Ute Carbone's Blog, page 9

#NationalPoetryMonth: The Bridge of Sighs

In honor of #Poetry month, I'm featuring some of my poems at the garret. I fell in love with the story behind the name of this beautiful bridge in Venice. Built it the 17th century, it once served as a link between the doge's palace and the prison. Legend has it that the bridge holds the sighs of the condemned as they catch their last view of Venice before being locked away. This romantic notion led me the poem.

The Bridge of Sighs
​You crossed it with your heart
​laid out in your open palm.
At the top of the arch,
you let your heart flutter
​into the shallow water
​weeping far below your feet.

​Your heart became a boat of paper
floating away, quietly
​passing the magnificent palazzo gardens,
​the flower vendors with their hands
​covered in roses,  the church towers
​pealing their soulful songs to flocks of pigeons.

You will never know where your heart landed.
​Was it caught up by another pair of sighing hands
​who laid it to rest among fragrant lilies?
Or did the water eat slowly at its edges
until, soggy from this wet hunger,
your heart sank
​under the gondolier's rhythmic paddle?

The Whole Journey in One Book

​The Sweet Lenora follows Anton and Lenora Boudreaux as they go from love at first sight to becoming the roots of a legacy.  There is of course, lots of adventure and many trails and tribulations along the way.
​The series was originally sold (and is still available) as three novellas and a full length novel. Readers, though, told me they'd like to see all the books together in one volume. My publisher listened--and now you can get exactly that. All the stories are available in e-book form for the low prince of $3.99.

​You can buy the book at:
​Amazon
Barnes and Noble
​Kobo
And most other places where e-books are sold.

​

#NationalPuppyDay

What better way to relax than with puppies in a basket? These guys are too cute.

#WorldWaterDay

​In 1998, the United Nations designated March 22 to be World Water Day, a day we examine this vital resource and it's impact on people around the world.
​Clean water is something those of us here in the United States and in other first world countries often take for granted. It isn't always so. Within the past few years, children were poisoned in Flint, Michigan because of lead contaminated water and we've had Native Americans in Standing Rock, North Dakota, protesting against oil pipelines that threaten their supply of clean water.
​The problem is even more acute in third world countries, were clean water is far from being a given. The UN estimates that 1.8 billion people use drinking water from contaminated sources, putting them at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio. Unsafe water and poor sanitation cause around 842,000 deaths every year.
​Several years ago, the UN, in co-operation with countries around the world, pledged to make sure that everyone has access to clean water by 2030.
​This year's theme, Why Waste Water?, is about reducing and reusing wastewater.
​Like me, you probably learned about the water cycle sometime in elementary school. It is a simple concept: Rain falls and then evaporates back up into clouds. The clouds get heavy with rain. Rain falls.
​It is, of course, not quite that simple. In the real world, rain falls and people use the water to drink, to water their livestock, to water their plants, and to power industry. Used water becomes wastewater.  Untreated wastewater can be filled with all manner of harmful pollutants. Here in the first world, we filter our wastewater before discharging it back into rivers and streams. But in the third world,  water is often discharged without much filtering. Or, if filtered, the filter systems may be old and unable to remove certain toxins.
Properly filtering wastewater to make it potable again is a key part of this initiative.  Safely managed wastewater will gives people living in extreme poverty a sustainable and affordable source of water.
​According to the UN, the benefits of this initiative far outweigh the costs. These initiatives will provide new business opportunities and create green jobs.   To my mind, it is hard to put a price on good health and environmental sustainability.
Water is at the very center of life. It is priceless.

​For more information on World Water Day, please visit http://www.worldwaterday.org/
​

In Honor of #WorldPoetryDay

Three Poems from the Collection Gathering Dust in My Closet
​
Gypsy
​I dance on foreign ground
always teasing out
the unfamiliar with my toe,
moving town to town
​selling snake oil from the back
of a painted wagon.

At night the moon comes up,
full and wagging light,
​a silver dollar for me to follow
making that empty shell of a promise again:
​This time, I will bring you home.


​Mother Tongue
​I spoke you first.
​You, with your guttural clacking
Ich being Deutch
​Not Ik.
​You must stick the word in your throat,
hawk it up.

​Your words are lullabies,
the fairy tales that clicked in my ear.
I was breast fed on them.
​I held them in the gully of my mouth.

​I write in a different language now,
​write in impossibly lengthy words garnered from a collegiate dictionary

I have forsaken you
​Left you for dead like the Latin I learned
in the eighth grade.
​I can't remember how to say your name
Can't remember how to say I love you.



Bridges
​​The bridge I crossed to the schoolyard
​was old brick and asphalt suspended
​over a highway.
Every morning, I pledged allegiance
​to a nation and a strange new language
​I stood with my hand over my heart,
​sang God Bless America
​as though it were the land of my birth.

​At home, Mutti cooked apples and potatoes,
​​Himmel und Erde,
Heaven and Earth.
​Old songs rose from her throat
​as she remembered Oma's kitchen,
She would have built bridges over oceans
​for the embrace of Oma's arms.
​

Have a Happy and a Merry

Here's to joy and wonder and light!

Tis the Season #Giveaway

Who couldn't use a little escape to the beach? I'm giving away  a copy of The P-Town Queen, a romantic comedy that one reviewer called "laugh out loud funny."
​Enter by following this link:
Win a Copy! PS Don't forget to get your free copy of The Whisper of Time. See details below!

A #gift for you!

Tis the season for giving, and I'm all in!
​I'm giving away one hundred free copies of my time travel novella, The Whisper of Time, at Smashwords.
​The Whisper of Time is a short, sweet romance about a young woman who moves to Vermont and finds she's moved a lot further than she first imagined. You can read more about the novella on my Whisper of Time page.
​To get your free e-copy, go to the link below and at checkout, put in the promo code:

PJ27G WHISPER OF TIME ON SMASHWORDS

Today's #Poem: A Question of Love

A Question of Love

​Look around you-
​all the ways of love are in the light dancing on the river
​in the rain soaked branches of the trees.
​All the ways of love are in the wings of swallows,
​in the feather soft riot of flight

​When spring comes, they will build again
under the eaves of my house,
​layering blade over blade to shelter their hatchlings.

And who can say what love is?
No more and no less than the birds who shelter
​their children under the eaves
No more and no less than the branches damp with rain
​No more and no less than the river that flows and flows,
​gathering the waters of the storm

We are Wildness

I will seek
​the wildness of the world
​the powerful
​heart of my being
​the exquisite
​wildness of the world
center of my being
​