POEMS, LITERARY ACCOMPLISHMENTS, AND SNOW
A week before Christmas—our gray cat Numah slumbers as she watches us decorate the tree while outside skies and sea and clouds color the world in a Northwest winter’s many grays. Thanksgiving had barely passed when snow embraced our area (not the whole Seattle area, just some of us near Hood Canal) in six inches. The Olympic Mountains turned white, and I wrote the following poem:
GULLS IN SNOW by Susan Glenn Lampe
Gulls swoop and swarm in synchronic symphony,
White bodies bright against a dark fir background of the distant shore.
Joyous rapture on a gray-toned morning as November fades to exit.
Closer to our window, snowdrops drift past, slight at first, then more, faster, faster. .
Until the sky pours snow, mixed with hail bits, piling up, forming mountains of inches on deck rails.
On the opposite shore, the gulls continue to create their music in a unique birds-only choreography.
Below the window Canal waters quiver in variegated gray shades glazed at the surface with a shimmer of white, reflected sky tones.
Deciduous trees shiver barren as stark sticks of black.
So opens the invitation to Winter,
Who maliciously accepts and enters quietly with devastating inches
Disguised in her white glove, enough to bow and break
the last leaves of Japanese maples to the ground, snapping unsuspecting branches,
Coating driveways and houses; trapping residents in their homes without power,
long, dark days with only candles and flashlights to offer light.
Icy Queen Winter returns in a swipe of majestic white power and fury.
Numah assists with tree decoration.
We could call 2022 a good, even a GREAT year for writing in our family.
LITERARY ACHIEVEMENTS include: Publication of The World Is a Sniff, Mindy Hardwick’s book about her Magnificent dog Stormy, a good read for all ages, fun to read aloud among friends and family. Click here for Mindy’s website.
Mindy at the Holiday Market and Bazaar in Portland, OR December 2022
Stormy, Mindy’s cocker spaniel featured in The World Is a Sniff
BECCA HARDWICK sold a story about her dog Zoey to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned From My Dog will be available for purchase starting January 24, 2023 on Amazon. Click here to pre-order.
Becca opening her box of advance copies of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned From My Dog.
SUSAN designated this as a writing year for herself and participated with the UNION POETS group that meets monthly over ZOOM. She also enjoys a monthly ZOOM meeting writing with a college sorority sister who lives in South Carolina. (I am doing an historical novel and she is writing a memoir about living with hearing problems.)
There is also the monthly MOTHER/DAUGHTER BOOK CLUB for Susan, Mindy and Becca. This month, features the four magic books by Alice Hoffman.
We all three met our Goodreads Challenges this year (well, I am close. My goal was 65 books and I have read 63 so far.)
Another poem I wrote led me to contemplate THE HIDDEN PORTALS OF LIFE—see below
Silver brown and gray salmon bodies appear slippery
as they struggle to ford a clear stream,
buoyed by fall rains, late this year,
deep into November.
The salmon struggle against currents, slip up waterfalls,
Whip along slick smooth giant rocks
Rest on side sandbars.
How do they do it? We never cease to wonder.
They left the Pacific Ocean
To battle through the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Some found their way into Hood Canal
where we see them.
Some lost friends and family to gluttonous seals and Orca whales.
Fatigue defeated others
Who turn mottled white below us
They leave eggs and succumb to a final rest.
Many are three feet long; they cling in groups,
assist one another.
As we watch from Twanoh Park’s main area,
a couple asks, “Have you been upstream?”
They point past the road
Although we have come here ten years,
for the first time we see a pathway to a campground.
Bridge railings mark the way as we cross Route 106
We follow the stream to an area unknown to us.
How did we miss this? Why did we confine ourselves to park limits?
We move beside the rushing clear pebbled stream,
Small falls run white with rushing water, fish group together, six or more.
We wonder what else we’ve missed.
How strong are the limits we’ve set around our lives? What else is hidden, blocked from our view?
(Above poem by Susan Glenn Lampe, November 2022)
The year’s end finds me filled with gratitude. I give thanks that Rich and I are still active physically, and that we have shared another year of life together. When I married Rich 35 years ago, he was supposed to die any day but he remains my friend and partner so each new day is a gift. I am not sure I expected to reach age 77 but I continue to create each day in a morning meditation and try to fill the hours with praise and thanksgiving. I do not subscribe to any certain religion but I have always loved my God and find that Being most readily in nature, here where I am surrounded by mountains and water and sky and remarkable species of wildlife.
I do grieve for the people of Ukraine, those lost, those fighting; I admire their courage and bravery. As a domestic abuse survivor, I remember the fear of trying to survive life with a bully. I dream of living into a time of freedom for all to choose and determine their life’s path, a time when LOVE trumps hate.
Rich and I wish all of you a year of wonderful new adventures and a peaceful heart in 2023.