Happy (and Hoppy) Easter, New Poems Up at The Normal School, and a Week of Being Sick (During Beautiful Weather)

Apple Tree Blooming in my Own Yard

Happy (and Hoppy) Easter

Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates. I was too sick to do much this year, but I did revisit some classics, including the children’s book (written in 1939, and re-released in 1967) The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, which besides having adorable illustrations, contains surprisingly subversive morals on racism, classism, and feminism—I mean, it would be fair to say it’s an anti-Nazi Easter Bunny book. It surprises me what I look back on in children’s lit and see what affected my own values—in this case, learning that being a poor, brown female bunny from the country (being told to “look after her children” and “leave Easter business to the men” by the tall wealthy white male bunnies—sound familiar?) can achieve her dreams no matter what the obstacles.

sick, but still dressed for Easter, with neighboring cherry tree

Anyway, I strongly recommend you buy it for all your children. Meanwhile, I read the account of the Easter story in all four gospels and again noted that the first people to discover Jesus had risen were women, the first person to speak to the risen Jesus was Mary Magdalene, and the male disciples were too scared to check on his grave and refused to believe the women who saw the angels and even saw Jesus himself. So, ha ha ha, not much has changed, right? The church fails to point this out too often I notice. Ah well. You’ll have to excuse this country bunny.

New Poems up at the Normal School

I am very happy to share that I had two poems up at The Normal School this week, “Aurora, or When Firefoxes Spark the Sky” and “Pyrokinetic.” Below is a sneak peek at one of them. If you go to the link, like and share as The Normal School and I could use the online attention.

A Week of Being Sick During Beautiful Weather

First lilacs blooming in Spring.

This week I was supposed to run a book club for poetry month, record a poetry tutorial for Writer’s Digest, and a bunch of other things, but instead, I was sick in bed with a combination sinus/stomach flu bug, which I strongly do not recommend (if I look like I lost weight in the pic above, I did—from three solid days of being constantly sick and another day of liquid diet. Super fun! Like Ozempic without the cost Lol!) And every day I was in bed, outside the sky was blue, the flowers all jumped into bloom at once (cherry blossoms, apple blossoms, and lilacs generally do NOT bloom at the same time in our area, but the late spring really messed up the bloom cycle). So that was a bummer. It was not covid or the official flu (according to tests) but there are a lot of bugs going around, the doctor said, so just be aware.

Glenn and I with cherry tree

Meanwhile, I slept a lot, drank a lot of Pedialyte™ and caught up on a lot of good and bad television. I am hoping to get through my birthday (around the corner) with better health so I can get out and around Seattle to enjoy some blue skies and flowers.

It is almost the end of National Poetry Month, so I hope you have been reading and writing and enjoying poetry this month, too. If you want to cheer up a poet, just buy one of their books or write them a note about how much you enjoyed their work or share their work on social media or leave them an Amazon review or something. You never know when someone needs a little boost to keep them going.