Saturday, January 5, 2008

The Ninth Month by Carol Lynn Pearson

The Ninth Month

Being a duplex
I have been happy, my dear,
To loan you half the house
Rent-free and furnished
As best I could.

You have been a good
Tenant, all in all
Quiet, yet comfortably there
Tapping friendly on the wall.

But I hear
You have outgrown the place
And are packing up to move.
Well, I will miss
The sweet proximity.
But we will keep in touch.
There are bonds, my dear,
That reach beyond a block
Or a mile or a hemisphere
Born of much love and labor.

I approve the move
And gladly turn from landlady
To neighbor.
--Carol Lynn Pearson


Somebody gave me a book of Carol Lynn Pearson's poems about motherhood at my baby shower. Here's one that seems appropriate for today. I really like a lot of her poems, but only in small doses. It's odd how any one poem may sound profound or touching, but several in a row tend to start sounding sappy and trite. A few years ago I tried to write a poem in her style. It turned out OK, and appropriate for the occasion, but it's really not MY style, if you know what I mean.

I went to the doctor yesterday. He says I'm dilated to 2cm, and that the baby's head is very far down. He thinks that the baby will come in the next few days. I find that I can't really think about anything else with much concentration, so today's post will be short.

I'm back to sorting Ensign pictures while listening to audiobooks to protect my sanity. I'm hoping to get all the large pictures done before the baby comes and distracts me from the project again. I've already finished tearing everything out of the magazines, trimming the torn side, and sorting by book (OT, NT, BOM, Church History, and Modern). Now I need to sort each book, put them in order, and separate the best version of each picture from the duplicates. I have about a full paper grocery bag worth of paper to go through. When I'm done with that, I'll still have about 3 inches of temple pictures to trim and sort, the same amount of old photos to decoupage with, and then a bag full of smaller pictures which will take a lot of work to trim and sort (since there may be more than one on a page, and it takes 4 cuts for each picture rather than just one). When we moved in here, I had about 10-12 grocery bags full of old magazines, so I've gotten rid of a LOT of scrap already.

4 comments:

  1. So are you going to scan all the images?

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  2. No. All the images are available online already, but these are pictures she uses to make books for kids to look at during church. She fills those $1 photo albums with 50 pictures of church- appropriate stuff and gives them
    away to friends with kids. Nice service.

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  3. No. That would be a waste of time. I haven't got a printer that would print them out in even a 10th of magazine quality, and the whole point is to have them on hand in case I need them for a primary lesson or project.

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  4. Looks like you've done a good job and she's big enough to move out of the duplex.
    I like Pearson's poetry one poem at a time. I'm surprised that it's still being passed around as it is so much a product of the 60's and 70's.
    Mom

    ReplyDelete