As I write this, it is raining outside. Ernesto is working his way
up the coast – and has began dropping rain here. The winds are
still gentle – although I hear they will be quite hard tonight and
tomorrow. A part of me enjoys these violent storms (as long as the
winds stay below hurricane force). I'm not sure whether it is the
glory of the storm itself or the feeling of triumph at having
shelter from the storm. There is something so nice about snuggling
under a warm comforter with a book of poetry and a mug of hot
chocolate, while the wind howls outside and the rain pounds against
the panes. But a part of me also dreads them, for I remember all
the people who will be flooded or who are homeless, and who do not
have the luxury of hot chocolate and warm comforters and books of
poetry.

The last couple of months have seen other sorts of hurricanes
blowing through my life. And those hurricanes have prevented my
paying as much attention to poetry submissions as I would have
liked. So if you haven't heard from me about your poem, I probably
just haven't seen it yet. Please be patient with me.

There are two major hurricanes in my life right now. The first
involves my older sister, Ann. She has been diagnosed with advanced
pancreatic cancer, and probably has a very limited time to live. I
spent some time in Michigan with her. She is in good spirits. She
is very very thin. This lady has always been thin, but, right now,
she is almost skeletal.

The other one involves my grandbabies. Many of you know that Mario
and I adopted a son a number of years ago who had been abused as a
small child – and that, as a teenager, he got another teenager
pregnant. Against our wishes, they married. From their union, we
have a three and a two year old grandson. During the last two
months, the two separated (under very unpleasant circumstances that
I will not discuss here) and Mario and I found ourselves with two
traumatized toddlers. I have successfully established a regular
routine with them now, but that took quite a bit of work. Taking
care of them is taking up a lot of my time.

On the plus side, they are great kids. The three year old, Shahid,
is the kid I've mention who erased all the icons on my computer at
15 months, and removed a screen from a window at 23 months. It is
still his goal in life to take the world apart. The two year old,
Josiah, is a very verbal kid. He is not yet two and a half, but he
talks in six and eight word sentences, uses adjectives and adverbs,
and even knows many less common words, like "dusk". I realized
almost right away that I had better be very careful how I talk
around Josiah. He remembers almost every word and phrase he hears.

Anyway, the September Autumn Leaves is in cyberspace right now,
waiting for you to read it. You can find it at
http://www.sondra.net/al/

And I am open for submissions for the November issue of Autumn
Leaves.

sondra
http://www.sondra.net/al/