Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Jone Macullough Here. Thank you , Jone, for hosting. Be sure to stop by and see what she has for us today.
This has been a busy week and I didn’t post yesterday, on Thursday, as I usually do. I wrote cards, baked stollen with my friend, Leah, and spent a morning at a day surgery center in Watertown, NY, while my husband, Bart, had a carpal tunnel release of his wrist. It was a minor thing, though no surgery is minor to the person who has to have it. It went well and we are so grateful to the medical and nursing staff who continue to work, helping people everyday in the midst of this pandemic.
Now we are ready to move on and soon, this pine will be ready for Christmas.
I hadn’t prepared for Poetry Friday this week, but I wanted to share something. so I found an old notebook where I scribble down things, bits of poetry I write or find here and there. I found this:
WHY COMPLAIN ABOUT WINTER? moan about snow lament the howling wind wishing you were elsewhere? Here is a blank page a pen full of ink whole worlds to think, thoughts that have nothing to do with January. ©Janice Scully
For me, winter is a time to slow down. I look forward to it.
I have more time to read, and I want to share this book by Omar El Akkad. I heard him speak two weeks ago at Colgate University as part of their Living Writer’s series. If you don’t know about this series, check it out. All the author’s talks and readings are shared on line and it costs nothing.
El Akkad is a journalist, born in the Middle East, who has traveled and lived in several Arab, so many that he himself has always felt stateless. His amazing book, WHAT STRANGE PARADISE, is about a Syrian boy, Amir, who washes up on the shore of a Western European island (probably Greek) and rescued by a teenage girl. If you ever wonder what it might be like to be a refugee, this author makes you feel it and understand the terrible risk taken by so many who flee, so many who are children.
Have a healthy week, everyone and thank you, Jone, for hosting!