I Never Wanted Anything More

The sun burns off the fog

as orioles eat store-bought

grape with no mind

as to where it came from

or who grew and picked

the grapes and filled the jar.
Me, sipping coffee from beans we can't grow

but remembering young girls with shy smiles

picking beans under triple canopy jungle.

I open the door to snap photos

as the fog lifts from the headlands

and a bank of clouds pose as a mountain,

white-peaked with angry undertones—

indigo bunting breaking free of the mother cloud.

Red wing blackbird glides in for a landing

confident as a pilot adjusting his flaps.

I never wanted anything more.

Written and posting for dVerse, the Poet's Pub, "Go and Open the Door" and for Poets and Storytellers who ask for a Slice of Life. This is mine. Have a cuppa with me?!

The Greatest of Lakes If We Can Keep It

 

Sand gives way under my feet

as I bend to the effort

of climbing a dune

on the sweetwater sea.

 

Beyond waving fronds of seagrass

water to the horizon heaves and hurls

plumes of foam that pound the shore.

It polishes stone

and whittles driftwood

burnished and smooth as a baby’s sole.

 

With sand in my shoes

hardpack underfoot

I fill my pockets.

Clouds scurry happily overhead

as gulls ride the waves

like surfers in wet suits.

 

Where water meets sky

the stars and the moon live in the depths

while on a rush of wing

eagle eats gull and feathers fly—

            ferocious predator

            rules the sky

while fox of the bayou

trots over the sedge

to circle his den of many rooms—

            intrepid hunter

rules the beachhead

as Superior turns herself

inside out to bring in treasures

whittled to size by the push and pull

of the big shining sea.

For dVerse, the Poet's Pub, and their Open Link Night, Poets and Storytellers, what does "low battery" mean to you, and how do you recharge?  and What's Going On the writer's blog that asks us to think about the personal nature of homemade gifts, and while they're the best, I think gifts washed up on the shore of Lake Superior might be their equal 

 

She Took Venice

She bought a sarong in Venice where everyone is beautiful
though the surf smells and seagulls scour the tideline.

All along the shore the ocean unfurls its soul.

Beer with salty clams to peel, dip, and swallow.

The bar faces the ocean with a poolroom where poets rhyme.

She bought a sarong in Venice where everyone is beautiful.

One size fits all with three ways to fold, wrap, and tie.

In Venice, where guitarists skate the boulevard

all along the shoreline the ocean unfurls its soul.

Sea birds ply ocean weed, piles of shell, and salty form.

Bougainvillea drapes the cafes. She collects all she finds.

She bought a sarong in Venice where everyone is beautiful.

She took the ocean home - salt, shells and sun coils.

Maybe he'll come over with a hank of garden lettuce or another sign.

Because all along the shoreline the ocean uncurled its soul.

On the whisper of her sarong she crosses the wooden floor

and watches him cut grass, sun on his shoulders, tasting salty brine.

She bought a sarong in Venice where everyone is beautiful

and all along the shoreline the ocean unfurls its soul.

Tasked with the challenge from Poets & Storytellers to write a poem about a sensual piece of clothing, I immediately thought of a  trip to Venice Beach where the beach was littered with what the ocean didn't need, where sarongs were as popular as sun hats and, yes, where everyone was beautiful.

The Uprooting

The fate of a rose planted by my grandmother a hundred years ago released by Flapper Press

The Flapper Press is a literary magazine of Useful Words, Inspiring Stories, and Eclectic Perspectives and I'm very happy to be a part of it.

Also shared with Poets and Storytellers's "Lasting Impressions". No one makes more lasting ones than mothers and grandmothers.  

The Boomerang That Came Back

As with writing, learning to throw a boomerang requires perseverance and discipline, the subject brought up this week at Poets and Storytellers, the power of discipline.  As it has an important, if symbolic, place in my novel, and in anticipation of my April 2nd release date, I thought I'd repost the poem I wrote back when I was first throwing the idea for a novel around in my head. (No pun intended.) 

Some of you may remember the G-Man and his Friday Flash 55 challenge to write fiction with a plot in 55 words. He inspired me to write flash poetry.  You could say, in a convoluted way, that he inspired me to write Let Evening Come.

The birth of a novel in 55 words.

Even as a child, she was drawn to the night
when the air was soft and fraught with life.
He, too, a child of twilight—
mysterious boy boomerang in his belt
Was my father’s he said,
dog circling, divining the night air.
Fingers entwined, he taught her to throw
so it would always come back.

The Flow Of Water

Waking up in the lowlands with the murmur of the teakettle, a pour-over coffee, and a ticking clock. Within a short drive of Lake Huron and a stone's throw of the creek that trickles into the Black River that flows into the big lake which rushes to the ocean. 

Contemplating this business of publishing, royalty gigs and division of the pie with so many forks, and me with nothing but words in my head, phrases and ideas, passion and pain, spinning, weaving, plotting, scheming. 

Why do I wake up in the middle of the night? Thinking about the old man on the tractor and the woman with the broken broom, the man who trekked over a mountain with his youngest on his back to stay ahead of the soldiers, and the teen who enlisted for glory only to stowaway on a boat for foreign lands. Then there's the biologist who lives in a tent and studies the die-off of amphibians, and the reporter who only wants a story but comes face to face with a second chance at love.

Beyond our yard and across the pasture there runs a creek, which flows into a river that crosses the plain and enters the ocean. Currents collide, the Labrador meets the Gulfstream to merge with the Canary to circle a globe without borders. 

One story I wrote that's out of my hands but still won't let me sleep is about an Indigenous son who lost home and family and a motherless farmgirl who is simply lost.

Which brings me to the end and mention of my favorite modern invention which Rommy at Poets and Storytellers asks us to write about. Has to be the Universal Book Link.

A coming-of-age story in times of distress available now at  Your Favorite Digital Bookstore 

INDIAN HORSE A review

In awe of an expertly bound book, I ran my hand across the smooth surface of the Milkweed edition of Indian Horse, the feel of it a tactile pleasure. From front to back, I fanned the pages, intrigued by the page numbers elegantly printed in cursive on the bottom left, and the smell of print. I leafed through them—I couldn't seem to stop—the promise of a story captured between the covers of this book.

Indian Horse is the beautifully written story of the Ojibway youth, Saul Indian Horse, who is trapped at an early age in Canada's residential school system. The story is an affirmation of Saul's perseverance and resilience as he struggles to survive the horror of the school and the demeaning actions of those who felt compelled to subjugate and drive the savage out of the Indian. In testament to the endurance and spiritual wisdom of his people and the grandmother he remembers, Saul battles to reclaim the dignity he was endowed with. I loved him and cried with him.

I just realized there was a movie made and it's on Netflix. I recommend it. But read the book first, if you can. 

Gifted to me at Christmas, owning and reading this novel has made me realize how personal books are to me.  Books have been my best friends since I learned to tie my shoes. Stages of life bookended by the books I read.

Now we have eBooks, the epitome of inanimate. They aren't books—I would argue—but devices. They are screens that need battery power to light up. They need electricity to turn the pages. They smell like nothing. But they are cheaper than print (and friendlier to the environment), thus the way of the future. 

I gave up my eight tracks for cassettes and my cassettes for CDs. I confess to the convenience of Alexa sitting on a shelf, devoid of rizz even when she's plugged in, but she has her place, like an electronic reader on an airplane or in the dark of bedtime. But my bookshelves sag with that which I will never give up. Books that remain readable when the power goes off.

It's early in the year, but it will be difficult for any novel to unseat Indian Horse's number one position on my shelf.

Poets and Storytellers,  invited us to "de-retro" our vintage vocabulary with a post, including the Oxford word of the year for 2023 - Rizz,  an informal noun defined as style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner. 

I stuck it in above. Did you notice.

yvonneosborne.com

BEGINNINGS Newsletter Signups (what's in it for me?)

Everything must have a beginning … and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. – Mary Shelley.

This Friday's prompt from Poets and Storytellers is to let the idea of Beginnings inspire us in our responses. For me, 2024 marks the beginning of being a published novelist, the birthday year for LET EVENING COME 

This beginning is linked, as Shelly says it must, to all the years of reading that went before. From Island of the Blue Dolphins and Ramona to the latest novels on my nightstand, which somehow, somewhere along the line, gave me the impetus and courage to write a novel of my own. 

Now it's time to say, I’m proud of this thing! This is hard because, like most writers, I’m humbled by the process of putting my writing out there. Humbled that people would want to put down hard-earned money to read it. There are no words to express the gratitude I feel.

I started a newsletter to share the process, the bump and grind of a publishing journey in hopes readers would find it interesting and to help get the word out. I know it takes an extra step to signup for a newsletter, and there is so much noise out there, advertisers, bloggers, "influencers" (I hate that term). I get it. I've been there.  So it takes a leap of faith for which I may or may not be worthy of, to sign up for my newsletter. But I promise to focus on succinct, interesting content. I will not flood your inbox with drivel. Most importantly, there will be two drawings from the first fifty subscribers for a signed, first edition book, and, honestly, (alert: arm twisting) there are exactly 8 spots left.  

The sign up form for my mailing list is here . Thank you for your trust and support. 

Finally, I'd like to plug an author's two best friends. The library (this is me recently at the one in Rochester) and independent bookstores. Both form mutually beneficial relationships with authors, readers, and their communities. 

To new beginnings in 2024!  

Yvonne,
 Human

Pet Peeve #3 December Rain

 

The Pet Peeve #3

December rains flood the bird feeders—how will they eat?—but doesn’t wash the blood off my porch, the carnage scattered from door to window; tuffs of fur, a chewed-off leg, entrails, a tail. My dear husband cleaned it up with his shop broom and what all. But what, you ask, does this have to do with the rain the rain, the rain?

It’s my opinion that if it were snow falling gently from these iron-gripped skies to pile up in fluffy banks around the porch, drifts swirling and forming barriers along the drive, then perhaps these nocturnal creatures, whatever they are, would eat their dinner in their riverbank burrows, cubbyholes, and woody enclaves, (I want no Invitation to the Party!) instead of spreading it across my front porch for the UPS and Fed Ex guys to look at askance, as at the scene of a murder, checking the soles of their boots before climbing back in their trucks.

So, call it what you want: global warming, climate change, or normal fluctuations in weather patterns, I want my winters back. I want the cardinals and the juncos to flit among snow-laden boughs instead of flapping their wings like ducks in the newly formed ponds where there was once a yard. And I don't want dead things on my doorstep.

For Poets and Storytellers and their Seasonal Writings, asking us to include the title of a book we're reading this December in a piece of poetry or prose. An Invitation to The Party  was a perfect fit!

A STORY OF OPENING DAY

Back when pheasants were plentiful
Opening Day meant friedcakes hot out of the deep fryer—
Betty Crocker called them cake doughnuts
But mother called them friedcakes so friedcakes they were—
subtly spiced and dipped in glaze or sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar
and stacked in dripping pans to cool.

Opening day was hunters in camouflage jackets

and canvas vests lined with little pockets

to store bullets in. Traipsing in and out

the back door to sign in on dad’s clipboard

hung on a nail beside the dryer.

 

They would carry their birds back up the lane by the feet

stopping first to report in and get a friedcake.

A snapshot of one of the regulars

     Eddie in his bulging vest with his bird

     And a grinning preschooler full of indulgence in a fuzzy sweater.

What beautiful birds those ringnecks were.

 

1957

Gunshots echoed across the fields

The kicking up of leaves in galoshes and wool socks.

The warm kitchen smelling of hot oil and cinnamon

Friedcakes dripping frosting cooling in the pan.

A jostling around the counter to duck and grab

Mother in her apron and dad in his coveralls

Talking up the hunt and the camaraderie of neighbors.

 

 

2023

A Kindred Need

Chaff in the wind, grasshoppers on the fly,

the gathering up and the laying down.

Combines creep across the field

where sparrows hover and hide

in the dry rustle of the corn

storing up energy in their hollow bones

for fall portends winter,

when they’ll swoop over the land in concert of wing

for they need their kind come winter.

I heard a pheasant this past summer.
Never saw but heard the truncated chortle,

the two-note song. 

Was that a tail waving in the Queen Anne’s Lace?

I thought I heard a pheasant this past summer.

Can't resist linking this to Poets and Storytellers with their prompt in  favor of adjectives, reaffirming my belief that there are exceptions to every writing rule. And in answer to the prompt at What's Going On?  what do you love?, this post might only scratch the surface but Opening Day, then and now, are right near the top. 

Uncommon Fruit

 

I need to see the sun’s first light

and flaming slide at the end of day.

I can’t escape my farmgirl sentience—

what it was to fall asleep

to the thrum of the hay dryer

with a pillow cooled at windows of sweet scent,

to hear the whistle of the freight train

on its rumble through the night

to pick up grain and carry it off.

 

With hay cut and drying in the sun,

I see those strong boys paid to help.

Heavy bales to lift, throw, and stack;

chaff in our hair, sweat down our backs.

We gathered at the hydrant,

close but not touching. Closer than touching.

 

Knee-deep in Queen Anne’s Lace

on a wend among the boulders,

glacial erratic that lined the fence—

worn pocket tops caught the rain

and made a seat for dreams of Oread

hawks and love and common things

 

and lent a view of the jagged line

of rogue apple trees

that grew along the creek

in unmannered ways,

withstood the winds of winter

and bore uncommon fruit

without the nod of a care from us.

 

Sharing an old poem about home at dVerse  (the poet's pub) and Poets and Storytellers, What conjures up home?  Nothing was ever sweeter than the smell of fresh cut hay and first love. 

Novel Writing, Websites, and Sugar Dragon Angst

Prompted by Poets and Storytellers United to shape words around the phrase "It's Been A Long Time Coming", I immediately thought of the writing process. I'm in the proofreading stage on the editorial calendar for the novel I've worked on since 2012. In between gaps in that calendar, I'm working on a website (another Long-Time-Coming) and trying to turn a couple of short stories into novels. That endeavor began during NaNoWriMo as I attempted to combine two into one but didn't get very far. I've never been an outliner but now I see why some writers prefer that approach. 

On another "Long Time Coming" subject, I've been trying to rid my figure of all those Christmas cookies, cakes, festive punches and bourbon slushes we indulged in. To be honest, this is a lifelong seesaw occurrence for me. This time I'm forcing my family into the Whole 30 plan with me. Wow. I never realized how much sugar "they" sneak into our foods under different names like sucralose and dextrose, even stevia, all the same to our brain. Not just ketchup (which was suspected) but lunch meats, chicken and beef broth, even some mustards have added sweeteners.  We've gotten so used to them, whole foods without added sweeteners seem bland and boring. On the average, Americans consume over 57 pounds a year. No wonder we are notoriously subject to obesity, diabetes, and many other ailments. 

The sugar dragon is a tenacious creature, but we have him in a pen and are about to lead him down the chute to slaughter. Long time coming!

Yet, I think about food all the time. Especially when in the throes of website building and navigating Word's track changes with an editor.  While my experience seemed endless with the dragon of self-doubt always breathing down my neck, I know novelists who've spent twenty plus years on a project. How does one soldier on while slaying the beast in the closet? As Sylvia Plath said, "The worst enemy to creativity is self doubt." 

The Lake Superior Writer's Retreat

A small one-room cabin sits on top of a dune overlooking Lake Superior. Local legend holds it belonged to a writer. It’s not really a cabin, just a glassed-in lean-to which this writer supposedly built as a retreat. When walking the beach, you can see the top of the glass enclosure. Knowing the rumors of his mysterious death by drowning along with the sad truth that the dead have no privacy, I climbed the dune to see what the inside of a writer’s cabin overlooking a vast body of water looks like.

 

A grill sat beside the door next to a weather-beaten bench. I pressed my face to the glass. The inside was cluttered and desolate. It wasn’t at all cozy, as I had envisioned, only abandoned and sad. A crookneck lamp sat on a table beside the window but nothing else beyond clutter was recognizable. Nothing to indicate a writer ever worked here. No reams of paper, no lost manuscript, no rejections taped to the wall. Who were his heirs to let this writer’s retreat fall into ruin? What did he write? Poetry? Murder mysteries? Ghost stories of the lost at sea? Lake Superior never gives up her dead, but still, I envied him his writer’s retreat on the top of a dune.

Written for Poets and Storytellers Friday Writings, whose only stipulation is that we include the word cozy in whatever way feels right.

This is a true story. 

Election Day Eve

The phantoms of disorder

dance across screens

but from whence they were conjured

no one can say.

On election day eve with naysayer cries

they'll don placards like

cheerleaders outside

a car wash brigade.

They walk along byways

like bad actors

on the dole,

whisper and hiss

intrigue and lies.

The republic is under siege

with three days to go

by jackals that feast

on the leavings of fear

while the acolytes of the lie

with their camo and guns—

        as fungus grows best

        out of the sun—

repeat what has spewed

from the maw of the king.

For Shay's Word Garden List Poem.  The challenge to compose a poem using words she has taken from the lyrics of Jim Morrison and his poetry collection "The Lord & The New Creatures". I'm a huge fan of The Doors and everything Morrison so this one I could not pass up. If you are likewise a fan of the Lizard King check her link. Also, linking up the Poets and Storytellers and the power of three. And won't we all be glad when this election season is behind us and we can relax with a cold one, or hot, as the case may be. Cheers!

What's For Dinner?

I knew something was afoot when he went upstairs in his barn coat. He came back down with a knife that belonged to his father who grew up in Kentucky where shotguns and knives were all a boy knew. A boy who could knock a squirrel out of a tree with a slingshot became a man who went to war in the first wave. He was in a foxhole when the soldier beside him took a bullet to the head, but he aimed over the heads of the enemy and came home with a purple heart. 

The son of that man stepped back into his boots, worked his fingers into his gloves, and with the knife in one hand and a stainless-steel bowl in the other (my mother’s for whipping up cakes), went back outside in the near dark and bracing cold to skin the kill.

 

A big rabbit lived under our garden shed. I saw his tracks in the snow every morning when I let the chickens out. I knew where his entrance was and I knew his comings and goings. His circle of tracks was like a child’s game of fox and goose.

 

A big rabbit once lived under our shed.

For Poets and Storytellers my New Year's resolution is to try new recipes.

Haiku - going micro

 Inspired by the prompt at Poets and Storytellers to go micro . . .

The night bird rustles
midst the snow-burdened branches
of his hidden home.

 

Smog colored sunrise

of busy men—rich cerise

for their artless ways.

 

On the snow fog morn

white lights dance around the nest

of winter’s cardinal.

A traditional Japanese form, haiku is a three-line poem written in a 5/7/5 syllable count, usually with a focus on nature. Thanks, Rosemary, for including the other forms of micro poetry in the prompt. Less is often more!

 

Publishing Contract

I just signed a publishing contract with Unsolicited Press out of Portland Oregon. I'm so excited! It's a long process and the novel won't be published until early 2024. It seems like a long time, but I know that is to be expected. Out of the thousands of submissions they received, they said mine was one of forty projects they seclected for publication in 2023/2024. 

I wanted to share this with my blogging community, and expressly today with Poets and Storytellers.  Many of you have been so supportive over the years. You know who you are, and a huge thank you goes out to each and every one of you. And remember,  the only failed writer is the one who quits. 

Here's a toast to poets and writers who never quit!

"What do you plan to do with your one wild, precious life?"

                    -Mary Oliver

Garlic!!

My hands smell like garlic. I've chopped and chopped, chopped the house awake. Time to get up! The sun is shinning through the evergreens, cones hanging like coconuts from the top branches. One of our trees lost its top in a straight-line wind two years ago. It's big but no longer the biggest.

Back to garlic. 

Well....I've dried parsley before in the oven, so I know this can be done, this dehydrating process. Thirty minutes at the lowest temp (170 for me) then stir, reset the timer, and repeat.  Repeat until dried and crumbly to the touch, however long that takes. Will it get crumbly? You tell me. Then I'll grind it up (to make my bread)  in my food processor to have my own garlic, um powder? Or just minced dried garlic to put in spaghetti and meatloaf and lasasgna and minestrone and bean soup with pig hocks and all those other things we turn to for comfort when the weather turns to winter.

Check out Poets and Storytellers: "The Season Turns" for seasonal thoughts from Down Under to "Up North". And I'd welcome any suggestions that will improve my chances of success on this Sunday Funday.

The Apple

What if it was Adam ate the apple
and in retelling, told it slant?
The tale recorded by scribes of men
with etching tools and papyrus

rewriting Eve into a sin—
the temptress who led her mate astray
and cursed us all till kingdom come.

The mother of mothers forged

into the witch of Salem, the shrew of literature,

the feminine mystique placed on high

but denied the pen to record it straight.

But what if Adam ate the apple?

A rogue deceptor, a muscle man,

who climbed the tree

who shook the limb

who took a bite
and smiled it good.

April is poetry month and Poets and Storytellers is helping to kick it off. An ode to trees, here with a slant, and linked to dVerse , the pub where poets hang out.

Time

 I

The Last Snowfall

 

The child playing

in the driveway

while his dad shovels

will remember snow.

 

II

The Mirror

 

The hair that falls out in the shower

is still black.

Why in the mirror is it not?

The face cream claims to lift.

It’ll lift your lids right off your face.

Why in the mirror does it not?

We worry about bills and cancer

and if the car will start 

and the junction in our lifeline.

Put a dimmer switch in the bathroom.

Life is too short to worry about our health.

 

 

III

Gravity

 

The door swings empty. Dust settles.

Flesh accommodates.

The old lady stumbles but she recovers.

I hurt therefore I am.

 

When you crossed the hospital lobby

Did you think to escape?

Pick up your feet.

 

Make a wrong turn and you could come up missing,

walking back at yourself in the elongated mirrors

hung in corners. Don’t breathe.

 

The ventilator hisses and pumps,

tireless machine needing only an outlet.

The incident, unforeseen, took her down

one day before she was to come home,

one from which she could not recover.

 

It’s raining again at the window bed,

steady as the pocket watch ticking unseen.

It paces us through gathering events.

In a place like this

the only time I ever saw my father cry.

 

Out of time. And when was it ours?

Sometimes we can’t go home but would it matter

if we don’t recover?

We get along. Dust settles.

 

 

Three connected to close out the wretched year we call 2020. Inspired by Poets and Writers  to post one more time before the end of the year, this is for the Writers Pantry.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all you poets and writers!