Notes from the Firefly Jar

For years, I have kept notebooks beside my bed, not for my own writing, but to jot down the things I read which strike me as timelessly profound. For example, I recorded these words from John Irving's novel, Last Night in Twisted River, in February 2010.

We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly - as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth - the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives. 

Notebook at the bedroom window.

When I began to write poetry a few years ago, I just turned to the back of my notebook and scribbled my attempts there.

First drafts

Once I began to blog, and read poetry on-line, I became much more comfortable writing directly into a word document. If I need to jot something down, I grab a piece of paper from the printer and fold it in half.

My Workstation

This is where it all goes down.  The firefly jar has replaced my notebooks, as a more convenient repository for those momentous quotes I like to capture.  I added these lines recently from one of Shay's poems, called Sacrifice:

If, the next time, mine is the sacrifice,
At least I can scream my joy and my pain in my own language.

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The Mini-Challenge on Real Toads today is Poetry for the Firefly Jar, and here are my scraps, two written in the Koan Style, and the last just free styling an idea.

Today's poems in rough

The promise of season’s change has been broken:
Old leaves lie like burning footprints in the frost.
It has been months since I last thought your name,
Why, then, does your ghostly face wake me cold?

~ ~ ~

I asked the holy man: “What becomes of the dead?”

He replied: “The long white bones are carved into flutes.”

~ ~ ~

We sit atop our junkyard ruin
and weed out dandelions
with silver forks,
while the children collect seeds

in broken teacups.