Almost

Early June, the world of leaf and blade and flowers explode and every sunset is different.

John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent



Almost summer.

The between seasons, spring and fall, are what I anticipate. Before the long stretch of heat or the last gentle breath before winter, there is that liminal time of expectation. 

This spring I've planted a kitchen garden in the wooden boxes my husband made. He isn't here to plant Oregon snow peas or to build more trellises. I wrap the dangling twine that ripped when I took them down two years ago. Everything bittersweet.

Often the only thing that diminishes my anxiety and sadness is creating something. I moved from words to making art journals and decorating boxes. The freedom to create multi-media pieces was freeing. I follow Jack Ravi and Jane Chipp online because what they create stuns me. I make things with my hands because it is visually and tactilely satisfying. Creating with paper, photos, textiles and whatever I can get my hands on is never work. It supplies exactly what I've needed: childlike joy. 
 
I knew the words, the work, would eventually return. When they arrived, I was carried backwards to when JoAn Osborne and I edited and published Tiger's Eye: A Journal of Poetry, when we worked closely with our poets. We called them "our" poets because they mattered so much to us. We could not offer them a wide audience, but hopefully gave them the satisfaction of knowing how important their work was. And is. 

The words have also pulled me into the present. The remembered practice of writing longhand lines, the click-click of the laptop keys. The challenge of writing a final poem to complete an already-written manuscript. I was sure I couldn't dredge up the original energy. Unexpectedly the poem practically wrote itself. It had the original tone and meter of its sister poems. That gave me hope that my long drought did not define me. 

I have piles of "unfinished symphonies." Folders with completed work, partially completed manuscripts, published and unpublished poems. It isn't pretty. I have not given the words the respect they deserve. Maybe now as spring storms rush over the Rockies, I can concentrate on making poems. I can fill yellow legal pads with thoughts and images in the bright heat of another non-liminal Colorado summer. But the art supplies are staying.


Colette
June, 2025