Hello, fellow worms!

I’ve been working hard on my new book, Snow Angel, and not doing much blogging as you have probably noticed.  So I thought I would share a little of the novel in progress here. I hope all of your summers are full of fireflies and magic.

Maria

Snow Angel

Angie looked like a waif but we in the family knew she was something sleek and feral.  She was skinny to look at but boneless and eerily supple to the touch, like a cat.

That summer, she ran away from the grill one night with the marshmallow I was toasting, and when I, proud to be fast enough, proud to be strong enough, caught her, instead of twisting away she came close, sank her pointed little teeth into my shoulder until I let go, then ran away, laughing.

“It’s a nasty bite,” Grandma said.  “And close to her heart, she could get blood poisoning.  Human bites are dangerous.”

“Oh, Mother,” Aunt Mickey said, but she sent Angie to her room.

Angie ran up the stairs, laughing.  Aunt Mickey looked exhausted.

I had hot soaks and ice applied to my shoulder, depending on who was around, ice by my mother, heat by Grandma.  Aunt Mickey rolled her eyes at the fuss.

Late that night, Angie said, “You can bite me back, Nicky.  Go ahead.”

“Yes,” Jenna said.  “Chomp her, Nicky.  It’s Justice.”

Angie edged nearer, the strap of her pajama top sliding down her arm, bony shoulder offered.

“I don’t want to,” I said.  You’re too…”

“Skinny?” Jenna suggested.

“Rubbery.”

They laughed, as they often did at things I said.

I was the youngest, the fattest, the plainest.  With my long, wavy, mouse-colored hair and round gold-rimmed glasses I had an unfortunate resemblance to John Lennon, but they always had me right in the middle, just like in that picture, and on the rare occasions when we broke into two and one instead of our usual united three, it was always either me and Jenna together or me and Angie.

I loved them both.  I could never have bitten Angie back, even though I knew she would just have laughed.  She laughed when she bled, she laughed when Aunt Mickey, goaded past endurance by Angie (or, more often, by Grandma) spanked her.

She had laughed the week before when Jeremy gave her an Indian burn to get her to give back his Frisbee.  She laughed silently, her whole body shaking, tears standing in her big gray or green (we could never decide) eyes until Jeremy finally dropped her arm and turned away in disgust.

“You’re a big bully,” Jenna blazed at him.  “A big, — a big brute.”  The grownups said Jenna was dramatic.

She dropped to her knees in front of Angie, whose thin shoulders were still shaking in that silent way you thought was maybe a sob until you saw the crazy grin on her bony little face.

“A brute?” she gasped.

“A horrible brute.  Pick on somebody your own size,” Jenna told Jeremy, and the sight of his furious little sister made Jeremy laugh too, his shoulders shaking in a way that made beautiful, dark Jeremy look uncannily like Angie for a minute.

“Get somebody my own size to make me.”

I was already pulling one of my sweatshirts out of a drawer for Angie.  Perpetually hot, she wore spaghetti-strap tops my mother said were inappropriate for girls our age, tiny shorts that fit her in the waist but were too baggy and short everywhere else, no shoes at any time of the year if she could get away with it.  She radiated heat and kicked off the covers all night long as fast as you could pull them up, so Jenna and I always shared one bed in our room at the beach house and gave Angie the other one to herself.  But now she took my sweatshirt without argument and pulled it over her skimpy top (this one said Angel Baby in pink glitter script) to cover her red, swelling arm.

Brute or not, none of us would ever have told on Jeremy.

Many thanks to Doreen McGettigan, author of Bristol Boys Stomp and the forthcoming The Stranger In My Recliner, for this interview on her book and writing blog!
http://doreenmcgettigan.com/2015/05/the-caregiver/

This is my favorite poem of all time, so I decided to share it with you on the ultimate day of National Poetry Month.  I love how the images come back, a little different each time, throughout the poem.  That (along with the length) makes it a killer to memorize, but a pleasure to read.  Enjoy!

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be 
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Night Feeding

For Margie at the Solstice

So now begins the long gray trudge

from sleet to drizzle, the stingy sun

dragging its shroud across the brittle

sky, as night by night the darkness

yields an inch, and every touch

of planet earth’s deliberate tiptoe

times the magic moment when the willow branch will go from dun

to dream, luring your cautious steps

to the matted grass of spring, and I

will celebrate the sunrise gift

of your quick smile, bright as any

crocus when you point to it,

triumphantly: one purple blossom,

pushing through the snow.

Beware of Things in Duplicate… by Dana Gioia

Beware of things in duplicate:
a set of knives, the cufflinks in a drawer,
the dice, the pair of Queens, the eyes
of someone sitting next to you.
Attend that empty minute in the evening
when looking at the clock, you see
its hands are fixed on the same hour
you noticed at your morning coffee.
These are the moments to beware
when there is nothing so familiar
or so close that it cannot betray you:
a twin, an extra key, an echo,
your own reflection in the glass.