It’s been a long week for me, getting adjusted to my new old city, my new digs. I’ve not written much in the way of my novel. I’ve made a few changes and settled upon a crime. Just working that out begs for minutes I can’t seem to string together.

It was a good week for learning what I will need to do and how some things will have to work. So, next week I can move forward productively, working through a text book of information compiled last week. Adding to my new Book of How as I go along.

I found some inspirations in the week I spent tooling around New Orleans, learning the new landscape, remembering my way around. All while I worked to stave off the aches and pains of moving that threatened to waylay me, seemingly permanently. I see buildings gone, new ones erected, schools closed down, slated to not return and I wonder why.

What formula are they using to say that Valena C. Jones Elementary School will not return? Quite likely, it’s of a demographic nature. And yet, however logical, ensconced in rationality and business savvy, it still stings a bit to see it gone for good after generations of family and friends passed through its halls.

My week ended with a funeral of a dear friend of the family, my parents’ friend. That ritual, familiar too. Sad definitely. But still so good to see old friends, many not seen since my dad’s funeral almost four years earlier. We had a little time to catch up before we’re apart again indefinitely.

My next weeks will be spent job searching and catching up. Family and friends I neglected excusing myself with having been away. Now’s my chance to re-connect before more go on in, as tomorrow is not promised to any of us — not them or me. And, I find I want people to know my heart before we part permanently.

I can’t say if this is prose poetry, if you’ll recognize it as such. However, this was my intent.

©2011 Shari Lynne Smothers

It’s taking my time
spending it ruminating
and recording
random thoughts
that catch me.

Sitting in the near-empty
New Orleans River Walk food court
shortly after the assaults by
Hurricanes Katrina then Rita.

Or in the Magazine Street cafes-
free internet signals
and weak hot chocolate,
stuffed with people
sitting together and alone
mocking city-wide damages
behaving
like pre-disaster days.

Early morning hours
in Boston
at my friends’ kitchen table
before our day begins in earnest.

I’m slow to get going
for reveling in being free.
It excites me so, until
I’m at first struck dumb.
Then through ritual
and determination
reminding me
it’s time to write something;
the dam is broken
words, ideas, stories
come falling out of me.

If you didn’t catch
my intimation
that time
is rarely on my side,
now I’ve said it plain.
It is my constraint;
never wanting to rush,
I rarely have enough time
to just sit and be with things.

©2008 by Shari Lynne Smothers