On page 28 in my poetry chapbook, Now Might as Well Be Then

Blue Moon Every Twenty Years
for Barry

Blue Moon was not my favorite song
until the night you sang to me,
the night before our wedding day in 1964.

You were a student of the forties music,
played it with your band when you were
just a high school lad in nineteen fifty-five.

On the Love Boat with orchestra in eighty-four,
microphone in hand, you owned the stage,
like you were born to be the rage. Like Frank,
you melted hearts when you sang for me.

Aboard a river boat in Ottawa, in two thousand six,
silver-haired peers applauded when you sang
Blue Moon in October, on my birthday.

Suddenly, I was twenty-four once more,
adoring you and longing to spend my life

with you. Years flew past on wings so soft

I hardly noticed.

As you returned to sit beside me, smiling at your new
found fame in Canada, you whispered a promise.
I’ll sing your song for you again in twenty years.

Now Might As Well Be Then

Poetry has been running through my mind the past two days. I've rewritten several and have some lines rattling around in my head that will find their way to paper soon. Sometimes I go back and read poetry I wrote years ago and I wonder if that is really my poem or did I copy that from a book of poems. It seems strange to me that I'd write about a subject that touched me deeply enough to write a poem, but today I'm not aware that I wrote it.
I think it is because when we write poetry our minds go into a state of thinking, deeper than we normally think, and for a short time we are delving deeply into part of our mine that we are unaware of in our daily life.
But that might not be true of Nancy Simpson, Kathryn Byer and others whose lives are poetry. I'll bet Kay Byer dreams in poetic phrases. I know Nancy sees every thing around her as a poem.
I can't explain how I write a poem or why. But when a line or a thought comes to me, I know I must use it or write about it. I mull it around for days until I know how I will use it. Sometimes it is a poem and other times a line will lead me to a story or essay. Oddly enough, after completing the piece, the line might have been cut out of the poem or the idea I began with leads me to something else which I decided is more in keeping with what I want to say.
I have the last poem for my chapbook. I finally stopped re-writing it and I will mail it out this week. Ah, that is such a relief to have that last poem. Now I feel it is complete. The chapbook title is Now Might As Well Be Then, and my last poem, Blue Moon Every Twenty Years, is perfect for the ending. If only the publishers agree.