Kestril's Rhythms and Groove

When Winter Comes

Some wounds are deep
enough to bleed through generations—
aches handed down as heirlooms
listed on wills with invisible ink.

It couldn’t be helped. Then

silence was a virtue
(and here everyone believes that
please scream inside your heart
is just so 2020).

There’s an evolutionary advantage
to all the wild ‘what ifs’
buzzing like discomforted wasps
looking for a target.

At least that’s what I heard on NPR once.

If I have time for NPR,
I have time to consider
all the seasons
the wounds have lingered—

all the thorns in the spring,
all the hollows of the summer,
all the breaking of the autumn—

and what I’m going to do about them.

I hope
that by the time winter comes
some wounds have time to close

and I will know that I have done my part
to pass on what it means
to walk away from legacies
we don’t want to hold on to anymore.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Song Choice: Teach Your Children Well by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

This poem was created in response to the prompt given at Poets and Storytellers United, Weekly Scribblings #40: Walk Away.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

October

Photo by Esther Wilhelmsson on Unsplash

October's leaves are pumpkin-colored confetti of celebration whose crunch carries the whispers of the grave. Like all magical things, October has its price. I cherish its gifts all the more for it.

I breathe deeper in
October’s sweet beginnings
and its harsh endings.

Song Choice: Only Time by Enya

This poem was created for the prompt at Poets and Storytellers United, Weekly Scribblings #39: October Thrills.

Liner Notes for this Groove: October happens to be the birthday month for some very cool people, including my husband and my son. It also is the month I said goodbye to my first dog, Faye, and to a dear friend, Mike.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Take Chances. Make Mistakes. Get Messy.

After getting an encouraging message about my writing back in August, I decided to start work on a new novel. I already had ideas for a few longer stories kicking around in my head and that message was exactly the spark I needed to get started.

Starting isn’t the same as finishing though. And as you might imagine, what with being a citizen of the U.S.A., there are quite a number of things that can keep my mind scattered Early on, I decided perfectionism was not going to be one of them.

You see, writer’s block for me, doesn’t always look like a lack of ideas. It can also look like me staring at a screen, agonizing about the best metaphor or the perfect phrase, for way longer than is healthy. So the only way I was able to continue was by being OK with sucking a bit.

Nobody churns out a perfect rough draft. After all, it’s meant to be what the name implies—rough. Accepting that it is going to look a bit of a mess is somewhat freeing. I gave myself permission to just run with ideas and my imagination loves it!

Sometimes when I look back at what I’ve produced I have a good giggle (Yuuki saying out of character things like “Say what now?” tend to crack me up). Being willing to be a bit silly also helps me to write quicker. That’s a big bonus when my time is at a premium right now (a lot of my free time is being taken up by helping to get out the vote for the upcoming election). Also it’s a huge morale boost to feel productive.

I’ll hopefully be able to jump deeper into the writing process in November (just in time for NaNoWriMo). The plan is to go hard during that month. If all goes well, I’ll be able to start really polishing it up by January. But first things first… just get those ideas down, knowing a lot of those words are just going to be temporary placeholders. Then I’ll see how things go.