Often less than a trickle, that creek was a haven of life to us kids.
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Today I went looking through my writing archives to find something written on or near this date in the past, and I found a poem written about 24 years and a week ago. It’s not particularly great nor too profound, but it does connect me with an important moment going even further back, to a golden day spent with my grandfather, Urban Lee Ridings. The day was sunny and warm, I remember, and I must have been somewhere around five or so. Grandpa instructed me to go and shake his money tree, and I could still walk you right to…
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Thinking back on my life 20 years ago, I have to say that today seems so much simpler. I wrote about that key personal era in “Arc of the Poet Part 6,” and although I think it makes for interesting reading, recalling those days is rather bracing for me. I had so much to prove to myself and the short list of others whose opinions really mattered to me, and although I was confident in my strengths and abilities, I was unsure about so much more. While I had come very far with the gifts provided by my family, as…
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Arc of the Poet Part 1: Life Poetry Part 2: Tour de Force Part 3: True Love Part 4: Spinning Out Part 5: Wake-Up Call Part 6: Serious Dreams Part 7: Home Stretch Part 8: Feedback Part 9: Dear Departures Part 10: Good Poetry Part 11: Rewrites Part 12: Resistance Part 13: Fame and Fortune Part 14: Ramblings Part 15: Being Nearly a year after our spectacular wedding, May of 1993 found me, Beth and pretty much everyone else in our family continuously thinking about my brother, his daily perseverance in recovering from his July ’91 diving accident, and his…
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Eventually I came to feel that I could become famous, and accomplish all my lofty personal ambitions, through poetry.
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I’ve written here before about my “Ramble” creative writing project. On Dec. 30 of 2009, I sat down to write a Ramble entry for my late grandmother Beatrice Ridings, who was widely known to many as Granny Bea, Aunt Bea, or Ms. Ridings. I had two wonderful grandmothers who have now passed on, and luckily for me, Grandma Eileen Darnell, who we called Bam, was also tight with Granny Bea, so on more than one occasion, I was able to enjoy them both simultaneously. At long last, I have published a separate collection for Grandma Bam, and below, I am…
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Recently I was going through a folder I’ve held onto over the years, which has some of the poems I wrote the old-fashioned way, with a piece of paper and a pencil or pen, along with some similar keepsakes. Among the other pieces in the collection, my mother is a major contributor. She has always had a great way of giving things that feel special enough to make me want to keep them forever.
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The ‘Bumper Crop’ series has at least one more entry, but requires a bit more work on my part before I can post the rest of the story. In the meantime, I wanted to share something from a more recent work. After we moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains almost exactly seven years ago, I found my creative writing energies more or less depleted. Soon, being a father added a new dimension to my life, and the one creative project that stayed on my agenda was to write an epic poem for Amelia, detailing the first day of her life…