Our Coffeeshop Writer's Group | Power outage on our street brings neighbors together

Right in the middle of working on a poem our electricity went out. A flotilla of helping vehicles appeared on our street.

I hadn't heard the explosion that occurred behind a house two doors down to the left.

I was working upstairs in my bedroom on my poem when there came a knock on the door. It was neighbor Pat with his two boys. They were out for a stroll to see the big trucks: an SUV police car, a huge shiny fire engine with Engine No. 10 on it, PECO truck with folding ladder, and Asplundh Tree Cutters.

We went out in the howling winds and walked down the street. Then I remembered I'm a cub reporter for Patch.com. Maybe Gerry, my editor, would let me write a story about the power outage.

He did. You can read it here.

What to do about my half-written poem? I did the best I could but couldn't print it out. No electricity.

I was gonna hand-write the whole thing, but then had a better idea.

Packed up my laptop and brought it to the Coffeeshop. I'd read my poem Brotherhood of the Front Porch off my battery-operated laptop, a feature I never use.

Now, before the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt came into the news, I had begun a novel called Brotherhood of the Front Porch. It's absolutely terrific but I'm too busy to work on it. Maybe when I'm 85 and living with three kidneys I'll get back to work on it.

So I figured, why don't I write part of it as a poem, which is what I did. The group liked it. Coach Iris liked it. But it's a poem in progress. I wanna get it good enuf so I like it.

Here we are, the Coffeeshop Writers' Group: Donna Krause, Linda Barrett, Kym Cohen and Beatriz Moisset.

Carly, we missed you! Chris and Bob we miss our very special guys! And Nurse Barb works on weekends healing the minds and souls of all nations.

Y'all submit poetry to Icing on the Cake, our forthcoming poetry journal, ya hear?

Beatriz, or as I say to myself Bee-a-TREE-chee, Dante's great love in L'Inferno. I don't think she'll mind if I start calling her that.

We're gonna publish our own journal and discussed names. Icing on the Cake won, suggested by Beatriz. A retired biologist who hails from the Argentine, her videos of little critters appear on YouTube. Lots of em. Here's one I liked of a caterpillar taking a long leisurely poop.
Donna, with the gorgeous nails. She publishes her work on IdeaGems.

Prolific Linda read a terrific poem called The Perfect Crime. The female narrator was gonna whack a former cheerleader over the head with a two x four and kill her for calling her "Tubby Tuba" in high school. God intervened, thwarting the perfect crime.

Kym read a lovely piece straight out of her journal. A multi-talented artist who's had minor roles in major motion pictures, Kym will most likely illustrate our front and back covers. She showed us two spectacular snow scenes she took, including one of a snow house in the darkening light.

And me, all's I do is write poems and paint carpet mats. In a bold and daring move, tho, risking everything I own and love, I went outside on one of the warm days, and painted the bottom step with my trademark splotches so people don't fall and break their necks.

Am trying to decide who should drive me to the arspital on April first. Dan or Ada. Without doubt, we'll have to be up at the crack of dawn. Ya know, I was thinking I wanted to get a good nite's sleep but it doesn't matter. I'm gonna be out for at least four hours during the operation. See how blogging helps me think?