I’m thankful for time with my mother yesterday–and time with all three kids, and for the delicious brunch they made. So lucky in this world.

And then unexpected good weather and a chance to lop at the roses. A trip downtown to the market (traffic getting there was hairy, but once we’d parked it was great and the sun was out and we bought pea vines and scallops and a few other things).

I’m thankful for the lilacs and their reminder. Here, just one week later, they’re looking pale, ragged, beginning to brown. Pay attention to the good things, enjoy them now.

Open the door. Open my heart.

I’m thankful for the sun and the warm weather–and that now it’s light out by 6:00 a.m. I’m thankful for the birds singing.

I’m thankful for my family.

I’m thankful for a Saturday with many things to do and nowhere I really had to be. That meant almost three hours of whacking and weeding in the yard. That meant lemon almond biscuits. That meant submissions to six contests. And kale chips.

I’m thankful for a quick wine-tasting trip with Tom–a nice day to luxuriate, good wine, no rush.

But before we left I was having one of my melancholy Sundays today–gorgeous blue skies, sunny and warm, and I’m in my own blues. Which got me thinking about the nature of gratitude. I started this gratitude journal because of my recurring Sunday blues–a way to remind myself of the many things I’m thankful for. But it’s easy to be thankful for all the good things and kind of skip over the not so good. This morning, I realized that part of gratitude is being thankful even when the good stuff isn’t write-it-down obvious. It’s out there.

This day. This life. Spring.

And I’m thankful for all the blooming–especially right now the lilacs.

Here’s a poem I wrote years ago–recalling some other lilacs even more years ago. And the photo is of that better-year bush. It’s flowering now.

The Garden of Waiting

In a land before you, I lived
beneath the gauze of hot mornings, heavy air.
Lilacs filled my open window,

their thick scent stitching sorry
with the dizzy hope that comes
from trying not to look down.

A breeze paused at the screen.
I wove words into a close hedge,
held a great space inside.

You looked through the garden of waiting,
spied me behind the hardened limbs
caught, without a language for help.

In a better year, a kinder climate,
I sent for a bare root in the mail,
wanting to share the pale cascade,

the heady smell of summer.
I dug out a space on the shadowed south side,
planted the shrub too close to a bully laurel.

Without enough sun, it grows leggy,
bears only leaves. I’ll wager on greenery,
place no faith in the absence of purple blooms.

I was walking past someone who was standing and looking at a presentation. Still looking over his shoulder, he started to walk and almost bumped into me. (I put my hand up, kindly and defensively.)

Has this happened to you?

Is it my imagination, or is it happening more and more—people walking along without looking where they’re going?

I blame it on cell phones. We’ve become accustomed to sending our attention elsewhere.

And yes, I’ve been guilty of this, too, so every new encounter serves as a reminder to me.

Enough with the rant—how is this about writing?

It’s about being observant—but it’s also about intention. When you look where you’re going to go, that sends a signal to the people around you (oh, she’s probably going to move in that direction). It communicates your intention.

Writing benefits from intention. You don’t need to tell everything at once or spoon-feed the reader. And in those first drafts, you don’t have to know where you’re going. I’ve heard that it’s better not to know—and I believe it. But by the time you get to the final version, you need to know where the writing’s heading, every twist and turn, each surprise leap—the where and the why. That will help you figure out what you can and want to leave out, what you need to keep. I think intention can help provide that spine Dean Young spoke of and hold all your wildest imagery together.

What do you think about intention? How do you hold your poems together?

Have a safe weekend. Look both ways, and then look where you’re going.

How do you balance work and poetry?

On May 10 (next Friday), 10 of us will gather at The Good Shepherd to talk about how we juggle the day job and our writing lives. We’ll also read poems about work?

I had a moment of panic–poems about work? Have I ever written about work? My job is not romantic (I’m not lofting bales of hay for horses on cold mornings) or heroic (I’m not a night nurse) or even really scientific (not in the analyzing samples of river water science way).

Then I remembered the prose poems–that winter we were testing our new internal content tools and feeling discontent, and I’d write Russian surrealism-inspired prose poems on the bus and then print them out and tape them to the wall outside my office. I was a one-poet morale machine. So I’ll read some of those.

I hope you can join us,

Friday, May 10, 7:00 PM, The Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Avenue North, Seattle, WA

and here’s the list of all of us:

J. Glenn Evans
Victoria Ford
Murray Gordon
Rebecca Hoogs
William Kupinse
Kristen McHenry
Dobbie Norris
Douglas Schuder
Michael Spence
me

and moderated by David D. Horowitz.

Speaking of prose poems

I have two myth-inspired prose poems up at Pirene’s Fountain, along with Jeannine Hall Gailey, Rustin Larson, Jane Yolen, and many more.

The two winners have been notified. Thank you to everyone who participated. And a big thank you to Susan Rich for curating this year’s Big Poetry Giveaway.

I hope you’ve had a wonderful Poetry Month, with lots of poems and writing and learning about new poets, new books.

Rumor has it that May is short story month. What will you be writing in May?