Atticus Helps Me Keep Poetry Friday Afloat

Atticus sends me all kinds of links, but who doesn't love a man who sends poetry?

I've been so busy with stuff-stuff-stuff -- writing projects, fun with Ramona while her big sisters were out of town, cooking for those big sisters when they got home (after six days of road food they were ready for something fresh out of an oven), cleaning (which is, as Erma Bombeck once said, "like stringing beads without a knot"), and homeschool stuff/reading stuff/planning stuff -- that I have neglected my poor little blog and nearly let Poetry Friday slip by unnoticed.

Atticus to the rescue. (He saved me last week and a couple weeks before that, too.)

This week he sent me this gem: "Winter Twilight" by Anne Porter. (You remember Anne Porter -- I've written about her before.)

Go ahead and click over to the poem now. You have time. It's all of five lines.

These five little lines bring to mind the winter nights here. When I run the dog outside for her last backyard break before bed, I breathe in the cold, Nebraska air, take in the starry night and think, "If I didn't have a dog, I wouldn't be out here at 11:00 at night. I'd be all Woody Allenish, quoting him from the comfort of my couch, saying, 'I am two with nature.' So, this dog business is a very good thing."

"Winter Twilight" is, then, a tidy package of love for my husband, gratitude for my dog, appreciation of nature and awe in the face of Anne Porter.

And let's not forget The Writer's Almanac.

On the same day they ran this poem, they also noted the birthdays of W. Somerset Maugham (who wrote The Razor's Edge, a book that affected me greatly when I was spiritually searching, and who said, "To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life."), Scottish poet Robert Burns (I have only to hear the name to have the Scottish blood in me stir), and Virginia Woolf (whose A Room of One's Own also greatly affected me when I was young).

So, huzzah for The Writer's Almanac and Atticus. Poetry Friday lives!

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Hey! The round up today is at Hey, Jim Hill!