You Asked...

Some of you have asked about the pieces I entered in the Weymouth Center Moore County Writers Competition. Well, they've all been on my blog! Two of the pieces, Blackbird (fiction, first place) and Grandma and the Devil (non-fiction, third place) were entered pretty much as I originally posted them on this blog. (Grandma and the Devil was actually my first post titled Solitaire.)The poem, Morning Swim Practice (first place), was written as a Six Sentences entry and then I rewrote it as a poem. So here it is as a poem. I still can't believe it! Thanks for all of your encouragement out there!

Swim Practice

Five am and the darkness seems so thick
I’m tempted to turn on the wipers.
Cold outside, the heater and seat warmers
are set as high as they will go.
Like a womb, the truck protects us
from the outside world:
me from my responsibilities,
Ellen from the yards
she is about to swim.

In a ball on the seat next to me,
hood pulled over her head,
she tries to snatch just a few more
precious moments of sleep.
I can see her face in the
window’s reflection.
Strange –
It’s like looking at me
25 years ago.

She is in that hard, in between
time of being two people at once:
both woman and girl,
each fighting to see who will land on top.
It makes me sad to see
the little girl letting go, giving up –
but I rather like this woman who
sometimes visits.
I think we will be good friends.