Anne Marie Cheney - Guest Blogger

Guest Blogger Anne Marie Cheney

It occurs to me that I don’t have to do everything myself—that’s the plight of most Virgos. There’s a terrain of creativity where I don’t wander on foot, but watch and appreciate from a distance. Poetry. I’m overwhelmed by it, a little bit in awe; I don’t understand the structure. One of my favorite local poets is Anne Marie Cheney—she’s also in my writers group—and I’ve asked her to be a guest blogger today. She writes:

So this is me, writing a blog. Who would have ever thought? But my dear friend, Jo, asked me to be a guest on her blog and it seemed rude to say no. To be honest, I’m pretty much of a Luddite when it comes to technology, a technophobe if you will. I am writing this at my desk with a fountain pen and a pad of clean lined paper. I can’t compose on a keyboard (I almost said typewriter!). I can barely type. I love the feeling of pen-in-hand and ink-on-paper. My reluctant Muse need coaxing and the cussing and corrections that attend my typing spoil the mood.

Jo thought it might be interesting for me to talk (or write) about why I write poetry. But really, you might as well ask “Why do I breathe?” Poetry has always been a part of my life. My parents both read and sang to me from the time I was a baby. I loved the rhythm of the words in those Golden Book stories and The Child’s Garden of Verses. As I got older, Mom would sometimes direct my friends and I as we acted out scenes from Shakespeare, those wonderful words rolling off our tongues: “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.” I was also fortunate enough to go to school when actual education was considered important, so poetry and art were always a part of the curriculum from kindergarten through college. My childhood friend, Mary, and I started writing poetry (badly) when we were 12 or so and I just never stopped. I love the mystery of poetry, its metaphors and magic. Poetry has rhythm and luscious language that can seem out of place in the prosaic world of everyday.


GODDESS OF THE SEA

The sea
beautiful, inviting, treacherous,,
all turbulence and undertow
waves of foam and power
eroding the hardest rock.

Yet that wildness
calls to me.
I long, from the safety of the shore,
to loose myself in its depths,
rising up
to ride waves of delight
wind in my hair
goddess of the sea.



NIGHT SKY

I am the night sky
deep velvet
full of emptiness, mystery.

Stars scattered throughout my hair;
fire and ice collide in my embrace
creating comets to sing my stories
across galaxies.