writing – Page 11 – Rae Spencer

Blue Moon Friday (Arachnophobia Alert!)

August 31, 2012Rae Spencer8 Comments

The blue moon suits my mood. I’m tired and sluggish, ready to crawl off into some quiet corner and lose myself in a half-edited manuscript, one burdened with rambling paragraphs and boring verbs. It needs dragonflies.

A couple of spiders wouldn’t hurt, either.

Because spiders matter. Even the ones that eat butterflies. (I believe this was a Cloudless Sulfur butterfly.)

I want my story to feel real, so it can’t be all flutter and gleam. It needs sticky strands of web, for tension. And rough surfaces, for texture.

Now, if only I could find a way to add cicadas. Maybe just one. A late summer cicada, laying its eggs under the bark of a pear tree…

A Leopard Frog and a Blogging Meme

August 27, 2012Rae Spencer4 Comments

I believe this is a Southern Leopard Frog. Frogs are rare in the yard, so I was excited to add this one to the archive. After getting these photos, I tried for a macro close-up. That was when the frog decided my paparazzi persistence was too intrusive. It quickly hopped away.

Actually, hopped is the wrong word. The first hop was a regular, modest jump with a lazy arc and about a foot or so of forward progress. The next jump was an impressive flat leap of at least three feet. Then the frog found another gear and zoomed off in grass-skimming lunges, each “hop” covering five or six feet. It disappeared under the deck in the blink of an eye, a beeline retreat that made me wonder if the deck is its home.

I haven’t seen the frog again, and I don’t expect to. Even so, I slowed my mowing pace yesterday, especially around the deck. Just in case.

I also made certain to mark the rabbit’s nest before starting the mower, because my mind tends to wander as I mow. Rather than mowing right up to the nest, I wanted to leave a wide margin. Hopefully, when the baby rabbits start exploring in a few weeks, the patch of grass around their nest will be tall enough to hide them from the sharp eyes of hungry hawks.

And now… a blogging meme!

Many thanks to Jackie at Swerving for Butterflies! Her posts remind me to look beyond myself (and my yard), to see the world’s tangled web of joy and grief, grace and suffering. She reminds me that I am not alone unless I choose to be. I’m honored that she thought of me, and that she enjoys my blog enough to encourage her readers to visit.

So, here are seven things about me:

1. I have registered for the Hampton Roads Writers 4th Annual Conference, which takes place September 20 – 22 in Virginia Beach, VA. I have not attended this conference before, and I’m looking forward to an inspiring weekend spent in the company of writers.

2. While my publication credits (so far) all involve poetry, I also write fiction. My first manuscript (a literary fantasy for young adults) has received positive attention from a few agents, but no offers for representation. Yet…

3. I recently submitted four photographs for publication in a literary journal. My first photography submission!

4. Submissions are the most difficult part of the writing process, for me.

5. I am working on a poetry chapbook, as well as a full-length poetry manuscript. Both will include photos.

6. My favorite piece of technology is my iPhone, and my favorite app is iBooks. I am learning to love eBooks.

7. When I grow up, I want to be a writer!

Finally, I’m supposed to pass along the “Seven things about me” meme, but I’m going to break tradition a bit. Many of the bloggers that I follow prefer not to receive award nominations and meme tags. So, rather than pursue the formal process of nominating and notifying, here are links to seven of my favorite recent posts. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Mystical Magical Mantis (The Iris and The Lily / August 24)

Stuck up a tree (WILDEN MARSH: Another Year Living with Nature at Hoo Wood and Wilden Marsh Nature Reserve / August 24)

Cicadas’ Concert (Lynn’s Creativity Post / August 23)

In the Mirror (Momentum of Joy / August 23)

Seeing Things (random acts of writing [+ art] / August 23)

As Above, So Below (Simone Lipscomb / August 21)

Little Toddler Loves (Boomie Bol / August 17)

Luminiferous Ether

July 31, 2012Rae Spencer2 Comments

Luminiferous Ether

They imagined a substance
Something made and measurable
That transmitted light
Bore the spectrum from shore
To shore, from planet to planet

Star to star they embraced
Aristotle’s ether, confounded
By the idea of waves
Crossing a sea of nothing
To a boundary that moves

Receding edge of confidence
Calculated into stability
Into constancy, a cosmological
Solution to infinity, dark shadow
Of mass ungrasped, cast across

Galactic coordinates and mapped
Against math, logic to simplify
The special fields of time and space
Elegant descriptions of the refuted
Ether, the vacuum tension condensed

Intelligible, static notation collapsing
Observation and paradox
Particulate light and magnetic
Matter graphed into balance
The observable universe illuminated
By luminous equations

More from Red Wing Park (and a Publication Note)

July 26, 2012Rae Spencer7 Comments

Red Wing Park is one of my favorite places to visit when I crave a short walk. Or when I’m in the mood for butterflies. Yesterday, I discovered several new attractions, including lotus blooms in an artificial pond and a skink basking on the pond’s rock border.

Butterflies were out in droves, even a few species I have never seen before. (Add these to the Snowberry Clearwing Moths in yesterday’s post…)

I caught several images of a large, unfamiliar swallowtail. I can’t tell if these are Pipevine Swallowtails or Spicebush Swallowtails. Maybe both species were present? Any ideas?

One individual had a mangled hindwing, with more than half of the wing amputated. In marked contrast to the other butterflies, this one struggled in flight. It flailed and fluttered along in short spurts, stopping to perch on flowers rather than hovering as it drank. It continued to feed and flirt with its companions, but it was decidedly less agile.

As far as wing injuries go, this was as bad as I’ve seen. I felt an uncomfortable surge of empathy, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the wound was painful. The encounter has turned me philosophical.

It’s just a butterfly. An insect. An ephemeral creature, at best. And yet, its fate affected me. I am reminded of that jaded cliche about chaos theory, the one where a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, causing an alteration in the weather pattern of another part of the world. What of this butterfly’s damaged wing? What currents of change might eddy in its wake?

Publication note: My poem “The Road” was published at vox poetica this week. It is now posted on the poemblog. Many thanks to editor Annmarie Lockhart!

June Bugs, Escaping a Spider (Arachnophobia Alert!), and a Publication Note

July 20, 2012Rae Spencer4 Comments

The June bug invasion continues.

This morning, one of the June bugs had a narrow escape after flying into an orb weaver web. (Look away!!) It was a failure of either bite or venom for the spider, a triumph of size and strength for the June bug.