The Power of Words

After many miles and many events, I thought I would have the last few days of the month for wool gathering. No so, wham-wham-wham, things hit. I no sooner had pushed some of my worries to the back of my mind when totally new surprises came to rock my world. Finally, I had laundry done, desk cleared, and all hot issues turned over to Divine Power-at least temporarily.

Today allowed me to turn to submissions. I realized that a lot of my writing needed to be submitted by first week in November, which had looked a lot further away at the first of October! Then a few contests and readings times also close at the end of the year. So I began to dig and match up the right story with the right contest, the best poem for the most sympathetic editor.

When I read my own work, all the pieces are like relatives. That is I think most are good even if slightly flawed. Then there are those poems or stories that just make me smile because they feel perfect, just right, and I am so content with them. It doesn’t matter than an editor rejects them; they are my babies and I love them unconditionally!

When I arrived home from traveling, my copies of Spring by Tending Your Inner Garden were here. I find this book a delightful and positive read about how we women are reborn and revitalized in the springs of our lives. My poem recalling my sister-in-law and I cooking in my mother-in-law’s kitchen two years ago is on the pages. It wrenches my heart to read my own work again.

I cried writing that poem. It formed in my heart that day at the farm because I have a burdensome habit of seeing down the road in life. Sometimes I am wrong, but I have been right enough times to listen. Like the time I was home for Christmas and knew in my heart it would be dad’s last Christmas even though he had not yet received the mesothelioma verdict. That Memorial Day weekend I knew this would be the last family meal where we would all be together “traditionally” at the farm. The in-laws were getting weaker for sure but fighting leaving the farm; some of us would eat there again but somehow I knew either one or both of the parents would not. (It came to pass that the in-laws had to go to assisted living.)

That day in the kitchen though, each movement loomed up, each utensil felt odd in my hands. We ate at the same table as always, but things were changing in the moment as much as if an earthquake shook the floor. So I put the emotion on paper when I got home. It is nice that an editor published it, but if no one else read or appreciated it, the poem would always capture the day for me better than a photograph.

The power of words never ceases to amaze me.