Category: blog

Today’s poem is short and semi-sweet. I don’t know really, it’s been an odd sort of day. I can’t say that I wasn’t productive. Quite the contrary, today’s completed tasks included an over 1,000-word blog post about Day 2 of The 24-Day Challenge and my completing the article that will run in this week’s Wednesday edition of my “worktown” paper. I honestly think that it has more to do with the season. Even a 20-minute walk on the treadmill did little to change my mood. Realizing that I also needed to finishing reading The Great Gatsby for our staff book club, I was pained in finishing it. By the last chapter I was restless and ready to be done with it.

And so, tonight’s poem. This is one of those rare poems that I remember where I was when I wrote it. It was about my ex-husband. Our divorce still very fresh in my mind. It was only two months (almost to the day) after the proverbial ink had dried on the decree. I was at my parents’ original home in Conyers sitting in the converted garage watching television. I often found during those years that I would start writing almost as if possessed. Something would just come to me and I’d frantically write on pieces of hotel notepads. To this day I keep them in my purse, never knowing when the moment will take me. Yes, I know, I could always use my iPhone to compose my poems, but this is one of the few things that I still prefer to do old school. I hand write the majority of my poems.

It really goes without saying just how much I’d loved my ex-husband. At least, I certainly thought that I did. I believe even now, over a decade since the divorce, that in that time, I did love him tremendously. Divorce was a very difficult pill to swallow, hence the End of Cotton. I had that as my last name for such a short period of time and as a result of having once changed it, it made me very apprehensive in changing it again when I remarried. Socially I use my husband’s last name but I have retained my maiden name and will not change it again. I’d married so young the first time and naively believed that despite all the signs, it would last. Turning blue refers to his turning blue ceremony upon completion of his army training. Quite simply I illustrate in the length of the poem the length of our union.

The past few days have been a bit rough. There is a famous phrase, “remember, remember, the fifth of November.” I suppose it won’t be a day I forget any time soon. Prior to today it was the last post I made on my blog. I was trying to do better about being more active on my blog and had been posting a poem each day with commentary as a result. I think that my upcoming newspaper article will discuss in further detail what has happened since that day. Today Kenrick and I began our Advocare 24-Day Challenge and if you missed the prior post, we’re chronicling our journey via a blog and on Twitter. We’ve already done our first video which is posted on the site and is available (with the link) on YouTube and have tweeted a bit. Maybe the relative public shame of it all will be the motivation we need to stick with losing weight and becoming more healthy. One can at least hope!

Tonight’s poem, rather than catching up I’m simply resuming with where I left off, is entitled Empty Cauldron. It is yet another poem about a person whom I loved very dearly but had made him more in my mind than he really was as a person. With time we drifted apart and fell out of touch a bit but reconnected. In my mind and in my heart I had hoped that little would have changed regarding how we felt and interacted with one another. And even with the blatant warning signs and hazards I barreled ahead. I saw him as I first saw him and not at all as the person he had become. I think that we all are subject to this kind of occurrence in life but it’s often hard to simply walk away.