Author Archives

by

The Gifts of Christmas, Past and Present

After the gift opening and the Great Food Indulgence (aka brunch), we headed to the beach. On the way down we wondered how the beach would look after the recent storm. Would there be a lot of driftwood? How had the dunes fared? Erosion in past storms had actually revealed military rocket motors and casings from World War 2, when the beach was used for military target practice. We chatted about this and that, wondering aloud what we would find there today.

We arrived to find only a few cars in the parking lot. Nick and Lydia headed off to explore the fort, and Kurt and I wandered on the path toward the beach. Already we saw mounds of debris and driftwood along the path’s edges. We came upon a white-haired man sitting on a bench overlooking the water.

“What a beautiful day!” I said, as we approached him.

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. We exchanged holiday greetings and marveled over the layered debris from the storm. He mentioned how he remembered finding bullet casings on the beach as a kid, and we exclaimed how we’d just been talking about that.

After a few minutes, I gave in to the lure of the beach, the shifting blues and silhouettes, and wandered ahead to take pictures. Kurt stayed to talk.

A while later, Kurt caught up with me.

“Were you talking all that time with that man?” I asked.

“We talked for a while. He sprinkled his mom’s ashes here a few years ago, so he comes here every Christmas day. He told me, ‘I don’t think she can hear me. Probably not. But still I like to come.'”

“Oh, I’m so glad you stayed and talked with him.”

“Yeah. He told me that he had diabetes and that he’d had a heart attack. He talked about not knowing what each day would bring and needing to enjoy the time you have.” 

Then Kurt said that as he left to join me, the man apologized, saying to him, “Hey, sorry to talk about such downer stuff.”

“It’s not downer stuff,” Kurt responded, “It’s just life, man.”

I think of that man now, sitting on that bench alone. Of how I wandered on without his story, content to investigate a different one. Of how Kurt stayed to talk, to ask questions, to connect.

I took lots of pictures yesterday. Mostly of sun and sand. Of storm-tossed trees and piles of debris. Even one or two of my family. But of all the images I saw yesterday, it’s the one I didn’t take that is strongest in my mind. That man sitting quietly on the bench, looking out at the water, thinking of life, his challenges, and mostly, remembering his mother.

Later on our walk, we came across another bench. Another story of love and loss. Of remembrance. This time I paused for a little longer, holding my own loved ones, near and far, close in my heart.

The holidays are wrapped in both past and present. Here’s hoping yours were filled with handfuls of love and laughter and seasoned with memories that brought more smiles than tears. Wishing you peace, joy and light as we head into the new year.

by

Making a Fashion Statement…of a sort…

I picked up the pink, wool sweater and put it on top of my pile of clothes on the bathroom counter. There! Ready for tomorrow! I thought, satisfied to have that annoying nightly chore done.

I turned to head toward bed and my book, when something caught my eye.

Wait…what’s that? Is that a hole?

I turned back and picked up the sweater. Sure enough, there was a hole, front and center. A few forlorn threads lay broken and unraveled, circling a glaringly empty space. No chance of hiding this one. Or was there? I pulled two of the largest threads together, trying to knot them up and hide the damage, but there wasn’t quite enough slack. I tugged again, turning the fabric this way and that. Finally, after a few more attempts, I gave up. I looked down at the sweater and its now-a-bit-larger hole. Maybe…Could I just…? No, I told myself firmly, there is no way you can get away with that.

Sighing, I walked over to the closet and pulled an alternative sweater off the shelf. Hmmmm….it looked a bit…off. The sweater was supposed to be soft and slightly fuzzy, but this garment looked a bit more than that, not pilly, but maybe a bit too much like the llama or whatever creature had donated the original fibers. I took it back to the bathroom, grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped strategically, removing some longer bits and pieces. Then, I held it up before me and gave it a quick glance. That’s better, I thought. I put it down on the pile and headed off to bed, well satisfied, once again, to have that task done.

At the end of the next day, as I walked my class back from Library, the student next to me spoke up.

“Mrs. Hogan?”

“Yes?”

“Is your sweater made of ….” she hesitated, tentatively touched my arm, then continued, “…cat?”

“Cat?!” I exclaimed.

“Well,” she said, “it’s sort of all fuzzy and…” she gestured vaguely at it, waving her hands. “Well, I just thought maybe it was made of cat fur…” She trailed off, looking a bit uncertain.

“Um, no,” I responded, unsure whether to laugh or cringe, but certainly not wanting her to feel bad. “I’m not sure what it is, but it’s definitely not cat.” I looked down, seeing my sweater with new eyes. I lifted my arm to look closer at the fuzzy threads. Cat!?!

We walked the rest of the way back to class. Every so often the student gave my arm a sidelong glance and a discrete pat. I’m not sure she was buying my denial.

Tonight I’ll try to bring a more critical eye to the task of garment selection. And this sweater? Well, I definitely won’t be wearing it to school again!

by

PF: Inkling Challenge: luc bat

This month it was my turn to choose the Inklings challenge. I was intrigued by Wendy Everard’s prompt during Ethical ELA’s October Open Write to write a luc bat. Luc bat means six eight in Vietnamese, and the form alternates 6 and 8 syllable lines. There is no particular subject and no required length, but there is an interesting, interwoven rhyme scheme. Here’s how Writer’s Digest shows it:

xxxxxA
xxxxxAxB
xxxxxB
xxxxxBxC
xxxxxC
xxxxxCxD
xxxxxD
xxxxxDxE

You can read their full description here.

I knew I wanted to play around with this form, and I figured if I set it as the challenge, I’d be sure to do so. It turned out to be a relatively tricky form, at least for me. So, as I’m wont to do, I turned to the marsh for inspiration.

Again I Turn to the Marsh

dawn lures me to the marsh
some find this setting harsh and miss
the subtle shifts and bliss
of tide, land, wings that kiss the sky
as herons, egrets fly
gulls soar, their strokes a sigh, a clue
of movement against blue
and all that is askew turns right
My spirits, too, take flight

©Molly Hogan

If you want to see what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on the links below:

Linda Mitchell
Margaret Simon
Heidi Mordhorst
MaryLee Hahn
Catherine Flynn

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Anastasia Suen at her blog.

by

Radiator Adventures

“Well, one thing that could help is make sure that the radiators are dust free,” the man commented. “Just take a vacuum to them.” He was sitting on a chair in our living room, talking to us about our furnace, possible replacements and overall issues with heating our 200+ year old home.

We looked at each other guiltily.

Oops!

I peeked over at the closest radiator. Even without removing the metal strips, I could see dust inside, and it may just have been a slight breeze moving through(remember…old house!), but I think one of the larger clusters waved at me tauntingly. I immediately added “Vacuum out the radiators” to my towering mental list of good intentions.

Fast forward a month or two and we’re in full home improvement mode. No, we haven’t vacuumed out the radiators yet, but we’re repainting the living room. We’ve removed the furniture from the room and Kurt has repaired various cracks and divots. The ceilings are done and it’s time to clean the walls and trim and get that started. This is all to explain how I came to be sitting on the floor, taking the long, external metal plates off the radiator, with the vaccuum sitting next to me, looking appropriately serious and intense. We both suspected this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.

We had no idea.

I removed the splice plate and the two long metal strips came off easily. For your reference, below is a picture of what the inside of a clean baseboard radiator looks like. Add about an inch of accumulated dust and grit to this and you’ll have an idea what mine looked like.

“EW!” I exclaimed, calling out to my husband who was in another part of the house. “Kurt, I could make a small animal out of this!”

Dust lay like a thick Shetland sweater over the heater fins. (No wonder we’d had a hard time heating this room!) I reached over and peeled a thick layer up and off. I think I may have blushed. This was even outside of my normal low housekeeping standards! Thank heavens for a sturdy vacuum. I gave it an affectionate pat, turned it on and we got to work.

There’s a deep satisfaction to listening to grit and debris getting sucked into a vacuum. I watched the dust zip away, feeling ever more virtuous. Bit by bit the radiator fins came into sight, as did a few lost treasures–a marble, a random earring, some paperclips. I was going to have the cleanest baseboard radiators in town!

That’s when it happened. The vacuum came to an especially thick clump of dust and didn’t tidily suck it away. Oh, it tried valiantly, but the dust clump remained. I tried a few different angles. Nothing worked. Turning off the vacuum, I poked with my finger at the stubborn clump. Why wouldn’t it go up the vacuum hose? Was it another earring? A toy lost long ago? I leaned in to take a closer look.

Uh oh

“Kurt,” I wailed. “I’m pretty sure there are feet in this dust clump!”

Whatever it was, it had clearly been there a long time and had no intention of disappearing up a vacuum hose. I held my breath, took the vacuum attachment and carefully poked it under an edge of the clump, flipping it up and over. The soles of four little feet came into view, pointing stiffly upward. Beneath the shroud of thick dust were the desiccated remains of a small critter.

“It’s a mouse!” I shrieked.

“Well, get rid of it,” Kurt answered, still safely away in the other room.

“Do you realize that all the times we said, ‘Oh, something smells bad. I guess something must have died in the walls’ (which if you have ever lived in an old house is just a thing that gets said sometimes), there was actually some creature cooking on our radiator! In the same room with us! And we were breathing that air!?!”

I said this, in various iterations multiple times.

“The very air we were breathing!”

“It was just right there, cooking away!”

“It was like a mouse barbecue!”

Then finally, after disposing of the remains, I announced, “Kurt, this is so disgusting. If you ever tell anyone about this, I am going to deny it.”

Unless I write about it…

Note: This morning as I write this (and I kid you not!), my cat is poised in the corner where the radiator meets the wall. She hasn’t moved for food or affection, both an essential part of her morning routine. She’s gazing intensely at the radiator. Her tail is twitching. Every so often she madly scrabbles her paws underneath the metal plates. I know what this means!

by

PF: Considering the spider

Earlier this fall when I was at the marsh, I spied a spider, peering from a web constructed in the whirl of a milkweed leave. My pictures didn’t turn out, but I’ve thought about that spider again and again: There was something about it, its web, and it’s watchful stance. It seemed poised at the edge of advance and retreat. I could relate only too well.

Considering the spider

What does Spider think
as it poises itself there?
Is it rapt at fall’s advance,
at the golden autumn air?
Or does it sense its coming end…
the frailness of its lair?

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Karen Edmisten at her blog.

PS Here are a couple of other spiders I did manage to “capture” early this fall.

by

Early Bird Sale

I told myself earlier in the week that I wasn’t going to be able to go. I simply had too many things going on and couldn’t spare the time. I hadn’t really thought about it again. Or so I thought.

Then, early on Saturday morning, soon after I’d started writing, I glanced at my watch. 6:05 am.

Oh, the Early Bird Sale has started.

The thought instantly popped into my head. Clearly, I hadn’t fully submerged it.

What’s an Early Bird Sale you ask? Well, in a nutshell, it’s earlier opening hours at local stores with a generous discount and encouragement to wear your PJs as you shop. At my local bookstore it was 25% off all books from 6-9 am. Every year I choose a book for each family member for Christmas. The Early Bird Sale is the kickoff of my holiday shopping and one of my favorite parts of the holiday season. But this year I’d already decided not to go. I had a very busy weekend ahead with lots of plans and obligations.

Still…

My pen hovered.

I wavered.

Usually I spend time in advance of the sale reading reviews, pondering my options and enjoying creating a list. This year I cobbled together some ideas from a few trusted sources and was out the door half an hour after deciding to go. Actually, I’m not sure I ever fully decided. I just suddenly found myself still in my PJs, list in hand, getting out of my car in the parking lot, and feeling vaguely guilty and very excited.

I wandered into the store out of the chilly, dark morning and was greeted with light, warmth and the hubbub of bright voices and happy conversation. I immediately relaxed. This was where I wanted to be.

I started with new releases. The newest Stephen King was out, but I knew at least two of my family had already bought and read it. I kept an eye out for the titles I’d scribbled down. I looked at Staff Picks, picked up books, read blurbs, considered my options. As I wandered, I listened in to others’ conversations, chimed in a few times, touched the covers of “old friends” affectionately, and breathed in the intoxicating aroma of new books.

After I’d been there a little while, the owner approached me, “Can I help you find something? Oh! I see you have a list! What are you looking for?”

I then spent a delightful 20-30 minutes with her. I’d ask if she had a certain book and she’d say “Yes” or “No”. If they had it, she’d show me where to find it. But, really the fun started with the “No’s”, and especially the “No, but’s…”

“No, but have you read this one?”
or
“No, but I do have one that sounds similar…”
or
“No, but have you read that author’s last book?”

Or she’d tell me she hadn’t heard of a book I was looking for and ask me to tell her about it. I would and then my description would connect to other books, other authors, other sections of the store.

Last Friday I posted a prose and poem combo describing kids at a recent recess delighting in the flurry of autumn leaves falling in the breeze. They had whirled and twirled, stretching their hands out over their heads, trying to catch the leaves as they fell. They had been completely lost in the wonder of it all.

I felt a lot like that in the bookstore on Saturday morning. Immersed in book talk. Giddy with books and the potential of them all. Loving thinking about my family and the interests and nuances of each of them. Busy stretching out, trying to “catch” the perfect book choice and lost in the wonder of all those words. All those books.

When I left the store an hour or so later, I had a large bag brimming with books. I know I was smiling, and I’m pretty sure my face was glowing just like the kids’ faces at recess that day.

by

PF: Finding poetry in prose

This month Linda challenged our writing group to write a prose piece and find a poem in it. She offered a variety of options within that challenge, but I opted to go with the original basic prompt. Thanks, Linda, for the nudge to revisit this small moment at recess and find the poetry within it.

The breeze blew erratically in unpredictable puffs. With every gust, leaves flew off the tree in a crimson cloud, like a flock of birds, spinning and twirling away into the chilly air. Around the tree and across the fields and playground, children played. Some kicked around a soccer ball. Some were involved in an intense game of kickball. Others played chase or pumped themselves high into the achingly blue sky on swings. And some twirled and swirled beneath the tree, like the leaves themselves. Their hands were outstretched, reaching to catch the falling leaves. Leaves falling like rain onto their heads, into their hands, and onto the ground around them. They spun and spun, their faces lit with joy and autumn sun. And they laughed at the unexpected wonder of it all.

Soaring

Like a flock of birds
or falling leaves
children
twirl
swirl
their wonder-washed faces
shiny and bright
giddy with autumn joy

©Molly Hogan

Click on the links below to see how the other Inklings met this challenge:
Linda Mitchell
Margaret Simon
Heidi Mordhorst
MaryLee Hahn
Catherine Flynn

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Buffy Silverman at her blog.

by

PF: What has become ordinary

Recently Mary Lee Hahn shared a prompt from Padraig O’Tuama’s newsletter with our writing group. It invited the writer to consider something that had become ordinary. It asked a series of numbered questions and then directed you to put those questions in the correct order to create a pantuom. In an irony that I really am not appreciating, I chose to address the violence that is epidemic in our country and the world at large. Earlier this week, this was just another exercise in my writing notebook, written in my safe little bubble, where I tried to make sense of our country’s love affair with guns and violence and humanity’s inhumanity and how we can become numb to it all. I wasn’t planning on finishing it or on sharing it. But today I did just that.

Because yesterday it all got a bit more real. Because I live in Maine. And in Lewiston, Maine, less than 20 miles away from my home, 18 people were killed last night and 13 wounded at a bar and at a bowling alley. Where a youth league was bowling. And at this time there’s still a massive manhunt underway. And families are shattered. And my school was closed today (along with many others) while families in that community were ordered to shelter in place. And I wondered how parents were explaining this all to their children. To my students. And how would I answer the inevitable questions when we (and when will we?) return to school. And the killer lived in the town adjacent to mine. And I just can’t wrap my head around this. And late this afternoon I received a blaring emergency public service announcement extending the shelter in place order to my town. And now instead of looking for deer out the window, I’m looking for a killer. Which I know is ridiculous, but still I catch myself glancing out again and again. And soon (when?) I’ll return to my second grade classroom, where we’ll try to get things back to normal. In the same place we practice for just this type of scenario. And how is that normal? And I feel so heartbroken and so angry and so damned impotent.

Just Another Day in the Good Old USA

Day starts…the somber newscaster spills the latest body count
disaster unfolds across our planet
I barely notice grief’s newest location
a mass shooting here. there. war. war. war.

Disaster unfolds across our planet
we are monster makers
a mass shooting here.  there. war. war. war.
we breed hate and disaster

We are monster makers
The television pulses with gunshots and bloodshed
we breed hate and disaster
Some days I don’t even wince at the death toll

The television pulses with gunshots and bloodshed
I barely notice grief’s newest location
Some days I don’t even wince at the death toll
Day starts…the somber newscaster spills the latest body count

©Molly Hogan

Today, I have definitely noticed grief’s newest location.

My heart goes out to all who have lost loved ones to violence in Lewiston, Maine and throughout the world, and I hope with every ounce of my being that this local situation ends without further tragedy.

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Carol Labuzetta at her blog, The Apples in My Orchard.

by

PF: Poemtober

I’ve been dabbling in my notebook with Inktober’s prompts this month. Inktober was a challenge first issued to visual artists to create drawings in response to particular words each day in October. Poets, always primed to see a writing possibility, grabbed the words and created a “Poemtober” challenge instead. I’ve played along for quite a few years now. It’s low stakes fun 🙂 I do take some liberties with the words, altering their form if that works better for me. In case you’re interested, here are the prompt words:

Oct. 6–golden

As summer exits
spruced-up trees applaud
toss confetti
into drifts
of autumn
gold

©Molly Hogan

October 9–bounce

Small Tragedy

A cage of balls,
bright buoyant spheres,
captive behind metal bars.
So eager to bounce
and play!
Forlorn and
locked away…

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Catherine Flynn who’s sharing a review of Irene Latham’s recent release and a wonderful original poem. Click to visit her blog, Reading to the Core.

by

PF: Path

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Robert Frost

Mary Lee posed our intriguing Inklings challenge this month. She invited us to consider visual frameworks from this site and then to respond to one that resonated with us. My first draft from early in September was off-the-cuff, but heartfelt.

August arrives
the bell rings
We begin

©Molly Hogan

That felt a bit flippant though, and I wanted to dig in a bit more. In my own life I’ve recently been coming back again and again to the idea of paths. I’ve been noticing how often I take photos of paths–in the woods, along a river, on the beach, etc. Something about a path clearly intrigues me, so I searched the visual framework site and found the image below.

I’m not sure the image resonates with me so much here as the word does, so I kind of came at this all backward. Thinking of paths made me think of choices and reminded me of Frost’s poem, which I quoted above. His poem represents more of the crossroads and initial choice, but my thoughts and images are more centered around walking along a certain path that’s already been chosen. At any rate, here’s the end result of all these mental peregrinations. It feels unfinished and still needs a strong title (shocker!) but it’s what was there when I came up for air and realized it was Friday already.


I’m not so sure about Robert Frost
and his path less traveled
In truth
I feel a bit defensive
as I step along
the well-trod path before me
stopping to enjoy the view
taking some side trips and
navigating as best as I can

There’s much to be said
for blazing a new path
and I’d never be so bold
as to challenge Frost
but still…
Isn’t there value
in traveling a well-worn path?
In noticing
and nourishing
the wonder
nascent
within the known?

©Molly Hogan

If you’re interested in seeing what the other Inklings did with this challenge, visit the links below:

Heidi Mordhorst
Catherine Flynn
Margaret Simon
Linda Mitchell
Mary Lee Hahn

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Matt Forrest Esenwine at his blog, Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme. He’s sharing all sorts of great news, especially the release of his newest book. Make sure to check it out!