My Country Life

Yellow Hibiscus at Jekyll Island last week. Learning to appreciate and write poetry at 50-plus is proving to be a fun challenge. I shared my poem to a deceased person (this week’s assignment) with the class last night. You can read it here . I like my poem, and the lady next to me told me she loved it and talked about her own father; I could tell she was sincere. (My siblings all said they liked it, but hey, what else can they say?) The teacher thought it was too straight forward and she didn’t like the ending. She didn’t like that Daddy was sitting in a recliner watching television in the end and actually suggested that I change it to something "more interesting." I think she meant something more worthwhile.  “Well, it is about my dad. We didn’t sit around reading poetry and playing the violin. He worked hard in a blue collar job all week, all his life, and he liked to sit in his recliner on Saturday afternoon sometimes. It’s a fond memory for me,” I replied, with att...

Daddy 1979 The latest assignment for my poetry class is to write a poem to a deceased person. Here's my poem to my father who passed away on June 2, 1998. I'll be sharing it in class tomorrow night.

I enjoyed my first fire of the season yesterday after returning home from a week at Jekyll Island. Cold weather arrived while I was away so the cabin was chilled to the bone. The seasoned cherry from last winter and the pond pine that Jack brought me made for easy fire-starting. Later I added some of the new "green" wood that I recently cut to create a slow-burning fire that lasted through the night.

I'm enrolled in a poetry workshop at Emory this fall. This is the first time I've given poetry any serious consideration. I'll be reading lots of poetry and writing some too. The first class was last Tuesday, and my first assignment is to write a narrative poem to share with the class this week. Following is the poem that I wrote.