Been quiet for a while but getting ready to shake those tail feathers again

I am counter-seasonal this year.  As leaves fall and nature prepares for retreat into winter, I feel a fizz of energy coming on and a sense of expansion and possibilty, especially where writing is concerned.  I have just finished a brilliant online course, Plotstormers II: The Editing Strikes Back and am on the first leg of another, Publishing 101, both, provided by the most excellent, sweary, super-bargainous and enormously helpful, WritersHQ.  Seriously, check them out if you need a bit of stimulating and expert handholding as you set pen to paper on your latest project.

So, that’s a weeny snippet of an update from me, which is all for now, as I need to get back to my editing but/and here’s an offering to you of a scribbled first draft of a poem.  Warning.  It’s not cheerful because it’s about bereavement.

Cover me with warm, red earth to bake my grief

My father has died, my father has died

Tamp my body with heavy, wet earth for stillness and quiet beneath the leaves

My father has died, my father has died

Stop my eyes and fill my mouth and ears with hot, dry sand, wind-blown by dagger thoughts that jab my brain, scoop out my heart and scrape at my soul

My father has died, my father has died

Fill me with all the world’s wettest soil, then stone heavy, seal me in a pitch-dark kiln

and bury me beneath everything

My father has died, my father has died