Does every person who walks--and has walked--the Earth fall in love with May? Perhaps it's not the month, but a time or another who exudes the feeling given by a pinch of a honeysuckle after it's pinched from the vine. It give the illusion of people dancing in bare feet without a care if the soles turn black. excerpt from "When We Loved May" by R.A. Bridges
As my husband, John, has recovered and defeated colon cancer, I’ve started to decompress the challenges, of not two, but many years. I’ve been a writer, author, and poet for more than thirty years, and it is a dream that never dampened. Two weeks ago, I began to reflect on my life as a writer, which I plan to finish in a series.
I also discovered a shift in my writing, both in poetry and prose. Where autumn and winter used to reflect the darker parts of my writing in metaphor, it switched places with May. That month, which I used to treasure, became the darker parts of my art.
Our Brightest Season
An individual with a mechanical mind might chuckle at a person who matches emotions with a season.
For poets and authors, it’s natural to combine anger, grief, happiness, joy, and deeper feelings without words with a specific time of year.
Once upon a time, April and May were my favorite months, and descriptions of the different flowers blooming filled up pages. After more than thirty years of writing, I’ve written bad poetry, good poetry, and some excellent pieces that have retained their luster.
The transition from spring being the beautiful and enlightening part of the year in my writing began to change before Corrie died because I’d experienced some tough end of the year challenges as a teacher at old schools. In 2015, I wrote this informal, but poem with love for Corrie as a baby.
When I first wrote the poems from May to October 2020 for When We Danced in the Rain, several poems began to reflect a joy found in autumn. As I told a co-worker, I don’t know if I’ll ever feel complete happiness again, but I do find beauty, joy, and contentment in certain strands of life.
I started thinking about how fall, and even winter at times, began to replace May, specifically, in my pieces as a brighter place with more light and life. It is ironic, since growth and plants are associated with the spring.
But I had to look at what came after we lost Corrie.
I found brighter colors on the crowns of trees. I found light in the cemetery the moment the sun went down, and all of Corrie’s solar lights came on last year for her Christmas decorations. I discovered peace in viewing Corrie’s resting place from two streets away lit up below the bell tower.
I found the memories of us hiking around the farm, and on the Blue Ridge Parkway full of light and life. The memory of the orange ladybugs on our road trip in October 2019 still makes me smile as I thought of we tried to get all of those orange lady bugs out of the car as they seemed to attach to us.
I felt a sense of light, joy, and contentment as I drove home from school last Wednesday or Thursday. I’m blessed to drive through a lot of country after years of being in traffic. I felt Corrie in every gold, bright orange, and russet leaf. I felt her as the sun reflected on my arm. I wrote “Orange, Gold and Mahogany” for her.
The sense that autumn brings light to my writing doesn’t dismiss the sadness and darker parts. There is darkness and light in everything I write, whether it includes images of the roadside, winter, spring, summer or autumn.
Know the roads to get to home and work. Recall the back path, gravel roads behind a farm in a valley outside of Asheville in autumn as light shines still at half past five, and the shades of orange darken on the undersides of leaves revealing hues of sunset on the edge before it slips below the horizon. Know your roads, or you end up wondering back where only your mind, but your body may never go. ~ an excerpt from "Know Your Roads" in the Road Sides, a Poetry Collection by R.A. Bridges
When I write descriptions or metaphors with autumn, I believe it is now a reflection of the fact I find light in the world. With the light, there exists a longing. While I write about the joy and light, the speaker also yearns for what she cannot have.
Six minus one is five, and at sixteen, we seldom realize destinies are nothing more than beautiful orange and yellow leaves cleaving to branches in late October before they fall in a river bank. Sweet sixteen, like fairy tales with happy endings, are inventions of commercials and ads to buy disco balls and dresses. excerpt from "Sweet Sixteen" in the When We Danced in the Rain Poetry Collection by R.A. Bridges
The excerpt above, “Sweet Sixteen,” was either the last or second to last poem I chose to put in When We Danced in the Rain, a poetry collection about Corrie. I wrote it in October 2020, and decided at that time I had enough poems to complete the themes of the collection. “Sweet Sixteen” came under the theme of numbers.
I called parts of my poetry collections episodes rather than chapters. I called the entire section “Numbers and Days Lost” around the time I would no longer have with my daughter, the weeks and months after her death, and how quickly someone close to you can dismiss you when you grieve:
Please tell me how to hold my head up again, and keep a bad day from turning into a bad week. I want to hear the sermon of how to raise my head from my child's death. excerpt from "Easy As" in When We Danced in the Rain. These poems came from the same section as "Six," my second favorite poem in the collection and one of the first to be published in a literary magazine. In total, three poems from the collection have been published.
It was two years after I wrote the collection, When We Danced in the Rain, when I realized the switch in how wrote about the seasons. I found so much life and light, yes, touched with some sadness; but it allowed some peace to flow into my mind.
One cannot look at all the golden leaves, and not think of Corrie. I consider she’s dancing with a crown of golden and orange leaves in her hair, if anyone has caught her to brush it (that is).
With those thoughts in mind, I leave you with a verse from an unfinished poem about Corrie called “Meet Me at the Sunrise.”
I had you at the sunrise, but you were gone by the sunset. I could think of a wedding in the country with lights attached to posts, and a view of the mountain. Something simple without a ceremony and dance that is the cost of of a life insurance policy. I see you jumping and dancing as you say, " Mommy, will my friends come today?" You grab my hand and say, "Dance with me" because you were the only one to get me to dance.
All words, excerpts and photos by R.A. Bridges
All writing and poems copyrighted by R.T. Dickinson 2020-2022.
Corrie's Season 