Welcome back to Member Monday. It’s a pleasure to feature author, storyteller, illustrator and poet Linda Boyden. Linda was a short story panelist at our January meeting and she’s sharing a poem with us today. An excerpt of this poem along with another one of Linda’s poems are being featured in the As Us Literary Journal this month. Congratulations, Linda!
Morning
By Linda Boyden
Morning when it comes
seeps in like the cookies
you left baking,
the batch you almost forgot
distracted by your work:
the music of the day,
its key, its melody.
When a whiff of vanilla
catches you, you rush to
the oven’s tiny window
and see them, golden circles
plumping in the heat,
like the sun in the morning sky.
You slide them out to cool,
and relax before your real work begins.
When Sun nudges away Night,
tired of its cold embrace,
you hear the message on the wind
and step out to face East,
the dew weeping between your toes.
You offer pinches of tobacco,
a smudge of sage and sing Sun home,
an honor song with words like
precious, tremble, cherish.
Words known only to you
and your mother
and your mother’s mother,
a thread of ordinary women
with the extraordinary gift
to lure Sun, coax Him to return,
and replenish the world.
Only you know the tune.
Only He hears the
power within your words.
Linda Boyden has spent most of her adult life leading children to literacy. From 1970-1997, she taught in primary grades, receiving her master’s in Gifted and Talented Education in 1992 from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. In 1997, Linda decided to change careers and abandoned full-time teaching for full-time writing. Her first picture book, “The Blue Roses,” debuted in 2002. It was the recipient of Lee and Low Books’ first New Voices Award, the 2003 Paterson Prize, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers’ Book of the Year, Children’s Literature, 2002-2003, and was included on the prestigious CCBC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center) 2003 Choices list of recommended titles. In 2007 she wrote and illustrated her second picture book, “Powwow’s Coming” which was published by the University of New Mexico Press. She has also written and illustrated “Giveaways, an ABC of Loanwords from the Americas” published also by the University of New Mexico Press in 2010. In 2011, Giveaways was the recipient of three Finalist Awards from the International Book Awards, Finalist in the 2012 New Mexico Book of the Year Award and was included in the California Reading’s Association’s 2012 California Collections list of recommended titles. In her writing for adults, she has had poems included in a number of anthologies. In 2006, she won the Adult First Place and Third Place awards at the Pleasanton Poetry Festival. Linda is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers. She enjoys doing author visits and storytelling at schools and libraries as well as presenting workshops at writing conferences around the country. Visit www.lindaboyden.com.A Note from the Webmaster: If you’re a Writers Forum member in good standing and would like to be featured on Member Monday, please send your submission to writersforumwebmaster@gmail.com. Submissions should be 75-750 words, appropriate for all ages and error free. Please include a short bio, a headshot and any related links. The author retains all rights and gives permission to Writers Forum to publish their submission on the website and/or in the newsletter. Thank you!
Writers Forum 