Poetry time log, getting paid was an illusion

I was simultaneously holding down several jobs for SSU, the Public Poetry Center, the InterCultural Center, and also CPITS. I was still under the illusion that I would actually get paid for my work so I kept note, but when I realized it was dust in the wind, I quit worrying about it, and just got on with it. But then I lived for poetry. It defined me. And I was also teaching at several schools as well. This log begins with the dreaded Robert Bly, reading where he mistreated me, and I put on the event for him, got him paid. I never forgave him.

 

Ghost trees, Michael Dow Workshop

During the winter it got dark early, we had double sessions at school and I got home after 5 PM. The cantilevered boughs of the trees reached across the long road that wove in and out of the trunks like a gray snake heading north. There were fallen trees decomposing along either side of the creek that ran alongside the road. My flashlight failed at the bridge. In the twilight, their light bark glowed faintly and they lay in waiting like great lumbering phosphor worms  and my fear rose up within me like a great black cape of smothering darkness.


3/20/1980 ?
added 5/3/2016
Michael Dow Workshop
freewrite

Sonnet Form Michael Dow Workshop

Sonnet Form

Mist morning when it is quiet
and the lips of fog kiss
the sky, beneath it, a riot
of flowers blossom in the dark abyss

The wind rustles the petals in the plum trees
bringing a snowstorm of blossoms in June
the vines are choking the bottom growth, and the peas
blossom—a late frost may strike and prune

the new buds with black tongue
before the growth's barely begun.

3/20/1980
 added 5/3/2016

Michael Dow Workshop