Friday, December 25, 2009

Christmas Passed

Now tell me no more about Christmas,
I have survived it once again
busy,  short-shrift  no less
than usual.


It’s the tinsel, the politics, the hype.
I have survived it once again
hungry, bereft no less
than usual.


Someday I’ll pass it all by
the tinsel, the petty politics, the hype,
and celebrate the astonishing love meant
to be usual.



                     Wanda McCollar

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Into Every Life a Frog Must Fall

I wanted a frog
in my garden,
I wanted his voice,
his splashing around,
when one appeared
I scorned him.


Was it my aversion to
nictitating membranes
slipping over
blinkless eyeballs,
or webby-toed
sticky suctions, his
unforgivable froginess?


There are other things
that look like frogs –
flowers in green paper,
rumpled blankets,
a crumpled letter,
tear-soaked Kleenex
looks like a frog,
his pond-green Peugeot
leaping away.


            Wanda McCollar



Wednesday, December 9, 2009

ReadWritePoem post # 104

                     


                     Sexual Selection


                    A nematode glides,
                    aimless, undulant, until he spies
                    a female opportunity,
                    then, excited, accurate, quick,
                    hot-wired for it.


                    On a broad leaf
                    fruit flies assemble,
                    displaying their greatest intentions,
                    she inspects these
                    contenders (for a week!)
                    One mating is all she gets                    
                    ever, but
no shortage of
                    healthy progeny --
                    good choice.


                    Echoing trills, moonlit
                    dances, aerial acrobatics,
                    erect feathers and
                    splendid blue faces,
                    peafowl, pheasant, penguin
                    all know what to look for, 
                    warbler, wolf, fox
                    better make good choices –
                    it's a mate for life.


                   Enlargement pills, trading,
                   selling, buying, cheating,
                   beating, addiction, abandonment,
                   pedophilia, murder –
                   you know the rest.
                   The species that exercises free will.


                                         Wanda McCollar

Sunday, December 6, 2009

In Defense of Apples

               Suppose an Apple

               of Queen Elizabeth I

               who lifted her spirits
               by its smell,
               and a boy tipping
               one after another into
               the pounder, of cider,
               of calvados,
               of Pliny who told
               about those who ate naught
               and lived by
               this smell alone. Suppose
               from a filigree of
               raggedy rows,
               from windfalls pillowed
               beneath
               laden branches,
               one --
               perfect in the palm
               round, firm
               smelling of morning,
               of crispin, ginger gold,
                jonathan, winesap from
               the Shenandoah Valley,
               of gravenstein,
               paula red and ruby jon,
               of peelings yellow, green, red
               and nearly black,
               of firm white flesh
               sweet and tart.
               Crunch.

                            Wanda McCollar

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

ReadWritePoem post # 103


  


                    A Pomegranate, of Course

                   
A splendid scrotum of
                    juicy ruby seeds
                    caught Eve’s eye
                    and sin
                    is our penalty.

                   
Persephone succumbed
                   to sucking seven juicy rubies
                   in Hades, and
                   Winter
                   is our burden.
            
                  
About a nightingale
                   singing in a pomegranate tree
                   Juliet lied, and
                   lost love
                   is our sorrow.

                  
Surely, there was never danger
                   in apples.

                                  Wanda McCollar

NaNoWriMo


November was National Novel Writing Month. Write a novel during the month's 30 days - 50,000 words required to "win." I managed it - 50,000 words. It became easier as I went along. My characters took up their own lives and trotted off in their own directions. Amazing process.

Of course - it's a jumble of twisted threads - rather like a knitting basket the cat's been paying in. It's going to take patient effort to untangle/edit. And many more words. Tentative title is "Walking Backwards." Could change. -