Hawks at Dawn

At sunrise three hawks

ride the updrafts,

wide open above the earth,

new sun butter on their bellies.

They disappear amid the sweep of pines,

emerge again in the white-light backdrop,

circling, circling,while the sky above them

warms to ripe peach.

One wobbles, beat its wings,

thrusts toward space

and for an instant

it seems gravity must win,

but digging in, it powers on,

merges with the carry and glide,

an aerodynamic glissade,

birds sliding on air,

coasting on wind and sky.

Hello, My Angry Ocean

Two weekends in a row, the ocean churned.  I compared pictures and could have taken them all on the same day.  Only for this one, I'm standing at a beach, with towering piles of dirty snow melting behind me, imagining striped umbrellas, lifeguards swinging their whistles, and the flurry of kids gripping bills while they run to the parking lot as the ice cream truck pulls up.  Somewhere a radio chirps.  Teenage boys paddle a ball back and forth across the hard-packed sand.  Women wearing oxford cloth shirts over their bathing suits walk with eyes cast down and squat to pick up sea glass.  In this vignette, the sun is hot on my shoulders.  I'm sitting in the same striped beach chair I've used for thirty years.  There's a novel in my lap, but it's closed as I watch a wave chase a flock of terns and they skitter-step up from from the edge. 

It's forty degrees and raining here right now.  We are almost there. Right?  Right?

Putting it out there - IWSG April 2015

 Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! To read more IWSG posts, click here.


Statistics

Queries sent to date: nine

Request for full manuscripts: two

Request for a partial that turned into a request for full: one

Rejections out of the above: one

Dead air: six

The Process

I’ve taken to tracking down the agents for books I’ve  read recently and loved, then researching the heck out of them before sending a first batch of five individualized queries.

For every response I received I planned to send out another query.  Out of that first group, I received two full requests and a partial that resulted in a full.  One of these ended in a rejection with some pretty actionable feedback.  Part of me wants to dig right in an address it.  But it was one agent’s opinion.  If I get corroboration from someone else, I’ll be all over it. 

And if you are counting on your fingers, I know the math doesn’t add up.  I sent another query last week because I got too tired of not doing anything.  It’s important to me that this process be methodical and planned.  But the waiting.  Oy.

What do you do while you wait?

Best wishes to all you A-Z bloggers out there.  I’ll be checking in over the month.  I may skip a few days blogging this month in order to spend more time on my current writing project.

Here's Hoping

March is almost over but rather than looking for snow drops and crocuses in the garden, we’re still looking at snow. There’s still no good walking around our town, so Sunday, we headed south, to the ocean and open land with no trees. There we saw further evidence of Mother Nature's violence this winter. A wood bench, at least twenty feet above the beach had been flattened by the sea so instead of having a back, it looked like a double thickness of seat. Two granite memorial benches had been knocked off their footings and relocated to the middle of the walkway atop the sea wall, just down from a huge boulder, also deposited during one of the many storm surges. Still the day was sunny and the ocean churned and mixed with patches of green and blue.  Our eyes still watered and our noses sniffled, when we turned our backs to the sun, it felt warm. 

 This is our back yard through the window.  These guys are hungry...I chased them away from my Rhodies by banging pan lids. Sorry about the TV reflection. 

Our daughter usually startles these guys when she returns home from school late at night.  But on this day, they weren't waiting for her.

On Sunday, the pond behind the beach was mirror still.

But the ocean was boisterous and angry, with this rip tide forming.

Did you say Spring?  This is my back yard on March 29. 

Doing my Homework

While I can’t recall the title, I remember the first book I took out of the library.  It had a green cover and it was about a girl called Kiki.  I was allowed to take it home while waiting for my new library card to arrive in the mail.  I also remember a second grade library period in which I was so engrossed in reading a book; my class took off without me.  For years, I read as a passenger in the car, in the tub, before classes, in line, at the breakfast table, sometimes even arriving early for appointments so I could read while I waited.

There’s not always enough time for reading these days, but this weekend I plowed through One True Thing by Anna Quindlen.  Books suck me away from the here-and-now world of laundry, dinner and dishes, so there was a glass-half-full reason to be glad spring chores have been delayed by the hard pack of snow still smothering our yard. Suffering only a modicum of guilt, I camped on the couch in front of the fire, taking a break for grocery shopping and other necessary things, but otherwise, reading.  All you writers out there know that in order to write, you need to read, and yes, I do find myself reading now with a writer’s eye, but that doesn’t stop me from loving it.  In Quinlin’s novel, the story of a woman accused in the mercy killing of her mother, the writing is so dead-on evocative that a couple of times I stopped reading, just to say in my head, “Exactly.”  

Listen to this:

But I could see her, standing at the place at the bottom of the hill where there was a dip and then a bump, yelling up at us, a cap pulled down over all but the smallest divot of eyes and nose and mouth, “Not so fast. Not so fast. Slow down. Oh, my lord, Jeffrey, you’ll give me a heart attack.”  All of life like a series of tableaux, and in the living we missed so much, hid so much, left so much undone and unsaid.  Jeff had broken his arm once on that hill, and she had taken her tempera paints and painted a toy soldier up the entire length of his cast.  He had been mortified.  One True Thing  by Anna Quindlen

Good-golly-gosh what I wouldn’t give to write like that. If to read well is to write well, then I’ll take that kind of homework assignment any time. 

An Oldie

This is an edited rerun from 2009.  As I perused old blog posts to generate ideas for this week, I found this unseen piece.  Not only is Central Cemetery still one of my favorite places to walk, but a fictional version of the St. John plays an important role in the novel I am currently querying.  The pictures are a more recent addition.

Dead Calm

Today I toured the cemetery. Before you grimace and assume I attended a funeral or was in the throws of a depression, let me explain that the place is situated near the library where I park the car to take my daily constitutional.  It has the added advantage of sitting on a promontory overlooking Little Harbor, and its "residents" hold one of the most expansive views in town.  While lacing up my sneakers, I decided today’s walk should include a detour there.

The area I explored is one of our community's oldest resting places. Weathered slate markers dating as far back as the 1700’s lean high above the granite ledges that seem to grow and shrink in the tidal flats pooling below. Central Cemetery is carved out of grass tiers that step up from each other.  A stone Celtic cross towers at the top, erected in memory of immigrants from the Irish brig St. John that foundered on ledge while carrying these pilgrims to a better life. Far below the cross, flattened marsh hay etches the shoreline along with greening buds and tangled strands of sea heather. The sun heated the small gravestones edging the beach this morning.  Purple crocuses bloomed in bunches below veterans flags that lifted up on a hanging breeze. Today, the sea beyond the harbor slept steel flat and cold and gusts blew damp, but a whisper of spring erased the sting. Pebbles from the stone walk crunched as I wandered toward the road. On my way back to the library I swung my arms and eyeballed the forsythia preparing to burst in front of an antique cape along the way.

You may take issue with me strolling among the peaceful dead but to tell the truth, I began my walk low key in mood. The hike among them though--well, more than anything, it brought me back to life.

Poem for Susan

We speak the language of stone.

Quartzite, granite, pumice, slate,
the eternal rake

of tide
and sea.

While we walk,
you point your cane,

bottle caps, wires,
the rusted intestines

of lobster traps,
I fetch them,

ridding the beach of

unwanted accessories.

At home, you pile stones
in plastic containers,

by the sink,
on the hutch,

in a box stored
deep in the basement.

Now, you solicit requests,

and though
I remain voiceless,

you know.

“Get the black stone,” you say.

We bring samples to your bedside,

malachite, jasper,
and a composite,

disparate forms,
fused together.

Just as I realize
these stones 

and love,

will last forever,

again you point.

This time, grey,
etched with striations.

A heart rock, folded into itself,

pocket-sized,
with a hollow

just the right shape
to rub at with my thumb.