February has been a busy month - complete with a new regime of tennis lessons and practice matches, a poetry workshop, and a focused effort to walk more miles a day to get ready for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's AFSP Out of the Darkness 16-18 mile walk in May. The poetry workshop ended last week, and right now I like being off the hook to come up with another new poem. However, I very much liked the small group there were six of us including the instructor and the friendly but pointed critiques we gave each other on our work. To start the weekly three-hour workshop off, the instructor would give us a warm-up prompt that required us to write something poetry or prose in real-time and then share it with the group. One week she asked us to write down an unusual gift we've given or received. I wrote down: TisBest gift certificates I give to my nieces and nephews that enable them to make a donation to a charity of their choice. She also asked us to … [Read more...]