The Romans called today the “ides” of March – the middle of the month – and in Shakespeare’s play a fortune teller warns Julius Caesar: “beware the ides of March.” (He didn’t listen and was murdered on this day in 44BC.)
For me, March 15 is all about renewal. Every year about this time I feel the urge to plant something. Try something different. Start something new. Of course the ground is still frozen in Ottawa, and I’ve been shovelling the driveway this week, and nothing green will show up in my gardens for at least another month.
So I’ve been experimenting with new (to me) forms of poetry, and studying photo composition. Walking around the village of Richmond looking for new sites to photograph – when it’s pretty enough to do so. Cleaning out that basement closet to open up physical space, which always invites more open creative space too.
This month’s poem is in two parts: the first part is in the form of a “prose poem”, which looks a lot like a paragraph, but which strives to be more lyrical, more graceful in language and description. Part two is a story in free verse, where I imagine the answer to a mystery car that is only revealed in the early spring or in winter, when there are few or no leaves on trees to provide cover. I took the photo of it near our cottage in Muskoka.
Hope you get to feeling renewed and energized in March! Meanwhile, please pause and ponder this month’s “somewhere beautiful.” Where does this mystery take your imagination? I’d love to know! Here’s “Ridge Road.”
Lee Ann
Loved it. I grew up on another Ridge Road, and wonder now about its changes over the years..and where it will evolve and take my family. Thanks you, Lee Ann, for a lovely moment of peaceful prose.
Thank you, Karen! I am glad the poem brought you thoughts of your own Ridge Road. See you soon!