Plague!

CHANGING SKINS
—Taylor Graham, Somerset

At home alone on her volcanic islet,
Medusa sheds her snake-skins, lock by lock
by blinded lock. Who dares to look
on the opaque stare of each viper-eye
as the milky blue scale peels off?

Don’t come to call; Medusa isn’t in a mood
for company. She doesn’t feel sleek
and bronzed this morning, but itchy and
irritable. It’s a bad-hair day.

If you happen to be sailing by,
you might spy her shadow gliding among
the lava ridges, searching for a petrified
spot to let her tresses loose
in shivering waves across the rock,

till snake-skin translucently slips free.
Don’t look here for safe harbor,
don’t pause to trim your sail.
Just set your course for deep blue sea.

________________________

Oh, dear—does it show?

This last week the waters around Medusa have receded to reveal a plague of publishing errors—mostly of the annoying typo-gnat ilk, but a few that are worse—such as completely leaving Kate Wells' poem out of Snake 7! :-( Virtually every Snake publication lately has had errors that can't be ignored, for one reason or another. I have no illusions about mistakes; they WILL happen, and, like the deliberate error in a traditional Japanese garden, they remind us of our fallibility. Still, this is over the top, even for me.

The answer is clear: Medusa is fried at the edges. I expected to take more time off this summer than I did, and some extra things have come my way. As an ex-healthcare professional, I know the symptoms of burn-out all too well. Fortunately, September looks like an easy month, and I know how to put out the fires.

One of the ways to combat burn-out is by tapping into the support of friends, and Medusa and the whole Snake crew is hugely blessed in that regard. Yesterday I went up to Pollock Pines and met with the Tuesday@Two crew (see Snake 7)—and what a lovely group that is! Once a week they meet and read poetry, write poems, and generally check on each other under the pines and over the coffee of Pony Expresso. I came away renewed and slightly less fried.

And then I went to the Hart Center Tuesday Night Workshop, a mainstay of my life for several years now, although I've taken a two-month hiatus of late. Again, a lively crew that gets together to touch base and to delve into each other's poems. Friends.

Then, when I got home at 11, there was a stack of e-mail, including Taylor's Medusa poem, and a whole bunch of grandkid poems that Allegra Silberstein had taken the trouble to (1) get them to write for Snakelets, and (2) email me after workshop. (Snakelets REALLY NEEDS poems for the October issue, by the way.) Friends.

So why am I telling you all this? Just to remind you that poetry (like publishing) can be a solitary excursion, for sure, but it doesn't have to be—at least not in OUR area. We are SO lucky to have so many people interested in it around here; take advantage of it! Go to readings, workshops, or start a group of your own—fire season is always lapping at the edges of all of us, burn-out wise. Friends can be a healing salve. And a big THANK YOU to mine—including dear Judy Taylor Graham who is so very supportive of the wiles and whims of Medusa, and who wrote her today's poem. (Medusa is a bit of an egomaniac, I must admit...)

Speaking of friends in poetry, a friend of slam poetry in Sacramento, Angela Boyce, passed away from respiratory disease at the age of 30. Angela was responsible for forming the first official slam poetry team in Sacramento. Read more about her in The Sacramento Bee Metro section today.

Yesterday we mentioned Snake Pal James Lee Jobe's reading in Davis Friday at the Unitarian Church (7:30); James, Susan Kelly-DeWitt and Sandra McPherson will also be reading Saturday (9/10) from Charlie McDonald's new book from Swan Scythe Press, El Sobrante: Selected Poems, 1975-2005 at The Avid Reader in Davis, 617 Second Street, 7:30 pm. Info: 530-758-4040. Charlie is, as you know, ill with cancer, and his friends are bouying him up by sharing his wonderful poetry with us.

Now I'm going to go fix some of those mistakes—but don't be surprised if I let a few of the more minor typos go...

Here, by the way, is the poem that was the subject of the Labor Day Contest:


THE DAY IS DONE
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

_______________________

Thanks, Hank! A MOST appropriate poem for today...

—Medusa

PS—THIS JUST IN: Taylor Graham writes this morning: I just can't keep this to myself, even though I suspect I dreamed the whole thing up. Got an email this morning that I actually won a chapbook contest!! After all the finalist and 1st runner-up business, and all the entry fees and disappointments... finally! Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press. I'm so excited I almost threw up.

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.