October 2016
While my three children were young, I wrote just enough poetry to give me an inkling that I might have an aptitude for it, but I wasn’t brave enough to throw my earning potential aside until my family was grown and I’d worked for a number of years. As time went on, I came to regret not having devoted myself to writing much earlier in life. The “now or never” decision came about 20 years ago—my late-in-life career—and the process of creating a poem still gives me enormous satisfaction. I’m gratified that my poetry is widely published in the small press and equally gratified by becoming part of a larger community of writers. For my publishing credits:
lindamfischer.com
lindamfischer.com
Survivor
The desert suns her dry flanks,
Crone: she turns with the turning year.
The wind licks her shaggy slopes
In vain. I am my own oasis.
She ministers to her spare ecology,
Heeds not my pulse or print.
Old husks blanch by day,
By night shed the heat.
Time will not damp this sufficiency—
A sullen landscape and silent: moon
Scarps, star-marbled skies—
But mounts an uncompromising foundry
Of rutted ore. Soon the rat
Packs his jowls with grist
And gains his tent of wax and thorn.
In the wind gnarled tapers twist.
-first published in Ibbetson Street
From Quinlan, at Four
Will you remember the day you gave
me a “special present”—craft sticks
pasted with decals I’d tucked away
for you to discover? You barred me
from the kitchen, flourishing your ‘surprise’
with five emphatic warnings not to look!
How well, my able student,
you are learning the small lessons of love.
How long we labor to fit
such gifts within the delicate framework
of the heart until we get it just right.
-first published in Cappers
Confession
I chose not to write
because of the cardinal’s
insistence and then
the shaft of morning
light that claimed
its admiration, and mine,
illuminating the garden
as if it were
a gilded manuscript
and I, its reader,
eager to turn
the next page.
--first published in Cicada magazine
©2016 Linda M. Fischer
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