A Plug Dilemma

by | Nov 19, 2012 | Great Reads

B just told me over a pot of pear-cinnamon jam that he’s getting tired of the plugs. I admit that my posts have been plug-heavy of late, but that’s what you get when you cross three classes with six hours in the writing lab plus two random freelance gigs that come in just as your mother-in-law and your mom are both coming to visit. Plugs are quick and easy, truth be told, especially during this very busy fall I’ve been having.

So, whaddya think? Enjoying my every-Monday pings for books and films and lectures I’m interested in promoting, or should my plugs just come up when exciting stuff is happening?

As it happens, I have no plug for today, other than to say: get thyself a writing group. It’s the best. And spend some good time with your family or your friends this week. We’re making Christmas presents (pear-cinnamon jam, anyone?) and I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving.

Here is a fall poem for today.

STEPS TO GET OVER

Again yesterday the wind rose & shook the leaves off

The trees throw shadows on the sidewalk

We trudge along avoiding each other

Because sometimes everyone is the enemy even

The guy in the trench coat & black hat lingers over the box

Where they keep the free newspapers taking one out

At the ballpark a baseball took off through

The stratosphere was pierced by a comet with rough edges

And a whole series of constellations you didn?t know

How sharp I was I just got your letter & photograph

Thank you I treasure it as an artifact of the love that never

Was I too effusive or too

Odd how the baseball takes its arc from the moon

If the moon were a motion it would be whoosh

Go the leaves on the sidewalk in a sudden brief gust

That leaves us all

Breathless is how I felt when I got your letter

And tucked it into the drawer alongside other things

Aren?t so good here since you last

Wrote memory is a funny thing because it makes us

Crazy people in the crosswalk & a marching band on the town hall steps

To get over you are too numerous to mention here

Come the cheerleaders who arrived with the marching band & will leave

On the shoulders of a hundred football players

Are birds of paradise whispering play

Secrets are not fun for the person who doesn?t notice

The sidewalk dappled with leaf-shaped light

A cigarette in winter & it?s a tiny planet in your fingers

(? Susie Meserve. First published in Cimarron Review, winter 2007.)