lightening the load

I read an article suggesting I ask my readers what they like about my writing, what kind of mood it leaves them in and if they would return to read more of what I write. Those are scary questions but I will put them out there to see if any of you want to respond.

I know I am very selective about what I read and getting more so as the calendar years slip by. I purchase used magazines as I cancel my annual subscriptions because I just don't use much of my time reading magazines anymore. When the New York Times arrives, I scan the first two sections and if there isn't an editorial piece (Rural Life) by Verlyn Klinenborg, I skip the editorials entirely. I always read the local Lifestyle section and the Comics.

So, although I am a bit bummed by my limited, obviously selective, "followers" numbers, I know that a couple of you do read what I write because you write back to me on my gmail account and I really appreciate you sharing your time to write back to me in any way.

Today, I feel like I am lightening the load I have been carrying around since Mark's job was eliminated at the UA. I have worked through some of my own work challenges and the seasonal shift to summer has set in for Tucson. I know this is our rough season and many dread it, but, for me, it's a time of neighborhood swimming, sweet summer nights and that ever-lingering adolescent memory of what summers used to bring: leisure time, good movies and the bounty of ripe tomatoes, berries and corn-on-the-cob. So I embrace the summer with a smile in late May/early June, knowing that by late August, I am counting the minutes of darkening evenings and dropping temperatures (from 110 to 90 degrees:).

Last Sunday, Mark and I went to Mt. Lemmon and had a wonderful time among the green grasses, shimmering aspen leaves and slopes dotted with white snow-drop wildflowers. Since we had a dry winter season, the creeks were thin and trickling and wildflowers were sparse but loved the more because of their scarcity. I was able to do the hike in Bear Wallow without any ankle swelling or new aches so I feel another healing milestone has been met. We sat out on a Winterhaven cafe patio, savoring the softness of a freshly baked peanut butter cookie and drinking our canned cafe lattes, listening to the international language shifting of patrons from the valley and watching toddlers try to touch butterflies as they circled the flowerbeds of petunias and roses.

For this week's Writers Digest Poetry prompts, the prompt was "priorities" and so, I share mine here. I encourage my readers to think about their own priorities for the day or week ahead:

My Priority

Feeding the birds is the way I start my day.
My husband says it's a silly thing to do:
I am enabling creatures who
should be able to forage for their own food.

But I treasure the texture of the seeds
as they slip through my fingers
and bounce into the feeder.
The feel and sound remind me
of my Grandmother Dice as she
chucked corn every morning to her chickens.

So if it's a silly thing to do,
it's also a priority
and a solemn act of love.