Looking out my Backdoor: Confessions of an unknown poet

Times Were Simpler

We like to imagine

Times were simpler then.

We brag to grandchildren,

Honey, when I was your age

I walked a mile

To school every day,

Barefoot, through the snow,

Uphill both ways. They laugh.

We romanticize the past,

Ignore ugly parts, piece a mosaic

Of what we wish to keep.

If only we could turn back

The clock a hundred years …

Times were no different.

Wars, inequity, cruelty,

Hatred, disease … The same.

We were simpler then.

Poetry? Ewww. Not that awful incomprehensible stuff we were forced to read in high school and try to niggle-pickle a meaning! Not that!

Not that, but what? My poetry is simple, accessible, gritty, honest, evocative and seldom rhymes. It is not loaded with Latin phrases nor multi-syllable obscure words. OK, so a few are incomprehensible, even to me. But not painfully so. I’ll stick my neck out and (gulp) say, there is something for everyone.

All writing is autobiographical but my poems are not autobiography. A story I heard, a birdsong, a butterfly wing, a broken tree; any might trigger an impulse to versify.

I’m not a “real” writer. I don’t set aside scheduled hours to write daily, so many words, so many pages a day, locked in the bathroom, fingers hammering keys on a manual typewriter while my toddlers whimper and bang on the door. Those messy years, I wrote only during naptime.

I write at my convenience. At my whim. Whims come and go, messy things they are, too.

My friend Charlotte said I wrote poetry in high school. I don’t remember. But in the ’70s I began writing again. Ah, yes, the ’70s, a prolific time for poetry. I bought writer’s magazines, mailed poems to “Little Lits,” very small publications, mostly quarterly, which paid in pennies per word, or, most likely, a “free” copy of the publication.

This will not make a lick of sense. Of every four poems I submitted, three were printed. I was so disappointed. I figured the mags must be a scam (they were not) because poems are extremely difficult to publish (all the articles said so) and I did not have an MFA nor any credentials as a poet. So much for that.

But I continued to sporadically write. While I lived in Washington, I had the opportunity to attend weekly writing sessions with other writers, to hone my skills, to give public readings. That made me feel complete. It was enough.

In this digital age, the world of publishing has changed. But publishing still requires time, money and marketing (energy, travel, more money).

I know myself quite well. I have none of the necessities with which to publish and market my work nor the ego-need to see my name in print.

Friends ask me why I don’t self-publish a collection of my best. Oh, sweet friend, I’d spend maybe $5,000 plus for a small stack of books which I would give away to a few friends while the remainder of my brilliant work would mildew in a corner of my bodega.

Others tell me, Amazon is the answer. Same difficulties. Costs a lot of money. And I’d be their best purchaser, buying books to give to my friends.

Nevertheless, while in Montana in June, my daughter Dee Dee helped me begin a poetry blog where you few brave souls can read my poems in secret; nobody will know. No messy books to be hidden, shoved beneath the mattress.

We started the blog with about 40 selections. I will add to these from time to time. I won’t dump in 300 all at once. I promise. It is not an easy site to follow. Neither of us were skillful enough to make the site exactly what we had envisioned. Only the latest posts show. At the bottom of the page click on “older posts” to carry you back, again, and back, again.

So if you are a secret reader of the forbidden (What would your friends say if they knew?), in the bathroom or under the blankets with a flash light, a reader of that strange genre known as “Poetry,” please take a look at http://montanatumbleweedpoetry.blogspot.com/. Thanks.

Skywalker

I walked the sky last night,

Tangled my feet in treetops.

A pair of doves nested in my hair.

I sneezed and built a cloud cumulus

From which soared hidden dreams.

Leaves of other times

Obscured the way ahead.

Be still, I nodded my drum.

The quiet of questions unasked,

Hot and cold, fell like fog,

Into the fiery sunrise.

——

Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com. Email [email protected].