During my morning walk with the dog today, I took notice of a viburnum shrub exploding in full flower.

While I’ve no doubt passed this shrub for at least a few days without paying much attention to it, for some reason the white clusters struck a chord with me today. Unbidden, a   memory arrived  from childhood: these clusters hung over the fence once in the back yard of the house I grew up in Tallahassee. With that visual memory came a flood of others, of not just the flowers, but my childhood home and the life I lived in it so many decades ago.

Having lost my mother just over a year ago, and my father five years before that, I’m living in the world in a different way today. I’m so much more aware of the ways memories work on and in our psyches, and how day-to-day routines can be hijacked by memories triggered unexpectedly by things that may be ubiquitous in our environment. I have to say that most time, when this happens to me, the memories — at least when they involve my parents — are comforting, in that they are reminders that our lost beloveds remain with us as long as we can remember them. Today, I’m thinking of how these native shrubs are soothing, not just because of their tiny bell-like flowers, hugging each other close, as loved ones do, but through their sweet fragrance and how the little blooms feel when I run my fingers over them. Beauty and memory speak to us through all the senses…much like good poetry does.

I haven’t written many new poems this year, but about a month ago, I received valuable feedback from an editor I’d asked to help me tweak my new full-length manuscript. Her suggestions were wonderful, and I’m now circulating the manuscript again, and feeling much better about it. I’m really hopeful that it will find a home, but I also know the odds for publication are tough. All I can do is keep working, keep sending and look toward the next season of my work, whatever that may look like. Spring is almost here!