Sunday, November 05, 2006

Mountains

Hello everyone,

Per request of the wonderful Erin B., I'm posting to my blog. It's been a good month since I made a post.

Today Matthew (my husband) and I visited Shenandoah National Park, a national park that I believe is in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was Matthew's idea and I was glad that he had the inkling. Nature is very inspiring to me. It seems to balance me out.

I have a lot of homework to do. I'm reading Moby Dick, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, "The Overcoat" by Gogol, Whitman criticism, and Satanic Verses/Rushdie criticism. I have 2 papers to do, both about 15 pages. It's not fun. Grad school has turned out to be quite the challenge. But I am happy to report that I received an A on a Whitman presentation that I did. That was a wonderful surprise because I wasn't sure how I did.

I don't have any really recent poems to put up. Well, I do have one that was supposed to be an elegy that I was to turn in to class but I ended up turning in a different one. Let me know how this poem could be fixed as I feel it has many flaws. Thanks. Sarah L.

Chimera

Your death taught me many things.
Don’t take it all for granted and love
those you love with fervor and grace.

A woman’s laughter rose above the crowd,
she is the chimera inside the holiest of buildings.

She jumped the gun, missed the bullet.
Small, she was there merely, and I know

that death will bring me to you
but I keep on day to day.

A woman with wings should be an angel
but not this woman, see her eyes glare red.

See her lion head, her goat body, her serpent
tail. I know I’m not imagining this. She rises.

Your death taught me many things.
I watch for you in dreams and you come
in all your dead glory, floating and laughing.

Some would ask Jesus or God for help
with the pain but I’d rather not.

A man’s voice distinct and rich rose above
the crowd, he is the myriad of what I’ve been

waiting for. I stroke it real. I wait it out.
I find you in the strangest of places,
Buddha statue, incense smoke, coffee cup.