, too, will be writing a poem a day and publishing a stanza--or two, or three--of it here, as my record. These are first drafts, like the novel. No more than the editing that happens in the instance of writing, set down to be reviewed later, but first endeavored to be written.

Thus, without further ado, 'If Only:'

I'd be your knight in shining amour;
your handsome, pro-bono lawyer; your short-skirted Girl Friday. If only.

Only then you'd be the helpless princess, the thrice-tried convict,
the lecherous boss who grabbed my ass and called me Billy Jean.


I think I'd rather just be me, and you be you, thanks. If only.