September 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.
Currents
Rooted beside a creek—a modest trickle
winding its way downstream to feed
a ponderous river—she can only think
of what keeps her here. Whatever grows
clings to its banks, sustained by moistened
earth through the worst of dry spells,
weeks that beggar rain. No different
her life—as modest and unreflecting as the forces
that pull teaspoonfuls of water inexorably
toward the ocean’s depths. She thinks of where
she might go, exotic places of her own choosing,
armed with the kind of self-assurance
she finds so enviable in others yet for her
seems as vagrant as the currents that shape
weather—the terrain unpredictable, slippery.
Better to remain within customary channels
than find herself adrift, wandering the byways
of some foreign city, bereft of the comfort
of routine. Even here life flourishes—
minnows, the crayfish she discovers hiding
beneath rocks, impervious to the moving
stream above them—like the accretion of time:
flowing over you, past you, gathering
momentum while you look the other way.
--first published in Poetry East
Jean: In Memoriam
You made a joke of it—how we’d end up
together in our rocking chairs, blithe
in the assumption that we’d outlast everyone.
If you could see the ocean as it is this morning,
the sun streaming from the horizon to the shoreline
like a golden highway, you’d probably be out
there trying to get me to walk on water.
You were the one who believed in miracles.
--first published in Ibbetson Street
Currents
Rooted beside a creek—a modest trickle
winding its way downstream to feed
a ponderous river—she can only think
of what keeps her here. Whatever grows
clings to its banks, sustained by moistened
earth through the worst of dry spells,
weeks that beggar rain. No different
her life—as modest and unreflecting as the forces
that pull teaspoonfuls of water inexorably
toward the ocean’s depths. She thinks of where
she might go, exotic places of her own choosing,
armed with the kind of self-assurance
she finds so enviable in others yet for her
seems as vagrant as the currents that shape
weather—the terrain unpredictable, slippery.
Better to remain within customary channels
than find herself adrift, wandering the byways
of some foreign city, bereft of the comfort
of routine. Even here life flourishes—
minnows, the crayfish she discovers hiding
beneath rocks, impervious to the moving
stream above them—like the accretion of time:
flowing over you, past you, gathering
momentum while you look the other way.
--first published in Poetry East
Jean: In Memoriam
You made a joke of it—how we’d end up
together in our rocking chairs, blithe
in the assumption that we’d outlast everyone.
If you could see the ocean as it is this morning,
the sun streaming from the horizon to the shoreline
like a golden highway, you’d probably be out
there trying to get me to walk on water.
You were the one who believed in miracles.
--first published in Ibbetson Street
© 2018 Linda M. Fischer
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