February 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
After Making Tea for Quinlan
How can I discard this teabag, hardly used,
and not think of my yiddishe grandmother—
how she would put the soggy envelope
on a little dish and stick it in the refrigerator,
ignoring my mother’s pleas to just
throw it away? Now, thinking of how
she took her tea—in a glass (“glezle tey”)—
and sipped the amber fluid through a cube
of sugar held between the teeth (her mouth
wreathed in a steamy smile), I wonder
that my grandsons, four generations removed
from their vaguely Russian ancestry, can ever
comprehend the volumes of deprivation and poverty
expressed in that one simple gesture.
first published in Philadelphia Poets
©2016 Linda M. Fischer
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