Not exactly breaking the bank

by | Jul 29, 2008 | writing

I got a cheque in the mail for $50. For a poem that’s about to be published. Guess that makes me a bon-a-fide poet! Unless you count the 75 cents that was my cut when they passed the hat at a poetry reading many years ago, that’s the first time I’ve gotten paid for poetry. I’ve had a few published before, but never for payment.

I don’t write many poems these days, so I don’t really think of myself as a poet. This particular poem was written about 10 years ago. It was accepted for publication about 5 years ago, and since the magazine went on hiatus for a few years (I think they ran out of money – it’s hard to keep literary mags afloat), they only got around to publishing it now.

Clearly, poetry is not a very lucrative business. I won’t quit my day job.

(In case you’re going to ask to see the poem, I can’t show you until it appears in print. It turns out that if something appears on a blog, it is considered “published”. I learned that the hard way when another publication was going to accept a piece I’d written, but they took the time to Google it, found it on my blog, and turned it down because they only accept unpublished work.)

Where the wild things aren’t

by | Jul 25, 2008 | Uncategorized

We went camping this past weekend. On every trip to the bathroom or the beach, and every time my young niece wanted to go for a walk or my daughter wanted to go for a bike ride, we would stop along the path to pick plump purple wild saskatoons. They were delicious. (If you’ve never had them, they’re a little like blueberries, but they grow in trees instead of small bushes close to the ground.) Other than an unfortunate encounter with a bee, the girls enjoyed the opportunity to pillage the woods. What was almost second nature to me – to pluck a ripe fruit out of the bush along the path – was rather novel for them.

Though I’m not planning to move out of the city any time soon, some days I lament the fact that my children have so little opportunity to enjoy things in the wild. I spent many of the summers of my childhood looking for wild things. In the Spring, we hunted through last year’s grass to try to spot the first fuzzy purple crocus to poke its way to the surface. A little later in the season, we’d wander the fields looking for wild tiger lilies or bright orange cowslips. Along our driveway, the bush was lavishly dotted with soft pink wild roses. Those were a little more tricky to pick, though, because of the thorns. We felt especially lucky when we’d stumble on wild ladyslippers in the cattle pasture – but we always heeded the warning of my older brother who said that those should NOT be picked because they were becoming endangered.

Then there were the fruits of the wild – chokecherries along the path to the barn, wild raspberries along “raspberry lane” where we’d ride our bikes to the field to bring dad his lunch, wild saskatoons, and occasionally – when we were lucky – wild strawberries.

Wild animals were mostly for looking at (like the wild beaver that inexplicably made its way to our dugout, miles from a stream or river), but occasionally even those were fair game for the capture. I remember standing at the base of a tree where my older brothers had instructed me to guard a raccoon while they went back to the farmyard for a box. I shirked my duties, though, when the raccoon started coming down the tree – I think I beat my brothers to the farmyard.

My kids are completely “citified” (wow – spell check says that’s a word!). Almost everything they come into contact with is domesticated or tame. Fruit only comes from the store (with a few exceptions, like the raspberry bushes at their grandparents’ house); and flowers are either planted in the flower beds, bought at the florist, or mowed over with the lawnmower. And wild creatures? Well, you should see the way they react to bugs that get in the car! Oy veh!

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