I don’t really believe in writer’s block, as I try to engage in the written word in some fashion every day.  Some days, this means reading; other days, staring out the window or taking a walk.  However, I do believe that not everything I’ve written is worthy of publication, and I’m very self-critical, going through draft after draft hoping to get things “right.” . . . Please visit my website, www.barbaracrooker.com to see new work (and the Poem of the Month) via the button marked “Poems Online” on the right.​

Blocked


Late May near Charlottesville, and the Blue Ridge mountains
loaf along to my left, wrapped in their usual haze.  The sky
is a blank sheet, untroubled as a baby’s sleep.  A cardinal
twangs out his notes of cheer; he has no truck with irony and post-
modernism, and a bluebird—bluer than blue—flashes about the grass
in his cloak of sky.  The twin bags of doubt and self-loathing I have
been dragging around all week start to grow lighter.  A breeze gently
riffles the pages of the underbrush, and all the words I’ve been looking for
assemble themselves on the lawn.  I just have to coax them onto paper,
the shy little darlings. But a gust of wind blows up, and they’re gone.

from my book Small Rain (Purple Flag Press, 2014)