Well, it is official. . .

that I did NOT buy a new car.  I am simply allergic to car payments.  Enough said about that.

     Regarding writing, I am thinking of using the expression "No, Duh!?" as a title.  Is this still a common enough slang statement to be recognizable to most people under the age of 35 or so, and the parents of people under the age of 20 or so?  Let me know, please.  Your help is needed.

     Huge happening today, and it wasn't not buying a car.  I applied for Social Security.  To you young'uns, that means I am within 3 months of my 62nd birthday.  I simply have no further comment on that.

Some people mentioned that they enjoyed the polar bear story I included in my blog a couple of weeks ago.  Here's a poem I wrote to be used in one of my YA manuscripts.  It's written in blank verse which is unrhymed iambic pentameter.  That's the verse style Shakespeare used in all his plays, and Robert Frost often used in his poetry.  If you've forgotten, "iambic pentameter" means each line of a poem contains 10 syllables or 5 iambic feet.  Each iambic foot contains an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one.  So a line of iambic pentameter reads to this  beat:  stress-unstressed/s-u/s-u/s-u/s-u.  I love iambic pentameter.  It's both fun and hard to write.

For Jenny Who Taught Me to Believe in Ghosts

Although she left me seven years ago,

I often come back home and think I'll find

her waiting for me on the path or by

our picket fence with hat and garden gloves

and scissors.  In her hand a blossom snipped

just now, its scent still fresh, to float atop

bright water in the crystal bowl she kept

upon our hutch, a doily underneath

to keep a ring from forming.  Still , one did.

I know this for a fact because the ring

is all that's left.  The blossom wilted soon.

The bowl that from my fingers fell and smashed.

The doily torn or lost I cannot say,

All gone, all gone away, except the ring. . .

And Jenny, who when I'm sleepy or at 

my desk will touch a finger to my neck

or make the wind chimes chime without a wind,

again to let me know that she is there,

And so am I, and therefore we.  Then go

I to the hutch and touch the ring and smell 

that blossom in that bowl and then I know,

That there are surely ghosts, they must be so.

      Comments are welcome.  Even better write a verse in blank verse.  It's hard and fun.