Our Summer featured poet is Sheila Tingley Moore. She is an excellent poet whose writing entrigues a fond rememberance of life filled with laughter. A true friend that I am happy to share with you. You will enjoy her bio and especially, her poem, Fighting Dragons.
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Fighting Dragons
It's January and six in the morning as the
newsboy's headlights glide down deserted streets
and past houses shrouded in silence; they accordion
across dark windows of fleeting dreams, unsettling
the night, and I awaken. Only the old clocks breaks
the quiet, indifferently dropping lost seconds
over the early-morning edges of sleep.
The phone rings, sudden as a slammed door,
and across long miles, I hear Mom, the black bands
of fear constricting her voice as she relates how Dad
fell yesterday, cutting his head and breaking his glasses,
and how he fell again this morning before dawn.
Like a fighter down for the count but refusing
to give up, he has risen with a neighbor's help
and his own wry sense of humor and wants
to know the latest about his
greatly-loved great-granddaughter.
I tell him she recently announced
with all her two-year-old sincerity
that a dragon had bitten her elbow.
We both embrace her words
and laugh, knowing how little
she really knows about dragons,
and how much we are beginning to learn.
Why do you enjoy writing poetry?
I have a need to write, for it helps me understand myself and
others. Also, our language is so rich and
beautiful, and I love the challenge of constructing ideas through
imagery.
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Sheila's Bio
Sheila Tingley Moore, who has both a BA and MA degree, has
published six books and chapbooks of poems and has been published in numerous
anthologies throughout the United States.
She has won the Kitchener Foundation’s Texas Senior Poet Laureate Award
twice. She is a member of the San Antonio
Poetry Society where she has been past poet laureate for three years, poet
emeritus one year, and eight-year winner of the Excellence in Poetry
Award. She is also vice president of the
San Antonio Poetry Fair, past president of the Alamo Area Poets of Texas, and a
member of the Poetry Society of Texas and the National Federation of State
Poetry Societies, winning numerous awards in both. Her poems probe the nuances of life: the mental anguish, physical suffering, laughter,
and the interaction between man and his environment.
After nearly thirty years in the teaching profession, she
has retired to spend her time writing, traveling, dancing with her husband of
forty-plus years, and best of all, loving, and laughing with her five
grandchildren.
Thank you, Sheila, for participating in Toni's Poetry Colleagues!
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Fighting Dragons
It’s January and
six in the morning as the
newsboy’s
headlights glide down deserted streets
and past houses
shrouded in silence; they accordion
across dark
windows of fleeting dreams, unsettling
the night, and I
awaken. Only the old clock breaks
the quiet,
indifferently dropping lost seconds
over the
early-morning edges of sleep.
The phone rings,
sudden as a slammed door,
and across long
miles, I hear Mom, the black bands
of fear
constricting her voice as she relates how Dad
fell yesterday,
cutting his head and breaking his glasses,
and how he fell
again this morning before dawn.
Like a fighter
down for the count but refusing
to give up, he
has risen with a neighbor’s help
and his own wry
sense of humor and wants
to know the
latest about his
greatly-loved
great-granddaughter.
I tell him she
recently announced
with all her
two-year-old sincerity
that a dragon
had bitten her elbow.
We both embrace
her words
and laugh,
knowing how little
she really knows
about dragons,
and how much we
are beginning to learn.
