One morning while talking poetry

“I’m not dying yet, so I need to do something,” said Ilene. She is 88 years-old.

• 

• 

• 

The front deck is wet from the night’s rain. The red flowers and the orange cat glow in the grey morning light.

Today we met for poetry club. Three of us gather once a month to share a poem or two. Then we talk about whatever comes up. We like poets like Rumi and Mary Oliver. Today Ilene read William Stafford. She also writes her own poems. Her specialty is erotic poetry. Carol told us more about Montaigne today. How he got over his fear of death by almost dying.

I’ve come to realize that people send me their poems to read. I don’t even ask, they just arrive in my in-box. It doesn’t happen all the time, but how did I get so lucky? They are always worth reading.

My parents told me when I was young, “you’re a writer.” I only saw novels and didn’t want to write a novel. So, I got a journalism degree but wasn’t confident enough to express my opinions. The thing that moved me the most was poetry but I had no idea how to write it. I was not exposed to the whole of it, just the classics in school.

I find poetry everywhere I go now.

I could see having a honey farm and writing poetry about bees full-time.