It Is Raining on the House of Anne Frank 

Linda Pastan 

It is raining on the house

of Anne Frank

and on the tourists

herded together under the shadow

of their umbrellas,

on the perfectly silent

tourists who would rather be

somewhere else

but who wait here on stairs

so steep they must rise

to some occasion

high in the empty loft,

in the quaint toilet,

in the skeleton

of a kitchen

or on the map-

each of its arrows

a barb of wire-

with all the dates, the expulsions,

the forbidding shapes

of continents.

And across Amsterdam it is raining

on the Van Gogh Museum

where we will hurry next

to see how someone else

could find the pure

center of light

within the dark circle

of his demons.

Writing prompt.

What lies over the hills?

Is that steam from a lake?

Will you have enough water to make it?

Just discovered Matthew. Blew me away. Check out these lyrics.

Empty Road

Matthew Good

Throw away your anger

Throw away the sheath

Charge and spike your heavy guns

Because that ain't no kind of belief

Dream of where it left you

When you were still too young

To know the difference between the faith in your heart

And the politics of looking dumb

It's all I know

This empty road

It keeps me looking for a place in your heart

It's all I know

Said brother are you weary?

Said sister are you safe?

Has this world got you thinking

That it ain't nothing but jailers cage?

Well child there ain't no worries

And child it ain't no thing

Because this world's too old to hate you

And too young to give up spring

It's all I know

This empty road

It keeps me looking for a place in your heart

It's all I know

Give it a listen:

https://youtu.be/-S30Npr2_sA

I got a kick out of these.

Five Famous Authors and Their Strange Writing Rituals
Stephanie Ostroff


Routines keep us focused when we start drifting off course. They snap us back to reality and remind us that yes, we can do this. The words will come to us. Turning to a familiar writing ritual can help us find balance. Most authors have that one thing they do, even subconsciously, that sets the tone for a solid writing session.

Sometimes it’s as simple as creating the right lighting in a room or hearing songs from a favorite album. It’s the difference between churning out pages of your best work and wasting an afternoon staring at a blinking cursor.

 At times, these rituals are taken to an extreme. Some of history’s most celebrated authors swore by unusual and bizarre rituals. It’s possible we owe many great pieces of literature to the fact that they were so meticulous in maintaining these strange habits.

In honor of the writers who embrace their quirky routines, the Writer’s Circle is highlighting a few of the oddest rituals practiced by famous authors:

1. James Joyce
Crayons, a white coat, and a comfy horizontal surface. These were Joyce’s essentials. The author of Ulysses found his words flowed better while lying flat on his stomach in bed. Since he was severely myopic, crayons enabled Joyce to see his own handwriting more clearly, and the white coat served as a reflector for light onto the pages.

2. Maya Angelou
Most writers can’t afford to check into a hotel when the urge to scribble hits, but for Angelou, it’s the key to great writing. In the wee hours of the morning she’ll book herself a room with a special request: all distracting wall décor must vanish. Armed with a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards, some legal pads, a thesaurus and the Bible, she’s spent hours crafting prose in this carefully constructed environment stripped of almost all inspiration.

3. Truman Capote
The creative genius behind In Cold Blood, Capote was a superstitious man. His writing rituals often involved avoiding particular things. Namely, hotel rooms with phone numbers including “13,” starting or ending a piece of work on a Friday, and tossing more than three cigarette butts in one ashtray.

4. Ernest Hemingway
In stark contrast to James Joyce, Hemingway was a firm believer in standing while writing.While working on The Old Man and The Sea,he followed a strict regimen: “done by noon, drunk by three.” This entailed waking up at dawn, writing furiously while standing at the typewriter, and eventually making his way to the local bar to get inebriated.

5. Joan Didion
Didion holds her books close to her heart—literally.  When she’s close to finishing one, she’ll sleep beside it in the same room. “Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next to it,” she said in a 1968 interview with The Paris Review.

A Parrot 

May Sarton 

My parrot is emerald green,

His tail feathers, marine.

He bears an orange half-moon

Over his ivory beak.

He must be believed to be seen,

This bird from a Rousseau wood.

When the urge is on him to speak,

He becomes too true to be good.

He uses his beak like a hook

To lift himself up with or break

Open a sunflower seed,

And his eye, in a bold white ring,

Has a lapidary look.

What a most astonishing bird,

Whose voice when he chooses to sing

Must be believed to be heard.

Since it is getting humid and finally feeling like summer. I welcome in the mid 90 degree days with a nice cold Sunday poem. I love the word blueblack!

Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden

 Sundays too my father got up early 

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, 

then with cracked hands that ached 

from labor in the weekday weather made 

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 

When the rooms were warm, he’d call, 

and slowly I would rise and dress, 

fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

Speaking indifferently to him, 

who had driven out the cold 

and polished my good shoes as well. 

What did I know, what did I know 

of love’s austere and lonely offices? 

"I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travelers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who have heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves."

Henry David Thoreau

What is Henry David really saying?

What do the hound, horse and dove represent?