Confession Tuesday

My Yoshino Cherry Tree - in bloom!

Dear Reader,

It's that time again.  We're in spring heading towards Easter and the end of Lent, a good time to confess, though as usual, I have no idea what I'm going to confess...

To the confessional--

I confess next year I am not giving up chocolate for Lent.  Here's the thing--I think I'm happier and healthier with chocolate.  With chocolate, I know I've finished a meal.  Without chocolate, I look for ridiculous alternatives such as vanilla yogurt, carbon chips, raisins, graham crackers.  None of this satisfies as a piece of chocolate does.

I do think occasionally, I need to take a break from chocolate as there's a point when I go from eating good well-made chocolate to thinking of a bag of M&Ms is fine dining.

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I confess I am writing a poem a day and am so far on track.  I like poem 1 better than poem 2.

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I confess to keep myself on track, sometimes I write 2 poems on one day.  This is the poet's version of cheating or maybe it's called planning ahead.

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I confess I'll be going to Portland with Susan Rich for a reading and workshop on April 17th and besides arriving safely, my next goal is stop at VooDoo Donuts.

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I confess because of a bad incident of eating raw donut dough and smelling like grease all day in a high school Home Ec class, I am very picky about my donuts.

~

I confess yesterday I got an electric chainsaw and my new motto is "let there be light."  Though I confess, I did not touch or hurt my Yoshino Cherry tree, which is currently in bloom.

Because it's National Poetry Month, I'll leave you with a poem I wrote about my Yoshino Cherry tree after my husband decided it was getting a little too large...

Kyoto

Once on the sofa

you told me, you longed

for the sofa. 

And I thought you were referring

to haiku,

but you were just tired. 

You don’t think about art

anymore. 

What you want is an organized

resume, cherry blossoms

that don’t litter the driveway. 

The day I found my Yoshino cherry tree

in pieces,

I realized perfection couldn’t compete

with a chainsaw. 

My nostalgia carried to the truck

branch by branch. 

I said nothing as nothing

was left of the tree.

You said it was scratching the van. 

You said, Dismantle. 

My bumbling arborist.  My broken city. 

What I wanted to say was,

You cannot restrain what is wild.

What I wanted to say was,

Collaborate. 

Across the field, the cuckoo’s cry

could almost be heard.

from Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (White Pine Press, 2010)


Amen.
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