Tell It Slant

Read.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to read some of my work at an event called Tell It Slant in Portland. What made this event special was that I got read alongside my mother, who in her 7th decade has gracefully, and successfully, become a poetess.

The theme for the evening was 'Bloodlines', and both of us brought work concerning ourselves, and our mothers. We had a wonderful time, and were truly surprised by the positive response we received, not just about our writing, but about us, the way we were with one another, and the way we write about each other. It was validating, and a good reminder of the value of family.

Do not stop being astonished by your parents, they may surprise you yet.

The Stillness Of The Morning

Quiet.

I love the safety of an early morning. Morning moves slowly. In early hours there is time for contemplation, for listening, for the sorting of ones life into manageable tasks. In the morning I am not yet behind, not racing or juggling or fighting traffic and customer service or negotiating relationships. In the morning each thing is presented singularly, in its own time. Now coffee, now dishes, now the sound of the men collecting trash, now the blue jays knocking at the window. There is is time, and hope, and possibility inside the blue light of a morning, a gathering of will. 

There is comfort in a morning. As a child, I was always the first to rise. A good girl, I would quietly crawl from the covers to roam the house, feed the cat, and bring in my fathers paper. When he got up, half-lidded, sniffing for his coffee, interested in the news of the day, gearing up for a long day of work, he would take me by the hand and we would stand together at the picture window to watch the sunrise. From our perch on the hill, looking east, it was as if the whole world was bathed in soft pink sheets of promised light. My fathers hand was warm and soft.

This morning, I watched the sky take on the light from my own little perch on a hill, facing west. I closed my eyes, and felt my hand slip into my fathers. For a moment, my world was simple, love, gratitude, memory. And then, with a breath and a smile, I opened my eyes.

Start the day. 

Of Friends and Lovers

Kith.

Sometimes words fall out of common, or even uncommon usage. Often this linguistic loss is barely noted by the general public, with our propensity for the formation and favor of new words. And then there are times that I find myself searching, looking for an adequate expression of some thing that shouldn't take five words to describe but always seems to. It makes me wish for a reverse dictionary, in which you could look up your meaning and find the word. Sometimes, I stumble across it anyway, and discover a new or forgotten term that satisfies the searching. Today this word is kith, as in, "of kith and kin." Kith is the collection of our unrelated family, our chosen kin. It is a good word, and a good reminder of the important role that long-term friends and companions have in our lives, kith, the people who stand by us, who lift us up in times of need, make us laugh, share our dreams, our highs and lows, not because they were born to it, but because they choose it.

The Word A Day Website:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/

Picture:
www.rubygonewild.com