February 2018
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
The Benches
I could sing paeans to my garden benches
and why not after they’d moldered in foul
weather, wooden slats parched and cracked,
arms and legs frozen by the accretion
of rust as if their joints had become arthritic,
and woe unto me thinking it was all over
with those benches, carcasses I carted here
just months before my mother died—and what
was left of her and hers afterwards, hardly
even her bones because nothing in this world
endures forever, and her once graceful
benches suffered the blight of debilitating
age right along with her so by the time
they fell to me who would imagine them rising
like a pair of resplendent phoenixes—new
red oak burnished in urethane, ironwork
powder-coated in its original color, pieces
fitted with identical nuts and bolts—so by
now I can almost credit The Resurrection.
Here I am with Jason, the youngest of my 3 children, who replaced the wood and nuts & bolts on my mother's benches.
"The Benches" was first published in Poetry East.
© 2018 Linda M. Fischer
© 2018 Linda M. Fischer
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