Story Wednesday

Though today - and maybe for the next little while - it's likely to be more about poetry. I've been thinking about words a lot these days and how we use them (or don't use them) well. Poetry, for me, tends to distill language down to its finest essence, just as a fine single malt scotch does with alcohol.

A few years ago, 2003 to be exact, I knew I wouldn't be writing much because of other commitments, so I committed myself to write a poem a day. I wrote 313 of them. Some are terrible (surprise!), some are okay, some are amazingly good as I look back on them. I admit I wrote a lot of haiku and a lot of poems that aren't exactly poems yet, but could be if I spent some time with them.

Here's #163...

I love that smell

when it rains

and it's summer

dusty, underlaid with oil

and heat and

something else

a smell all its own -

Childhood summers

waiting for the rain.

Kate