Click here to read Wendy Brown-Baez’s thoughts on how poetry groups provide inspiration and support during difficult times.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n I met Christine Mounts at the Mid-town Writers, a group for generating writing in short bursts that has been meeting on Saturday mornings since 2007. Along with Diane Pecoraro, also a regular at Mid-town Writers, our friendship blossomed as we got together for meals, attended live readings, and showed up at open mics such as Barbaric Yawp, Bird\u2019s Nest, and Poets & Pints, and events hosted by the League of Minnesota Poets. <\/p> Christine Mounts has a quirky droll sense of humor and a gigantic heart. She volunteered to edit and publish a collection of blog posts written by a mutual friend of ours as he was dying from cancer. Popcorn From the Void <\/em>turned out to be a more extensive project than she had imagined, but she persisted. The book is now available on Amazon. She herself has cared for family and friends, hands on physical and emotional support. Her poems are observations from that wisdom of how the fragile and the ridiculous and the enduring are all part of daily life. She also has the unusual gift of being a left-brain problem-solver and right-brain creative.<\/p> In Christine\u2019s poem, we begin with the brilliance of sunset and a child\u2019s moment of awareness that life is full of possibility. The poem then reflects on adult reality: we need to finish school, find work, provide for ourselves. But eventually the poet returns to the yard to watch the eclipse, and something shifts. A change in perception, a shift in how she looks at her life and a suggestion of a new awareness that gives her a way to move forward. <\/p>–Wendy Brown-Baez<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It is the end of a spring day, I have no idea where my parents are, after all the years of travel beyond the world of my youth. I fitted the harness and plow, I had no time for dreams. Our collective definition of time, I will lay out in the night once more, Our whole unlikely existence, ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christine Mounts <\/strong>writes, travels, and cycles as much as she can manage while still working. \u201cI\u2019ve been told I am a funny gal with a big personality,\u201d she says.\u00a0She is the author of\u00a0Book of Snark: Wit & Wisdom for the Angry Professional Woman on the Bus,<\/em>\u00a0published October 2020. She is the editor of the post-humous memoir\u00a0Popcorn from the Void: Observations, Manic Kvetching, and the Raw Truth of Leukemia,\u00a0<\/em>from the blog of Todd Park, published in July 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n 1st grade report card note: \u201cToo much daydreaming\u201d<\/strong>
Christine Mounts<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
end of the school year.
Chrysanthemum orange sun
sinks into the western horizon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
why I am standing near the large oaks,
at school, looking out past the dandelion fields.
But what I understand in this moment, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
blessed by my nomadic father,
–is possibility.
Out there was freedom, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At that age, I was without an answer just yet.
How I was going to get to this other place,
was a journey far less starry than my eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
education and hard work,
so busy trying to break free
from my circumstance, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sun receding to the Pacific,
never in motion.
I was stuck to a rotating planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
always pushing toward tomorrow,
away from the light that called me
out to the yard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
away from city lights and alarm clocks,
to await the eclipse of the moon,
Earth\u2019s red smoke shadow,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I will see what was always true.
My life wherever I am,
is as happy as I say it is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n