for Chin (my poem)

She was my long-haired black beauty with a fluffy white chest and golden eyes. She cuddled with me in bed Saturday night and the next morning sighed that small, quiet sigh between living and dying and was gone. She had been born in my kitchen 14 years ago. Now having lost both Chin and Ollie, I am vowing to never love a cat again.

Okay, there is a workshop called Writing from Art on October 4 at the Albany Institute of History and Art, which includes a reception and reading on Nov. 7. I have a couple of flyers if you are interested. I imagine you can find it on the AIHA or HVWG websites. It sounds very creative. There is also a MEMOIR PROJECT reading series and related writers' course offerings going on at The Art Center that some of you might be interested in. Details available here.

Mimi's poem was a work of art, literally; called Parallelogram, it was designed in that fashion, with one word.........."jump"ing out. Very clever. Obie drew rabbit ears on it. Obie had an excellent poem called "Three Sketches on the Amateur Lepidopterist and his Wife"; I learned what strippers are (relative to butterflys). I have assigned Obie a word: cocoon. I now own dollop, Dan owns maudlin and Alan wanted pensive. If anyone else wants to claim a word, let me know.

Alan is promoting his Wednesday evenings at the Perfect Blend in Delmar. There is one next Wednesday. The suggestion was made that his poem last night about the dying Earth was a little dense and needed some air between lines . Liked the repetition of the first three lines as the last.

Dennis took a walk through history with a popular offering about heritage, predominantly Irish (I wanted the foreign phrases taken out, as usual - why were they in Spanish?) Mimi said it was "pleasurable to hear". Paul inspired a conversation about roofing which some of us found particularly touching because of the memories it evoked.

Another installment from Stacie was wonderful, about a Pakastani gentleman who works in her library. She does wonderful character sketches and we are enjoying her series.

I enhanced my education, learning what an eidolon is - a Greek word for ghost or spectre. Dan wrote about them in a dream-like manner. We all agreed that because he was inconsistent with his use of gerunds, it would be stronger if he changed them all to present tense.

That's it for this week, folks.