Monday, September 21, 2009

Hung -- by Donna Carrick

Flower-poem.JPG Long ago in my mis-spent youth, I used to exert a great deal of my passion in writing poetry. Every once in a great while I dust off some of those old sheets -- just to remind myself who I've been.


Hung

Feeling so
hung,
to find my soul
Stretched out to sunbake, brittle,
Cracked and sore. So one would
Come across me in a meadow --
Unforgiving afternoon! --
And there annoint my head with oil,
Too parched to cry aloud for rain,
And leave me there alone to perish,
Slow and languishing in pain.

So real it was -- that moment that
Was stolen from a dream!
I could have tasted it forever,
Moist and brazen like a lover.
The dream calls out, "Unhand my child!"
I must return that moment to
The other sphere. I cannot keep
It with me here.

So
hung
am
I
To steal another
Moment in the shadows as
They stretch from tree to tree across
The meadow, reaching out to shield
My dying and deserving soul.

The sun is not amused...


Donna Carrick

Monday, September 14, 2009

Writing and Parenting: An "excerpt from Trish"-- Part 1 of 3

Kids%20Blog%20BeachThumbnail.JPG As an author, wife, mother of 3 and office manager, I am often asked how I find time for my craft. On the surface, it seems to most people that being a parent takes a toll on one's ability to write, or at least on one's productivity. The following is Part 1 of a 3-part article that hopes to capture some of the essence of what it means to be a parent and a writer.


Trish was born in Ontario, and now resides in New Brunswick. Like myself, she's lived all over Canada, a fact which no doubt lends her work a tremendous breath of "experience". In addition to geography, Trish has been blessed with another kind of experience: she is both a wife and a mother to 7 children! In her own words, here is what Trish has to say about the impact of "parenting" on her art: READ MORE...

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Gypsy Love Song - something different by Donna Carrick

Flower-poem.JPG Long ago in my mis-spent youth, I used to spend a great deal of my passion in writing poetry. Every once in a great while I dust off some of those old sheets -- just to remind myself who I've been.


Gypsy Love Song

Thank you for the kind words that
You rained like silver on my head.
They made me laugh until I cried.
Too bad they were so insincere.
READ MORE...

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Recalling a shared sorrow -- September 10, 2009

Well, folks, here we are again, 1 day away from the anniversary of a dark mark on our history. If you're like me, you will remember quite vividly where you were on that fateful morning.

I work for a large multi media firm, and on that awful day I was at my desk, as usual. At 9:05 one of my staff members called to say she was held up in traffic on the highway.

"But Donna," she added, "there's something really wierd going on. Everything's really quiet out here, and the radio says something bad happened at the Twin Towers."

I ran up the atrium stairs -- me and about fifty other people from various departments in our building on Don Mills -- and got a spot where I could see the huge video screens in the newsroom.

Keep in mind, at that critical point we all, in fact the whole world, still believed there had been a terrible accident. (I can't believe the power of my emotions as I write this.) We watched the news man as he stood in horror with his back to the first building, which had just been struck. We could all plainly see the damage. It was tragedy in the making.

Then the unthinkable happened, right before our eyes. As the newsman spoke about the unofficial reports, the second plane flew behind his head and straight into the second tower.

You could have heard a pin drop in the atrium of our building. By this time, nearly 200 people had gathered on the stairs and in the halls, and there was not one sound. There was a beat, then another, as the newsman slowly understood what was happening -- as the dreadful realisation came over us that this was no accident.

Others have described this event with far more eloquence, and others have been touched by it on a far more personal level than I was. I was fortunate to be in Toronto when it happened, and to have no loved ones in the tower.

Having said that, it's clear to me that no one was un-touched that day. As report after report came flooding in, the world changed before our very eyes. We all changed.

We can't deny it. We are no longer the people we were before that day.

But here's the question that needs to be answered: Can we somehow move past the horror and make our way toward a better, more unified world?

I hope we will find a way. I noticed a "Tweet" by Yoko Ono ( @yokoono ) asking for signatures on a petition. The petition was very general in nature: it is asking for our leaders to work toward a more unified global society.

Big ambitions. I'm no longer as young as I was in the 60's -- I lost my rose-coloured glasses some years ago.

Just the same, one does hope...