Meet Poet Jane Hall

This first appeared in my "Poetic Ponderings" column in Wilmette Living.

Jane Hall is a long time Wilmette resident and my wife. Her poem Hairpins was a finalist in the 2018 Faulkner - Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. Poetry comes when the spirit moves her. Ink Smears began as images scribbled on an envelope, the final edit, a collaboration between us. She remembers sitting at her desk looking at a picture, reflecting on her childhood home. The two houses, evocative metaphors on life.

Ink Smears

the woman in the window stares out

fountain pen meets blank paper

wisps of wind through cracked

glass pane tousle hair,

rain falling from roof

hits copper, rotting timber,

years of neglect

ponders and stares at small gold

frame picture of another house

blanketed with snow

on a lake,

deep shadows cover the lawn

trees that no longer shade, obscure

the family’s rooms, windows,

her room,

void

who lived there

droplets pour, hit paper, blur thoughts

Ink Smears was first published in Front Porch Review, April 2021.Poetry comes when the spirit moves her. Ink Smears began as images scribbled on an envelope, the final edit, a collaboration between us. She remembers sitting at her desk looking at a picture, reflecting on her childhood home. The two houses, evocative metaphors on life.

Ink Smears

the woman in the window stares out

fountain pen meets blank paper

wisps of wind through cracked

glass pane tousle hair,

rain falling from roof

hits copper, rotting timber,

years of neglect

ponders and stares at small gold

frame picture of another house

blanketed with snow

on a lake,

deep shadows cover the lawn

trees that no longer shade, obscure

the family’s rooms, windows,

her room,

void

who lived there

droplets pour, hit paper, blur thoughts

Ink Smears was first published in Front Porch Review, April 2021.