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Category: Vein of Work

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At The Lake Alone

In loving memory of Norma West Linder September 4, 1928 – August 26, 2023 Winter entered with November, the first frost falling on All Souls’ Day. Overnight, the yellow leaves of my mulberry became clenched brown fists, late-blooming coneflowers shriveled. For once the lake lay subdued, its great trout rising towards the surface, the air

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Great Memories

Norma and my late Mom, Peggy Fletcher, were best friends. I can remember many writers meetings hearing their voices carefully dissecting and critiquing with wisdom and grace. Their adventures, first starting in the seventies with her first partner, John Henry, were epic. From her kitchen wall, painted with a personalized Peanuts cartoon to the photos

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Norma-lly

I first met Norma West Linder at a local writers’ group called Writers in Transition. Over the years, she was a kind, gentle, and encouraging mentor who assisted many with the craft of writing. In addition to being a prolific writer, she was an avid Scrabble player. I regret not playing the game with her,

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1223 Willa Drive & Re-Imagining Norma in Eight Tercets

(On Cabbages and Kings, Poems 2012-2019, Aeolus House) Dusting a book shelf, I came across a poem venerating life in simple phrases hopeful even in the face of illness. From time to time lines from them return to haunt me. We had a lot to say that wouldn’t keep till morning. Always we have questions

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For an Elder, Turning, Returning

As she flows in and out, we wait. Attending. Attentive. A tension. What is to be paid? What owed? The river is shallow for the season but its current runs deep. Consciousness flickers, will-o’-the-wisp only altered by constant choice. Sharp shards hold us close to home since she is almost ninety -five, almost ready to

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A Riff on Changing Times (for Norma West Linder)

shorts and sandals on a hot October day 30.1 degrees Celsius this is a riff on changing times on changing ways on changing days salmon are jumping and people are oohing the weir too high, they spawn and die the water runs swift like the beat of a riff cormorants soar while cascades roar susurrant,

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Canatara Beach

canatara beach a mile of beach along lake Huron ribboned in summer sunshine holds more than shiny sand among the silence of the dunes are the captured sighs of broken hearts the wild grasses sing silently the ecstasies they have witnessed on their leaves wet sands hold the souls of soles that stepped upon it

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Fusion – An Immigration Story

Worlds fused confused as I coil from one to the other and back Northerly winds sooth cool pseudo heat. Gone are the scorched canyons. The taste of sweet viscous dates fades away with sticky maple sap drips salted sea diluted by a shimmering lake. We too are mellower now, as we grow older in this

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Caravaggesque!

  The tulips of bold spring colours were in full bloom now they linger in liminal. I haven’t chucked them into the bin at the faintest wrinkling of petals; decay has its wondrous mutations— the purple petals flap open an unfurled upside down umbrella, exposing the pistil and stigma—so immodestly phallic! and the curled red

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Water World

  The lake waits all night for me. Fettered boats rock and drift gently, answering unseen currents. Tadpoles, soft black bodies like commas, wriggle along the honeycombed shallows, awaiting their metamorphosis. As morning ages wind wrinkles the lake’s skin, but as I slip into blue its fingers are all satin. You have to understand: poetry

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