The poems in this collection are about paying attention to ordinary things and the activities going on around me.  A barometer hanging on a wall, a bowl of lemons, an aphid on my arm.  Looking for the connections they sometimes evoke.  Usually they were prompted by a recognition or memory that I’d seen something in a new way.  Sometimes a line would come to me and I just went with it, not knowing where it would go.  Sometimes I found myself confronting loss (“Cranking the Wheel”), sometimes a sense of gratitude (“Gifts”).  Sometimes, what I would call paradox or mystery (“Spotting Turkeys,” “Crow Makes a Scene”).

Although most of the poems required polishing, they generally came as a single piece, or slice of life.  (Happy day!)  I didn’t add or take away much.  Sometimes I got stuck.  “Crow,” for instance was all about pronoun usage.  Should I refer to the crow as he or she?  Or should I address the whole experience as “You?”  I think I finally got it right and was pleased that editor Daniel Rice of Riverfeet Press selected it for the recent anthology, “Awake in the World.”

Lately, I’ve found myself more invested in the idea of shaping a poem.  I’ve let go of the idea of expecting them to arrive in any sort of finished form.  The process of polishing is a time for making associations, and possibly for finding some kind of personal meaning, as much as it’s an opportunity to experiment with form.  For me, the moments of “Spell of the Ordinary” were openings to go below the surface but also to appreciate that surface, to savor the penumbra around a pear, or the light off frost.