Poetry Friday: Four Brown Toes

We are at the end of week one of the staycation, and it's been a lot of fun. Lots of good mom-kid time, and the imaginations have been running wild.

This morning, I looked over to see a storm bird and a flying fire lizard rising from the ground—pretty powerful imagery. Just the kind of thing my mind runs with (so don't be surprised to see something about a storm bird or a flying fire lizard in an upcoming Creativity Challenge).

So my kid-inspired poem for this Poetry Friday is...

Four Brown Toes
by Alison Pearce Stevens

What's that, you say? It's time for bed?
But I don't want to go.
Not past the chair or up the stair
I'd rather stay below.

I'll stay here on the sofa, no
my feet won't touch the floor.
There is no way, simply NO way
that you'll get me through that door.

So come and sit and read with me,
I've got my favorite book,
the one with knights and dragons,
come sit here, let's take a look.

I'd like to sit—
no, wait! Now, STOP!
You CAN'T sit over there!
He'll eat you up! I see him...
there's a MONSTER 'neath the chair!

Look there, a foot with four brown toes.
He waits for you to sit.
What ARE you doing?
DON'T REACH IN!
Oh. There's my baseball mitt.

All right, if you say so,
then I guess it's time for bed.
Just another silly monster
that was living in my head.


My blogging (and blog reading/commenting) time has been limited, since I've spent my precious computer time writing. But I'll make a special point to check out the Poetry Friday posts. You can find this week's round-up at Laura's blog Author Amok.

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Staycation writing schedule

We are now three days into our three-week staycation: all the family time of a vacation without actually going anywhere. I'm actually excited about it, but I was making great progress with my WIP last week, and I've been worried that I'll lose my momentum.

So I decided to implement a staycation writing schedule. This involves getting up at 5:30 am, drinking excessive amounts of coffee, and writing as much as I can until the kids wake up.

Sounds like a brilliant idea, right? This is how my mornings have been going so far...

Alarm: beep-beep  beep-beep  beep-beep

Me: *reaches out to find watch that functions as my alarm*

Alarm: beep-beep  beep-beep  beep-beep

Beloved Husband: *shoves head under pillow*

Me: *knocks watch off of nightstand*

Alarm: beep-beep  beep-beep  beep-beep

Me: *curses and fishes around next to bed for the watch*

BH: *from under pillow* Turn it OFF!

Alarm: *silent*

Me: *still searching for the watch* *grateful it stops beeping after one minute*

BH: *mumbles something unintelligible*

Me: I'll just lie here for another minute or two.

Snuggle Monkey: Wake up, Mama!

Me: *notices daylight* *looks at clock* *groans*


Okay, so the idea was good, but the execution needs a bit of work.

How do you find time to write?

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Perseverance

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and since Donna Hole is hosting a Milestones blogfest, it seemed appropriate to post it now.

* * *

One of the things I keep seeing from successful writers is the importance of being persistent. Of not giving up. Writing's not easy, at least not writing well, and it's the ability to keep writing, keep revising that separates the professionals from the amateurs.

To be honest, the idea scared me. How could I be a successful writer if I had to be persistent?

I've always given up on things easily, haven't I? I mean, I cycled through after-school activities like a kid in a theme park, staying with each ride just long enough to see how it felt. If it wasn't just right, I moved on.

Did I have it in me to be persistent? Would I give up if it wasn't easy?

I was afraid of my inability to persevere.

But last Monday, I wrote a post about my husband, and writing that post reminded me of the trials I went through to finish my post-graduate work. I realized that I can persevere when I want to.

After all, when you invest two years researching the hormonal control of reproduction of southern hemisphere birds (sounds dry, I know, but it's actually pretty interesting*), only to have an outbreak of avian malaria kill a number of your research subjects (and the ones that live aren't particularly interested in reproducing), it's pretty devastating.

Two years of my life gone. Nothing to show for it. Not one step closer to finishing my degree. It was like looking down a long tunnel and feeling myself get further and further away from the light at the end. It started to look like a pinprick.

To complicate matters, Beloved (soon-to-be) Husband got an offer for a post-doc. We were planning to get married and move together after finishing our degrees. But he had collected notebooks full of data and published at least two chapters of his dissertation, while I had nothing.

I had a long heart-to-heart with my advisor, and we decided that the only way I could salvage things was to use his 30-year record of behavior. I could sit in a little room, analyzing film and video, and do something completely different from what I wanted to do.

But it would let me finish my degree.

The next morning, I was at our field site, videotaping birds when an unfamiliar car drove up. There was only one access rode to our aviaries (yep, that's where the idea for my challenge offering came from), so they had to be there intentionally.

A good friend hopped out of the passenger side and headed for the observation blind where I was working. I climbed down the steps to see her face pinched with worry.

"Sunshine," she said. "Frank's dead." 

For a moment, the world ceased to spin. My advisor, who I had met with justthe day before, died of a heart attack only three hours after I left his office. He got in his car and his heart gave out.

So there I was, no advisor, only his collection of film and video to get me through a Ph.D. project (something that should take three years to complete), and I had one year in which to grieve, pull myself together, and make something out of nothing.

But I did.

I spent god-knows how many hours sitting in that room analyzing video. It got old, it was tiresome, but something in me drove me to finish it.

At my dissertation defense, I expected to pass--after all, how can you fail the student who's had absolutely everything go wrong? But I also expected my committee to feel that I had scraped by.

Imagine my surprise when they were excited about my findings, when they thought that what I had done contributed valuable information to the field.

It made my success so much more meaningful.

* In case you are interested: In the northern hemisphere, most birds migrate for the winter. To make long-distance flight easier, their gonads (testes and ovaries) shrink to almost nothing. In spring, when the days start getting longer, they increase in size in preparation for breeding.

In the southern hemisphere, animals may be nomadic, but they generally don't migrate. No need to, since it doesn't get cold enough to lock up food and water under a blanket of snow. Birds in the southern hemisphere can breed year-round, and I was interested in the hormonal control of their breeding cycles and parental care (some fathers care for the young, others don't, and I wanted to know if hormones influenced the difference).

What helps you to persevere?

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Challenge results - The Aviaries

Okay... no poetry for me this Friday. My adventure muse was in for this Challenge. But see below for the Poetry Friday link and other creative offerings based on this image.

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I crept through the trees, stepping carefully to keep the noise down. Surprise was the only thing working in my favor.

I peered around a tree. He was there: still as a stone, propped against a tree, legs splayed out in front of him. His camouflage hid his features, though it didn’t hide him in the forest.

The Hunter faced the path into the woods. This was his third day of watching the entrance to the Aviaries.

The Aviaries housed the kingdom’s greatest treasures—rare birds found nowhere else. The newest hybrid was the glittering ruby of its mother with its father’s gossamer feathers and a great train of a tail that flashed purple and gold in the sunlight. The crown jewel of any collection.

The King planned to present it at his daughter’s wedding; an auspicious gift with which to begin her new life and a symbol of trust in the peace treaty.

But the Hunter clearly had other plans. He had been watching the path for the last three days. I suspected that he was waiting for an opportunity to steal the bird.

I couldn’t let that happen. My life was at stake—it was my job to keep the birds safe. The King tolerated no mistakes.

I knew today was the day he would make his move. The wedding was tomorrow. Today was the Hunter’s only chance.

I settled down behind the Hunter, ready to track him when he moved.

I didn’t have to wait long. As the sun got low in the sky, I saw the scientists and caretakers leaving for the day. The Hunter twitched.

As the voices faded away and the sky grew pink, the Hunter got to his feet. He stretched and looked around him. I watched. My camouflage was perfect—unless I moved, he couldn’t possibly see me. He glanced in my direction but continued to scan and turned away to retrieve a cage hidden in the brush. I stood and followed.

The Hunter moved quietly through the trees, but I could still hear his footsteps and his labored breath as he carried the cage toward the Aviaries.

At the gate, he set the cage on the ground and looked around again. He pulled a small set of tools from a pocket and began to pick the lock.

I cursed myself for letting the King insist on such a paltry lock, but he had demanded free access to the collection, and he would have nothing to do with high-tech security measures.

Within moments, the gate swung open. The Hunter picked up the cage and stepped inside.

Looming before the Hunter was a large, free-standing structure. Inside, I caught flashes of the gem-colored birds that lived there. They were flitting about in the fiery sunset, light reflecting off of their feathers. The Hunter stopped to stare, and I slipped into the Aviaries behind him.

I was weaponless—one of the King’s rules about working in the Aviaries. He didn’t want someone accidentally killing one of the birds. The Hunter, on the other hand, carried a shotgun, so I had to choose my position with care.

I darted behind an observation post—one from which the researchers watched the birds. The hybrid was kept in its own glass-walled enclosure about fifty feet away. I stood near a path of small stones. Thinking they might be of use, I scooped up a handful and shoved them in my pocket.

The Hunter pulled his eyes away from the birds. With a glance to either side, he headed for the glass cage. He set the cage on the ground and inspected the hybrid’s enclosure before he started to pick the lock.

As he knelt before the cage door, I climbed the ladder into the observation tower. From here a catwalk ran to a second flight cage, on the far side of the glass one. The catwalk ran directly over the top of the smaller enclosure.

I crawled along the catwalk, trying to keep a low profile. The setting sun threw an immense shadow on the wall of the Aviaries. I could see my shadow moving and hoped the Hunter didn’t turn around.

When I reached the glass cage, I swung my feet over the side of the catwalk. I lowered myself until my feet hung mere inches from the metal roof. I couldn’t get any closer without dropping.

I heard the click of the lock and a satisfied grunt from the Hunter. The cage door was open.

I dropped to the roof with a clang.

“What the—?” the Hunter said below me.

I threw some stones onto the path behind him, and he whirled around, pulling his shotgun to his shoulder.

He spotted my shadow on the orange-lit wall. He dropped to one knee and fired. But my shadow disappeared as the shot created clouds of dust in the wall.

I threw myself onto his back and wrestled for the shotgun. I was actually more worried that he would shoot a bird than me. Peace in the kingdoms depended on a successful wedding and gift-giving ceremony tomorrow. Dead birds tonight would derail the King’s peace negotiations.

The Hunter rolled to his side, trapping my left arm. I grunted at the impact and a sharp pain shot through my arm, but I held on. I slammed my right foot against his hand. The gun was now pointing at the distant flight cage. Nervous birds were flying in circles, and I knew one would be hit if the gun fired again.

I kicked a second time and heard the gratifying crunch of bone. The Hunter howled, and the birds erupted in alarm calls. The noise was deafening.

I yanked the gun from his injured hand and swung it out of his reach. Then I shoved the end of the barrel against his side. He arched away from it and stopped moving.

“You’re done,” I growled in his ear. I yanked my bruised arm from under his body and kept the gun trained on him as I backed away. Cradling his broken hand, he shifted to a sitting position and gazed past me.

“No,” he said. A slight smile played on his lips despite his grimace of pain. “You are.”

I turned to see that the door to the glass cage stood open, and I caught a glimpse of red as the hybrid flew away.

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 Post a link to your challenge results in the comments below. And comments on my challenge offering are also welcome.

If you're looking for poetry, check out the Poetry Friday Roundup at Live, Love, Explore!