Hot Flash Friday=Weather of Six Mornings

I have a lot of poetry books on my shelf. Sometimes even just the titles are inspiring. For today’s Hot Flash I want to highlight one of these titles.

The Weather of Six Mornings by Jane Cooper

The book contains some of her earliest poems, those referencing a love killed during WWII. Her life continued hesitatingly. College, career, teaching, publishing. It seems she grieved for the better part of her life. A few other poems have to do with her childhood home in Jacksonville, Florida. I especially like the one about St. John’s River and the water birds. My mind drifts back to my first solo bike trip, Jacksonville to Key West, and an alien feeling comes over me. Pelicans and bursting sunsets, warm sand and foaming ocean. It was another world—in January!

Let’s borrow that title for Hot Flash Friday and begin now to write consecutively for 6 mornings.

Sunlight lies along my table

like abandoned pages.

I try to speak

of what is so hard for me

--this clutter of a life—

Puritanical signature!

In the prolonged hear, insects,

pine needles, birch leaves

make a ground bass of silence

That never quite dies.

Each section of the six “mornings” is composed of 10 lines, coupled

What it’s like, right now. Write.