New Year’s Resolutions? Bah humbug!

Leon Comerre (1850-1917)

Have you made your New Year’s Resolutions yet? I haven’t, but at least I managed to write a new poem about all the lazy things I did instead:

TARDY RESOLUTIONS 2013

January second, and I haven’t made my resolutions yet.

Maybe it’s too late to bother. Too late to make it to the Y

in time for Nia, but for exercise I walked my dog

beside the lake, where he adorned the roadside

with an humongous turd too mushy for doggy bags.

I buried it with frozen clumps of grungy snow

left by the plow. So much for “Love thy neighbor.”

 

Back home I weighed myself, discovered I’d been ambushed

by four new pounds in just four days, crawled back in bed

and ate the raspberry strudel left from New Year’s brunch.

The sugar knocked me out. I fell asleep,

cuddling with my cat Lunesta, named for my favorite sleeping pills.

Waking at last, I slugged down coffee, gorged on leftover lox and bagels,

read the morning paper with its daily dose of mayhem – a murdered nun,

a stampede killing dozens after New Year’s fireworks in Africa –

then stole an hour blotting out the news with Spider solitaire.

 

Now it’s high noon. I’ve blown the best of day,

but no one will know, since my husband’s away,

unless I confess to this surfeit of sloth                                                                            

by posting this poem as my latest blog,

owning up to the deadly sin of wallowing

in total torpor. Shaming myself in public, flaunting  

a scarlet L for laziness, for lassitude,  an F for everything

I failed to do last year.

 

I know – I’ll take it from the top,

watch the midnight ball drop one more time in rerun,

erase this lackadaisical beginning

and make those resolutions bright and early,

trusting in tomorrow, praying for time.

I’ve only wasted one more day of life.

Last night the famed Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs (where Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie and countless others played on their way up) had its first poetry open mic of the New Year, and having the chance to read this poem there was a major motivator. People seemed to love it – at least they laughed a lot. The Capital Region’s poetry community is a wonderfully welcoming bunch of folks who are always generous with their applause. It’s great to be able to write something, then try it out on stage the same night.

How do you feel about New Year’s resolutions? Do you make them, and if so, do they help you work toward your goals? Or do they just make you feel guilty?

This cat looks a lot like my beloved Lunesta.

 

                                                                                     

 

 

 

R.I.P. Dave Brubeck

The first two jazz LPs I ever bought were by Stan Getz and Dave Brubeck. That day was in 1953, nearly sixty years ago, and I was barely twelve years old. Brubeck died this morning, one day shy of his ninety-second birthday, and his death brings back a flood of memories. I heard him in concert on several occasions, and bought several of his early albums, including that first one, the ten-inch Jazz at Oberlin.

Brubeck enjoyed a long and illustrious career. I last heard him at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall several years back, and although he hobbled on and off stage with difficulty, his playing was still as spry and powerful as ever. But his death reminds me most of all of how and why I became a jazz fan. This poem I wrote in 2007 explains:

My First Downbeat

Dimly in black and white, through a scratchy glassine sleeve

in a dingy bin at Colony Music in Times Square,                                                                       

Eddie Fisher’s face smiles up at me from the cover

of a bedraggled Downbeat magazine.

My very first major crush! I catch my breath, transported back

to seventh grade, the day I bought this very magazine,

the one that seduced me down the road of jazz.

Long lost for decades, now it’s reborn as memorabilia,

with a $25 price tag. My knees creak as I hunker down,

retrieve the magazine, and slip it from its plastic sleeve.

 

Yes, this is it – November, 1953. I turn the fragile pages,              

searching for the story. Stan Getz, busted in Seattle

for trying to rob a drugstore to finance his heroin fix.

My mind’s eye scans the photo – Stan in white tee shirt,

leather jacket, boyishly handsome, cuffed and flanked by cops.

So tragically romantic – oh, alas, poor Stan.

So it came into my life, a heavy ten-inch Verve,

Stan Getz Quartet, my very first LP. I didn’t understand at first,

me, a 12-year-old Milwaukee girl, who played “Oh My Papa”

on a red mother-of-pearl accordion. But still I persevered,

and soon my tastes evolved. At a Washington convention,

my father had his photo snapped with Eddie Fisher

as a special gift to me, but when he brought it home,

to his dismay, I blew it off as square.

 

But no, Stan’s story isn’t in this Downbeat! Paging through,

I find fascinating photos – Mingus and Bird at Birdland,

a young Miles Davis with a broad, ingenuous grin,

before he donned the mask of Prince of Darkness.

Then it comes flooding back –

Stan Getz was in my second Downbeat, not my first.

The Hilltoppers were on the cover. All these years,

my personal mythology has been a fraud.

 

Carefully, sadly, I slip the Downbeat back in its dusty bin.

Later, on Amtrak, heading north once more,

I curse my stinginess. Damn, I want those early pictures

of Miles and Mingus, even though I didn’t fall in love with them

till freshman year. Nothing for it but to head back to New York

and splurge on tattered memories in a magazine

that no one cares about but me.

Stan Getz

I never did get that magazine, but down in the basement I still have cartons of old jazz LPs from the 1950’s. Browsing on eBay, I’ve learned that some of them may be worth hundreds of dollars, including perhaps Brubeck’s 10” Jazz at Oberlin. Maybe I’ll auction them off one of these days, but somehow I haven’t gotten around to it, in part because they’re so well and thoroughly played.

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                         

In Memoriam: Windows on the World

Windows on the World

Today I awoke to a beautifully cool, crisp September morning with a brilliant blue sky – a Tuesday morning very like the day eleven years ago when the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell. Like millions of Americans, I have vivid memories of that ghastly morning embedded in my brain – the endlessly repeated images of the towers engulfed in smoke, then crumbling incredibly into nothingness, followed by photos of the aftermath at Ground Zero. Those tragic images captured by the mass media are engraved in our country’s collective consciousness.

But I have more immediate, personal images of the World Trade Center, and especially the beautiful restaurant near its summit, Windows on the World. In 2002, a few months after the disaster, I wrote this poem. A decade later, it still evokes memories of more innocent, trusting times. 

I see myself alone, perched high above the city, sipping Chardonnay.

Scribbling in my journal, creating affirmations, visualizing incredible success.

            My novel tops the Times Best Seller List.

            Boundless abundance and bliss are mine.

 An eternity of emptiness waits just beyond the window walls.

The sky is blazing blue.  Helicopters buzz below me, fat bumble bee chariots

ferrying the wealthy of Wall Street.  I’d never ride in one – too dangerous.

But the jets are another story.  They gleam above the water, across the harbor,

Floating heavenward as if by magic as Lady Liberty waves her stony farewell.

            I’m afraid of flying, so I focus on the destination.

           A couple of quick drinks at the airport help enormously.

The waiter brings my second glass of wine and replenishes my bowl of nuts.

His attitude is cordial yet respectful, and I feel totally pampered as I sink back

in my plush velvet chair.  As the sun sinks over New Jersey,

the handsome young pianist at the baby grand begins a Gershwin tune. 

Life hardly gets any better than this.

            My husband doesn’t like to come here.

            The empty sky unnerves him, and he doesn’t trust the building’s engineers.

            So when I visit New York City, I sometimes make this solitary pilgrimage

            To empower myself atop the World Trade Center, at the Windows on the World.

Twenty years have passed; catastrophe has struck.

I’m older, and the world is darker now.

Thousands of people died on that cloudless September morning, 

too many to comprehend, much less to mourn. I may be selfish, but

it’s easier to mourn the towers, the dreams they stood for, and to grieve

the knowledge that I’ll never again ride the elevator to that amazing aerie in the sky.

            I never did publish that novel, but I’ve got another one ready to go.

            My dreams have come down to earth. 

           Now I nourish them at home, on the lake, in my garden. 

           Being grounded has its own rewards.

 

Entropeia – Goddess of Disorder

Kali

I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of entropy, the idea that chaos and disorder tend to increase in a closed system. I’m not talking about the scientific explanations – the second law of thermodynamics and all the inscrutable equations that remind me of why science courses terrified me in college. Rather, I’m using the term the way sociologists do, as a measure of what Merriam-Webster describes as “chaos, disorganization, randomness.”

 As a description of my life, sometimes those words seem all too apt. Another definition I like describes entropy as “a measure of the unavailability of energy in a closed system” – not a bad description of clinical depression, when life closes in claustrophobically and it’s hard even to get out of bed. I’ve only recently emerged from over a year of living in this sorry state, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

A year ago, in the depths of my doldrums, I summoned the energy to write a poem in which entropy takes on the guise of a goddess. Here it is:

Entropeia

I’m Entropeia, Goddess of Disorder

Shape shifter, seductress

Enticing as your cat Lunesta

Purring and writhing on your desk

Unsheathed claws swatting the mouse

Knocking your pens and papers to the floor

Where they remain untouched for days on end

 

Over the years I’ve worn away

The letters at the center of your keyboard

A dozen keys, blank as an erased blackboard

Your fingers blindly grope for vanished symbols

You used to know by heart

 

Words become maddeningly elusive

Refuse to reveal themselves

Hide in the plaques and tangles

Of your aging brain

I wield Time’s Arrow

Wound you with panicked fear

Of irreversible dementia

 

I lure you with endless hours

Of Spider solitaire

Clawed hand cramping the mouse

You bargain with time for one more game

And throw away another day

Blundering on with stinging eyes

Till darkness falls

 

Nature tends from order to disorder

In isolated systems

That’s the entropic law that guides my every move

Your every lonely act or lazy lack of action

Under my ruthless reign

You fall apart

 

Athena

I’m delighted to report I no longer feel I’m falling apart, and I’ve managed to transcend my writer’s block and fear of dementia. But the other manifestations of disorder and chaos remain major issues. Lunesta still writhes around on my desk and tries to swat the mouse to the floor, and yes, she’s named for the sleeping pill I still take every night.

And I’m still using the same keyboard with the rubbed-away letters. The year of nonproductivity impacted on my touch typing ability, and I make more typos than I used to. Still, on the whole, life is good.

 

 

 

 

Venting negative thoughts in writing – is it always therapeutic?

Edward Munch

Commenting on my “Slump-A-Dump” poem in the last post, Bob Sanchez praised my quasi-rap rhyming and characterized the piece as “healthy venting.” He got me thinking – how healthy is using your writing as a way of venting negative thoughts? Can it be counterproductive? I’m afraid that sometimes the answer is yes.

This morning I attempted a poem about the depression that’s been plaguing me since May. One passage reads:

I score my mood on scales of one through ten,

with one as suicidal, ten as manic, trying to uncover

conscious weather patterns I can manipulate at will

by choosing wholesome activities that bring me pleasure

or failing that, alleviate the pain. Writing works sometimes.

Writing didn’t work today. I woke up with my mood at three or four, but wallowing in negativity for the hour it took me took me to come up with a first draft left me feeling like a two. I wrote about the heat wave that’s forecast to roll in tomorrow,* and how that will give me a more valid excuse for misery than I’ve had during the recent stretch of gorgeous summer days. Did committing my thoughts to paper have a positive cathartic effect? On the contrary, I felt even worse.

M.E. Kemp commented that short stories are one option for barreling through a creative block. I began one a few days ago about a woman who decides to take to her bed for good. She converses with a shadowy archetype who encourages her in her resolution, and speculates about how high a dosage of her favorite sleeping pill, Lunesta, would prove fatal. Only the need to feed her cats prevents her from carrying out her plans – for the time being.

As I wrote about Gladys’s sweat-stained sheets and wondered how long it would take for her cats’ hungry nudges and love nips to morph into full-blown attack mode – would she have to die first? – I realized I didn’t want to go down the path my imagination was taking me. I couldn’t envision an epiphany for Gladys, something for her to live for, nor did I want to accompany her on a slow and painful death. After three pages, the story peters out, possibly for good.

On the other hand, healthy venting fueled the fire that inspired both my mystery novels. Mood Swing: The Bipolar Murders is about transcending the stigma of mental illness, and Eldercide explores the ethical dilemmas that arise as our allotted life spans grow ever longer. For me, writing has to spring from conviction, something I feel passionately about that I’ve absolutely got to get down on paper. I’m waiting impatiently for that subject to manifest itself.

 *The heat wave is here, threatening to break all kinds of records in upstate New York, and sure enough, the external excuse for misery helps me feel a little better about myself. I wrote this post a few days ago but felt it was too downbeat to publish unless I could come up with a more positive ending. But what the heck – I need to get something up here regardless. Maybe you can come up with some more upbeat comments to help cheer me up.

 

Slump-A-Dump: Rapping my way through a creative block

Writing as everyday spiritual practice was the topic of one of my recent blog posts, but writing mindfully and staying in the present moment is a lot more difficult than it might seem. Since I’ve been feeling creatively blocked lately, I decided to follow my own advice, switch genres and write a poem about my current state of mind.

Simple enough, right? Hardly. My inner critic kicked in big-time. I found myself playing with rhyme and rhythm as a rapper might, but my “umpire” kept telling me I was making a mess of things. No sooner had I come up with the first few lines than I began wondering if the poem would be appropriate for posting on my blog. I could envision myself reading it at the next open mic at the Social Justice Center in Albany, but how would it come across online? Would the constipation imagery turn people off?

Is the word “turd” too vulgar for my readers?

I decided I could care less. I’ll let you be the judge, and I’ll try not to worry what you think (although as always, I welcome your comments). I recommend the following exercise: write a poem, and make it as crass, corny and vulgar as you can. Have fun, and don’t worry about quality. Who knows what makes for good poetry anyway? 

So is this poem an example of everyday spiritual practice? Writing it, I found myself immersed in the moment, and I feel more centered and energized now than before I began, so I believe it qualifies.

Slump-A-Dump Poem

Humpty-dump-dump, I’m sure in a slump.

Got that internal ump telling me I’m no damn good,

saying to give writing up – hell, well, maybe I should,

but that leaves a huge hole where there used to be soul.

***

Hey, I sound like a rapper, with my heart in the crapper,

chasing rhythms and rhymes, trying to get through this time

of gloom and despair – came on me from nowhere,

snaking up through thin air, twining me in its grasp,

this rhetorical asp has its coils round my throat.

Now my umpire gloats as I strangle on words

hard and dry as old turds that refuse to come out.

The frustration’s so painful, I choke back a shout.

***

I blogged about writing as spiritual practice –

sure, that’s what my act is, but the matter of fact is

I feel like a fake, and that critic keeps raking me

over the coals, telling me I’m too old

to go on any longer. Sure, if I were lots younger,

I might join the dance, have a chance to advance

in this crazy charade of a writing career,

refuse to accept that the end’s far too near –

no, that just isn’t so – I’ve got decades to go.

(Yeah, right, if I’m lucky, and relentlessly plucky.)

***

So I sit on my rump in this bitch of a slump,

fingers clawed over keys, hoping for a fresh breeze

blown my way by some muse who might choose

to fill up my sails, lift me out of these doldrums,

stop me going insane from this sludge in my brain.

***

Maybe writing this doggerel will lift all the fog, or I’ll

stay in this slough of despond – but no, I don’t want

to give in to being mopey and dopey. Nope,

I must persevere. Tell that muse, “Hey, I’m here!”

Tell the ump she’s a chump, and soar out of this slump.

Country concert distilled as poem

Jack Ingram

Sometimes a poem’s the best way to capture the essence of an experience. Case in point: my excursion yesterday to “Country Throwdown,” a marathon country music concert in Saratoga Springs with many bands, including Montgomery Gentry, Jack Ingram, Jamey Johnson and Little Big Town. There was lots of excellent music, but maybe it’s time to face the facts: I’m not the music fan I was 40 years ago, either in body or spirit.

It’s fascinating how modern country musicians channel the musical styles of rockers of my generation, including Jimi Hendrix, Tom Petty and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Jamey Johnson was the only headliner who played what might be termed traditional country.

Here’s my poetic take on the dark side of the day’s happenings (it’s always easier to wax poetic about the shadow side of things):

 Country Throwdown Concert

“On your feet!” The singer screams the order.

The crowd obeys, fists pump the air.

A shirtless youth salutes with horny fingers.

Erratic heartbeat of the bass thumps in my chest.

Extrasystoles hammer, relentless, triggering fears

of cardiac arrest. Red searchlights swivel

through clouds of smoke, target band and fans –

the entryway to hell. Batted by the mob, enormous vinyl balls

with New York Lotto logos crash endlessly above. One hits me

on the head, sparking phobic high school volleyball flashbacks.

Yellow-shirt security patrol with eagle eyes and walkie-talkies.

Outside the music shed, the crowd queues up and funnels through

metal barricades in quest of precious liquid.

Blue shirts check IDs and brand us with plastic bracelets.

We’ve been stripped of private bottles at the gates,

so now are forced to pony up eight bucks a cup to quench our thirst

on the arid patch of chewed up grass

called a beer garden. Shades of Germany.

Outside, the ATM machine attracts long lines –

suckers in search of cash, desperate for food and drink,

cowboy hats and black skull-logo tee shirts.

I’ve come here trying to conjure up

that long lost summer of love in Sixty-Nine.

Crows feet around my eyes and fifty extra pounds

brand me an imposter among the lanky girls

in skimpy shorts and cowboy boots. Ten hours of music

is seven too many for my aging psyche and physique.

To my relief, the headline final act is crass and mediocre.

I steal away to beat the traffic jam, pass through metal gates

emblazoned with a banner overhead:

All exits are final. No reentry.

They’ve got that right – I can’t go back again.

 © Memorial Day, May 31, 2010 Julie Lomoe

Blogging trumps poetry: I’m so much cooler online

Tonight I’ll be reading my poetry at the Albany Word Fest, an annual event that’s a virtual orgy of the spoken word. I thought I should come up with at least one new poem for the event, but instead I came up with a severe case of writer’s block. I managed to confront it in the following poem.

Word Fest features a 12-Hour Friday Open Mic that kicks off at 7 p.m. I’m scheduled for 10:30 p.m., so by all means stop by to cheer me on (and buy my books, if you haven’t already.) There’s be dozens of poets and spoken-word artists there, and it’s always a festive night. It’s free, too! Come to the UAG Gallery at 247 Lark Street.

I’m still planning to cover more topics from the Empire State Book Festival, but today this poem took priority. By the way, I borrowed the phrase “I’m so much cooler online” from Brad Paisley’s megahit of the same name.  As an entertaining lyricist, he’s peerless in country music.

 I’VE BECOME A BLOGGER 

My fingers have stage fright.

Knowing I’ll have the floor

tonight at Word Fest, I sit paralyzed at my computer.

Picturing people perched on metal chairs in narrow rows,

faces inscrutable, judging my every word,

my brain slams on the brakes, then sputters out,

rolls over and plays dead. As a poet I’ve grown shy and tongue-tied,

probably because

I’ve become a blogger.

 

Blogging, I measure my audience in hundreds,

rack them up as hits on my stat counter,

check the numbers daily. Nearly sixty thousand now,

but are they human beings, or merely phantom ciphers?

Some are real people. I treasure comments

from Albuquerque and Australia, schmooze with friends

I know by photos from their books, mostly self-published.

We all look our best on line, young for our actual ages.

We spill selected secrets, shout in virtual keystrokes, 600 words or so,

enough for a few pithy points, stopping just shy of boredom.

I feel I know them better than folks I know face to face.

I’ve become a blogger.  

 

My words flow free and easy when I blog.

I keep it bright and breezy, mindful that readers can abandon me

with a single mouse click, never to return.

Still, I’ll never know the pain of their rejection,

never see their restless jiggling legs or condescending smirks.

Month by month I’m turning inward,

conjuring an adoring virtual audience,

withdrawing from flesh and blood communion,

leaving a minimal carbon footprint as I cleave to my computer,

swaddled in my fuzzy pink schmatta from WalMart.

I leave home less and less.

I’ve become a blogger.

 

My fictional career is on sabbatical. Why write fiction,

when I’ve living in the World Wide Web,

spinning my tales, creating my character, branding my name

in Musings Mysterioso. Racking up the readers,

watching my WordPress graphs spike ever higher.

Mystery novels grow redundant, slow the flow.

Who needs them, reads them anyway?

I’ve become a blogger.

                                                                        ©2010 Julie Lomoe

Seven reasons I love writing poetry

Sylvia Plath

Writing poetry is a wonderful way to jumpstart your creativity and hone your writing skills. A decade ago, I wouldn’t have dared write this sentence, much less declare myself a poet, but now I have no qualms about it. After all, who decides who’s a poet and who isn’t? Danged if I know.

I’ve written in many genres over the years, but poetry eluded me until the year 2001. As a member of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany, I had the opportunity to submit my work to the Oriel, the congregation’s annual literary magazine, and I decided to give it a try. Since then, poetry has become one of my favorite means of expressing myself. I have no aspirations to fame and fortune as a poet; I haven’t even published a chapbook yet. But there’s something wonderfully satisfying about writing poetry. Today I’d like to share seven reasons I love this art form.

• Poetry is speedy. On average, once the words start to flow, it takes me about an hour to come up with a reasonably polished first draft – about the same time I spend on a blog post.
• Poetry’s a good way of catching ideas on the fly. Most of my poetic inspiration comes from immediate experience. There’s usually an “ah hah!” moment when I think “this would make a good poem.” If I’ve got a journal handy, I jot down a few preliminary phrases and ideas. This isn’t always possible, though. When I was skiing down Panorama at Jiminy Peak last week, the slushy spring conditions inspired me to think, “This would be a good blog post. No, on second thought, it would be better as a poem.” It wasn’t until later, when I was at the bar with my hot buttered rum, that I had a chance to capture the ideas on paper. You can read the results in Monday’s blog on skiing.
• Poetry’s a wonderful way of processing your emotions. I
  

  Mary Oliver

  became intensively involved in poetry a few years ago, when I was depressed and discouraged about publishing my novels. Exploring my feelings through poetry became a vital way of coping with my depression. For many, poetry has been literally life-saving.

• Poetry’s highly subjective, and hardly anyone knows what makes a good poem. It’s a lot like the cliché about visual art, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.” That’s how most people react to poetry.
• Poetry’s great for getting immediate feedback and applause. No matter where you live, there’s likely to be at least one poetry open mic near you. Many of my poems have been precipitated by the knowledge that there’s an open reading that night and I really ought to bring something new. Most poetry audiences are supportive and enthusiastic no matter what you read.
• Poetry’s highly compatible with computers. I do my best writing in Microsoft word, editing as I go. Some poets prefer longhand, but I love the flexibility of diving in with the first phrase that comes to mind, then playing around with the words on the screen.
• Poetry’s a good way to hone your literary skills in other genres. In poetry, every word counts. Part of the process lies in finding the best possible way to communicate your ideas in the fewest possible words, rooting out the clichés and discovering the most powerful images possible. The habit of writing this way carries over into other genres. 

What about you? Have you tried your hand at poetry?  I know quite a few readers of this blog are part of the vibrant poetry scene in New York’s Capital District, but what about the rest of you? As always, I’d love to hear from you. Please – come out of lurk mode and comment!

Windows on the World, World Trade Center

Stop by on Friday when my guest will be Roger Hudson, author of the historical mystery set in Athens, Death by Amphora. And click below to read “In Memoriam: Windows on the World,” my somewhat solipsistic take on the tragedy of September 11^th and one of my first published poems.

 

Looking ahead – life lessons from skiing

  

“Don’t look down at your skis or right in front of you,” my instructor said yesterday. “Look far ahead down the mountain, the way you want to go.”

“But what if there’s uneven terrain or something nasty right in front of me?”

“It’ll be too late then anyway. You don’t look at the hood of your car when you drive, do you?”

She was right – I actually managed to get my skis more parallel and carve better turns  when I stopped looking down at them.

Who’d have ever imagined I’d be able to improve my athletic prowess so late in life? All through my teens, I was one of those kids who dreaded gym, who was picked last for every team in every season. I especially hated volleyball, and used the “female troubles” ploy more times than was physiologically possible. In spring, when my classmates played softball, I chose tennis, which meant hiding behind the backboard out of sight of the gym teacher. Years later, as an art therapist at a psychiatric center, I generated much  merriment during a softball game with patients at a picnic because I screamed and dodged whenever a ball flew anywhere in my vicinity.

But clutzy as I am, for some reason I’ve always loved skiing. Maybe it’s my Scandinavian genes, or the fact that I can steer clear of competition and ski alone. In the past two years, my skiing has improved about a thousand percent, or so Jude, my instructor, said. We were midway down Gore Mountain, and I was taking advantage of  the Out of Control Ski Club’s free private lesson day on my last ski outing of the season.

In the interim since I’d last seen her, I took a series of weekly lessons at Jiminy Peak in a program especially designed for women, in which the lessons are followed by a buffet lunch at Jiminy’s John Harvard restaurant and then unlimited access to the hot tub and heated pool. I’m not enamored of lessons – at my age, I don’t take directions well. But it really helps to know what I’m doing, and my ego loves knowing that I can actually improve at something athletic that most folks my age are too terrified even to attempt.

So why was yesterday my last ski day? Simple – I hate spring slush. Here’s a poem I wrote about my last day at Jiminy. I took some poetic license, since my last ski day was yesterday at Gore, and I spent most of the afternoon in the bar listening to a band that did excellent covers of the Byrds, Neil Young and the like. As the poem says, I’m turning my thoughts to spring. And as Jude advised, I’m looking ahead, rather than dwelling on the muddy ground at my feet.

Were you a clutzy kid in gym? Have you gotten more athletic with age? I’d love to hear your stories. Meanwhile, here’s my poem.

Spring Skiing

 

Alone on the vast white slope of Panorama,

not a soul in sight. March is doing her early lion number,

ripping and whistling past my ears, searing my cheeks,

making me wish I’d worn my black ski mask,

my terrorist balaklava. The weathermen were wrong,

but Jiminy was right. Machine-groomed granular,

they called it in their morning e-mail –

another word for crap.

 

I’m channeling my Viking forebears,

forcing myself to face the fall line,

carving my way through piles of sodden slush.

My thighs ache from the work, the weight of it.

I picture Lindsey Vonn, flaunting her mini-skirted thighs,

flashing her gold Olympic medal

on Jay Leno’s first come-back show.

How can she be so strong and yet so slender,

not to mention gorgeous.

Me, I’m more the Brunhilde type, 

complete with helmet to guard against concussions

or sudden death. Rubenesque flesh,

swathed in baggy black pants

I’ll ditch upon final snow melt.

Next year I’ll need a smaller size – yeah, right.

 

So this is pleasure? Halfway down the hill

the realization hits me – this is my final run.

The season’s truly shifting.

Crocuses are pushing up unseen

beneath the mounds of filthy snow that shroud my garden.

Winter’s a goner – time to lay the ground for spring.

 

© March 6, 2010 Julie Lomoe