21 January 2013

Historic Day

President Obama’s second inauguration.
The Public one: 1/21/2013


Obama calculates his repetition
to be the jingle we all sing as we
leave and live:   We the People. 
We the People.
We the People.


He was made for this moment,
to stand and to stop “treating
name calling as reasoned debate.”
To reason, remake, reform,
revamp and re-energize.


Obama reminds citizens we must
execute God-given rights, that we
must be equal not only in God’s
eyes, but in our own eyes be
we, the People.



I had forgotten and worked with my poetry correspondance right through his inaugeral address.  I just finished listening to it at the  NYTimes and You Tube.  As impressive as his others, this one stripped away the icing and went straight to his points.  He said words like slave and strap and sword and, in general, made no bones about his agenda.  He never said the word compromise--he said "Do it for your children and grandchildren."  Everyone looked frozen except for Obama who is as if a torch in our midst. 

This is our history, he says. 
This is what we said we believe. 
We, the people, still believe it.



 

02 January 2013

Check in for the new year

I have been silent for a while, living in family out there and living in poems in here, mostly posting them at Susan's Poetry and on Facebook.  I answer letters, respond to comments, and sit down for way too many hours in the day.

I have made two decisions based in the past year's experience which some may call New Year's Resolutions:  (1) boldly write about what I have been silent about, and (2) make sure to have an "artist's date" at least once a week.  The latter is from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a book I worked with almost 20 years ago. I plan to combine walking with seeing places in Philadelphia that I haven't seen: museums, parks, stores, riverside sites and more.  I started with a Pendle Hill retreat over New Year's eve and day.

One writing word-shop ended in December and another begins next week. There, my mentor Alison Hicks encourages the growth of my novel The Storyteller and I plan to bring in pages for the other writers in the workshop to read.  No longer shy about writing, liking my chapters, seeing the conflicts and plots grow--I am amazed to be insider to what is for me an extremely slow process.  V e r y  slow.

That's all for now, folks.