Just for fun

Looking through poetry, trying to find something to enter in a contest, I came across this one, from a class on form poetry I took a while back.  It's a sestina, which means that all the lines have to end with one of the same six words, in a specific order.  (if that's as clear as mud, google "sestina")

This won't win any prizes, but it made me grin.   (As I recall, I was determined to hand something in every week, stellar or not.) (also I had to smallify the font in order to make the rambly long lines fit)

Last Minute Sestina

All week long I’ve been planning it:

a poem about riding the bus and watching people
back and forth on the bus every day
headed to work up in the north end
of Edmonton, befriending bus drivers, some
of whom let me ride free if (when) I lost

my bus pass.  Oh the things I’ve lost!
The universe is supposed to need balance -  it
seems reasonable that I should find some
things as well, but I’m not one of those people,
nothing ever drops into my lap at the end
of a journey, it’s never my day

to find a ten dollar bill, never my day
to even have the chance to return a lost
handknit mitten to the woman at the end
of my street, perhaps, although I’ve thought it
might be interesting to be one of those people,
you know the ones, there’s always some

new thing happening to them, some

thing that doesn’t happen in anyone else’s day.
But this poem wasn’t meant to be about those people -
(add “narrative thread” to the lengthy list of lost
items in my life), and just right now it
seems unlikely that I’ll get back to the bus before the end

the problem is these ridiculous and frankly awkward end

words – count for yourself how many stanzas I’ve been trying to find some
way to pretend I saw a man on the bus eating handfuls of tiny bunnies - it
goes back to there’s always something intriguing in every day
and really, all week I’ve been wondering when teddy grahams lost 
even a tiny corner of the market to bunny grahams and who the people

were that decided that variety of animal shaped graham snacks was all people

needed to make their lives complete, and was that the  end
of it? or will there be an entire line of tiny masticatable animals? I’ve lost
whole hours at a stretch, trying to think of some
new fresh way to talk about the bloodless violence of the day
I bit the head off a small defenceless (admittedly non-sentient) bunny ...and liked it.

some people would find some
elegant way to tie this all up before the end of the day
but I am as lost at the end of this as I was when I began it

The Word of God is quick and powerful (Hebrews 4:12)

We sometimes talk about the Bible being a dynamic read - how you can read a verse five hundred times, but the five hundred and first time you read it?  It somehow leaps to life off the page at you, and it's like you're reading it for the first time.

That happened to me today.

Because I am thisclose to finishing my novel, and I have a few weeks off work, I don't allow myself to knit during the time when I could be working on my book.  The exception is that I listen to the Daily Audio Bible, and I knit while I listen.

Today I had to put the knitting down so I could write down this verse that came arrowing out of the air at me.

"Come, all of you who have skills, come and make ..." Exodus 35:10, The Message

Yes, sir.  Message received and understand.  Putting the knitting down mid-row right after I've listened to today's Bible reading.

From the book of Matthew this morning

And Jesus is asked: 

What is the greatest commandment in the Law?

And the first word out of His mouth is?

"Love."

Why do we feel a need to make that so complicated??

So then I thought, hey, I know, I'll write a blog post

I am in the middle (please may it be way past the middle) of replacing one character in my novel with another character.  The new character has a similar journey, and does a lot of the same things the first one did, but this is not a simple switching of the cloak from red to blue, as you might imagine.

Right now I am writing a blog post while my underneath brain figures out who, exactly, was in the canoe, and if it wasn't K's father, then who IS that tree in the middle of the wheat field?  As I am an essentially lazy person, the upper brain is telling me to go cast on a Wingspan shawl because oh! the colours! and the cool striping effect and wouldn't that ball of Zauberball look GREAT knitted up into one of these, but my upper brain can SHUT IT because a) I am revising a novel and 2) I don't have the right size needles (and just how is that possible? you ask.  I cannot answer you.) and iii) NOVEL.

I am blogging while the underbrain works because if I walk away from the computer, the underbrain minions blow the "End of Shift" whistle and go back to obsessing about things I can't change, like the weather, or that horrible thing I did to that person way back when and whether or not I should have a shower.  I need the underbrain to stay on task, so I am faking working.

Also it is dishcloth season so I am making several to sell at a fundraiser.  I don't actually sell the dishcloths.  I put them on a table with an envelope and a sign saying "3 dishcloths with each $10 donation" and then walk away.  The dishcloths disappear, money shows up.  It's cool.

Someday I will post a picture of a pile of dishcloths that will do nothing for anybody but me.

Our winter Wow.  I can't believe I was almost that stupid.  I was THISCLOSE to inviting a winter storm the likes of which hasn't been seen in these here parts for a hundred years.  Been a mild winter here, that's all I'm saying.  Some people are delighted by that.

And here's some good news!  My mother's broken leg is healed!  AND she got over 40 Christmas cards and she was very pleased.

And some MORE good news - my mother in law has been declared cancer free.  Time to grow her hair back in!

Back to the novel.  I like the novel today, so I think I should keep working on it, because by tomorrow I will once again be convinced that my time would be better spent anywhere but on that particular page.