December 2017
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
Rain on Crum Creek
Out in it. Feeders keep this channel
Sleek, bladder-full, brimming
To a granite-banked spillway most
Weathers. In rain, waters ramming
Stones below banish complaisance.
I came for a spectacle worthy of Genesis,
In the rain. Rain as steady as churchgoers,
Rain relentless as a Sunday sermon.
In boots, hat & slicker, looking for
A revelation—some miracle in a minor
Key—I listen for the water’s pour.
No freeze yet to check its carouse
Over the falls, but cold enough to nudge
Cove-folk deep beneath a cover of mud.
Leaves burgeon with beads that drop
Like rosaries; their blacks circle & converge.
Ducks harbor under the arch of a branch.
A solitary crake picks its way through
Crannogs of rock: I take the footpath
That winds along the meadow. Quick currents
Sluice past clog & gully, driven
By gods indifferent to particularities. The sky
Whitens—blank—impossible to read.
Only the rain speaks of destinies,
Of infinite privacies. Small lives
That shelter here, in a country hidden
From the incurious, follow an order precise
As a catechism could we but know it.
The last geese rudder upward,
Choosing to winter elsewhere. I get in
Out of it.
--first published in Ibbetson Street
© 2017 Linda M. Fischer
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