Tag: Carey Taylor

Sea-Fever

June 21, 2021

After a long year, it was time to leave the house, and I knew where I was headed. To those early places of sand and sea.

I watched a tug crossing the Coos Bay Bar. Sat on the same jetty I climbed on as a young girl. Found comfort in the smell of ocean. The wind blowing my hair. Remembered bits of a poem by John Masefield called Sea-Fever.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of
the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day and white clouds
flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the
the sea-gulls crying.

It has been a long 15 months—a sitting on the knife’s edge of coming and going.

But I am one of the lucky ones, who has been lucky enough to walk the beach again, grow a garden, give peas to the neighbors, bouquets of flowers to the bedroom, create one small patch in the middle of a changing city, where bees, hummingbirds, and scrub jays, can find a place to land.

Just imagine if moving forward we could all find one small thing that would show this stressed planet how much we love being here and how much we long to stay. What if we wore amulets of sea water around our necks to remind us what holiness is?

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Dodging The Rain

September 24, 2017

I was thrilled to be notified by email a week ago, that five of my poems were selected for publication in Galway, Ireland with a new Blogazine on WordPress called Dodging The Rain.  These poems will be appearing on October 1st, so I will post again once they are visible.

This creative blogazine was started by three graduates of the National University of Ireland-Galway’s Masters in Writing Programme, and one graduate of Uversity, the NUI recognized Creative Process Masters of the Arts.

It is a visually beautiful blogazine, that is welcoming to emerging writers and artists and I would highly recommend my poet and artist friends check it out.

I have never been to Galway, but I have looked across Galway Bay from the Flaggy Shore.   I miss you Ireland, and hope to return soon— in the meantime I am honored to be included in this wonderful new creative adventure.

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Carey Taylor Photography – West Ireland/County Clare

 

Yours in poetry,

Carey

 

SHARK REEF

January 12, 2017

I am honored to have my poem “Elegy” published in SHARK REEF – A Literary Magazine, Issue Twenty-Nine-Winter 2017.

SHARK REEF is a online journal that as described on their website “was launched in 2001 to give voice to emerging as well as established writers of the San Juan Islands of Washington State.”  It has now expanded that opportunity “to all serious writers committed to producing original writing of high quality – regardless of where they live.”

Check them out and consider submitting your work.

 

Yours in poetry

Carey

Clover – Summer 2016

July 12, 2016

I am honored to have two poems, Math That Doesn’t Add Up and Wash Day with Grandma, published in Clover – A Literary Rag – Summer 2016, Volume 11.   Clover is a literary journal published by The Independent Writers’ Studio in Bellingham, Washington.  Thanks so much to Editor Mary Elizabeth Gillilan and Co-Editor Norman L. Green for including my work.

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Below is me reading, Wash Day with Grandma.

 

Yours in poetry,

Carey

Two Drops of Warmth

September 17, 2015

The leaves on the trail I walk are dry—a jig-saw puzzle in shades of orange, red, brown and yellow.  The air smells sweet with heavy-breasted blackberries still clinging to their vines.  The light is softer. The is air cooler, and I finally begin to slow down after the hectic energy of summer.

My husband wrote a sonnet for me in the Fall the first year we were dating and somehow in the mess of moving to eight different homes it was misplaced.  This weekend he found it, while once again organizing a new garage.

As I read it again this morning, I am grateful.  Grateful we have weathered well the different seasons each marriage contains.  Grateful I chose him.  Grateful he chose me. Grateful we are entering this season of change together.  Grateful we have made a life filled with warmth.

Grateful we have poetry to express what so often gets unsaid.

Two Drops of Warmth

The silent, dusky streets I tread tonight
Were warm with evening sun a month ago.
The autumn sunset sheds it meager light,
And distant windows through bare branches glow.

Familiar smells of leaves and smoke return,
And crystallizing in the eastern sky
The Pleiades with icy brilliance burn
To punctuate the loss of years gone by.

And yet the wind seems warmer as I roam
Despite the chill of winter in the air.
The Earth seems less aloof; more like a home,
The lonely evenings easier to bear;

For in this world two drops of warmth abide,
And in your eyes the green of summer hides.

Charles Taylor

Yours in poetry,

Carey

John Daniel-A Prayer among Friends

September 3, 2015

This morning I read a poem in a collection I have been reading by John Daniel called “Of Earth”, and decided to share it on my blog.  Of course it wasn’t enough for me to just share the poem, because through the process of reading the poem, I began thinking about the writing process in general, and how reading poetry is my way of staying accountable to my writing self.

I first met John at a writing conference in Edmonds, Washington, and we chatted a bit while he was signing a book for me.  The book was a memoir called “Looking After” and it affected me so much, I sent him an email telling him so.  Months later he returned the email, appreciative of my reaching out and sharing with him how much his story moved me.

I had just begun writing in earnest when I sent him that email three years ago.  He was kind to respond, and ended his response with—You have just the right attitude toward creative writing:  that it’s a worthy path in and of itself, regardless of outward forms of success or failure.  

As a beginning writer, I am sure I was happy just to be writing, and did not care about measuring myself by publications or acceptances and since I had none, it was easy to say it did not matter.  Now that I have some however, I find his words even more meaningful, because everyday I must return to that pure state of writing, and fight hard not to measure my success on numbers of poems accepted or not.

Everyday I work hard to flush the voices (and there are many) of ego and distraction out of my head and find my way back to my pure place—where I write to understand my world and how I fit in it.

When I read words like these from John’s poem, we walk here in the light of this unlikely world that isn’t ours for long, I am gently reminded of the path I need to stay on and how small a window I truly have to write about this homeland of all we love.   

Here is John’s lovely poem “A Prayer among Friends.”

Yours in poetry,

Carey

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Let’s Be Still

January 23, 2015

I have spent the past month working through the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.   One of the most important practices I have started is taking time each morning to write what she calls “Morning Pages”.  It has been transformational.  It has been a life-line.  It has been cathartic.  It has helped me be still.

Each morning I fix my coffee, grab my favorite pen, sit in a chair that faces the bay and write with no agenda, no direction, no expectation.  What I get back is a clearer vision of my own life and how I want to move forward in it.

Through “Morning Pages” I have been sorting out my relationship with technology.  How it affects me, when it creates stress, when it is helpful, when it is harmful.  I am still figuring it out, but one thing I have realized is that it has seeped into every aspect of my life, every day of the week.

There was a time in my life when I worked 5 days a week, and on the weekends unplugged.  No emails from work, no Facebook notifications, no messages from LinkedIn.  I had conversations around the dinner table and nobody checked their phones.   I listened to music while I cleaned the house, washed clothes, and cooked.  I planned weekend trips to the beach and did not post every move I made on Facebook.  Instead I sat on a blanket in the sand and watched my children play at the water’s edge.  I didn’t talk on a phone.  I didn’t even read a book, I just sat and watched.   I was busier than I am today, but I felt less stressed.

So, I have decided to quit some social technology on the weekends.  No checking my email, no posting on WordPress or Facebook.  No responding until Monday.  I am striving to keep my weekends sacred.  To quit being Pavlov’s salivating technology dog.

By unplugging from technology that can wait,  I am going to use that time to talk and spend time with my family, go on trips, listen to music, take a walk, read, stare out the window.

Julia Cameron believes in the power of synchronicity.  She writes, We all have…those dark and romantic notions that call to our deepest selves.  When we answer that call, when we commit to it, we set in motion the principal that C. G. Jung dubbed synchronicity, loosely defined as a fortuitous intermeshing of events.

Yesterday I asked my children for some ideas of new music artists I could listen to.  My daughter responded this morning and suggested a band called The Head and the Heart, a band that happens to have roots right here in Seattle.  Below is the first song I listened to, called Let’s Be Still.  

It is a beautiful song.  It’s simple message is pure poetry.   If you find your world spinning a bit too fast, take a moment and find your way to just be still.  Who knows what magic you might find.

In poetry,

Carey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwaGzIPpbBI