Writers rise and fall
They rise in writing productivity.
This post comes as a Write Monday post and goes out to my Monday Poets group and Redwood Writers, the most extensive branch of the California Writers Club. I have been thinking about what determines if a person rises in life or lets life’s hardships beat her down. Not having an answer to this question, I can only respond, the people I love to distraction seem to be risers. All of the writers I have connected deeply with have a core of hope and love larger than themselves. They tap it whenever they write. They touch it whenever they encourage other writers. They expand it when they help other writers to get published.
A Prose Poem Published in a Redwood Writers’ Anthology
Oceans, Eons of Sea
Nightly mists mute the land under churning streams.
Fog creeps over tree roots. Before dawn, it rises, vanishing corners of the neighborhood. Cloud-fingers take back what eons ago climbed from the sea. They take away the salamanders and frogs. They bring back the earthworms and living soil. They remove the possum and the raccoon, along with the sleeping people.
The ocean takes us back, drop by drop. Mounting seas warming our planet take seacoasts, beaches, and islands. Why not this desert with its dry valleys and hills?
The land thirsts for rain, which does not come. Sonoma County hills lie parched, plagued by heat spells as unbridled as California’s central valley. The blazing sun comes—a curse. Days of summer and autumn scorch the live oak savannah. Wild grasses lie defeated—baked to straw, leaving dairy cows hungry and thirsty.
As the sun rises over a befogged sky, our eyes gladden at the sea’s gift soaking into garden beds. The damp leaves amoeba-shaped puddles on the pavement, a spirit’s footprints.
A wet embrace comes in a single raindrop, a child’s kiss
before the surf comes in. We clasp a damp hand—before we let go.
Deborah Taylor-French
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Deborah, your commentary is exquisite! Long an admirer of Maya Angelou, I’m currently revisiting her first book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” I’ve posted a column about her on my website. A picture I posted of her was taken based on publishing rights.
About rising from life’s perpetual challenges, it’s something we all share if we are to survive. You are a gift–thank you!
Hello Alicia, your comment gave me a warm in my heart feeling and a smile. How kind you are to look in and make a generous on my commentary. I often feel deep pain as I read and think on the suffering of women worldwide, especially women of color. So Angelou’s Still I Rise
What a role model and inspiration Maya Angelou still is to me, poets, and women everywhere who must rise to face discrimination, prejudice, and hatred each day. At hopeless moments, I remind myself to stand strong and joyfully for my daughter, her friends, and my nieces, etc.m
You are a shining example of a rising woman, writer, and poet whom I feel so grateful to have met and get to know.
Be well, Deborah
Deborah,
Thank you for Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” and for your prose poem. I can’t be reminded enough about resiliency. I draw strength from women poets.
Laura
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