Sydney Hall has spent her life looking for love in all the wrong places. Her world falls apart when the man she thought was Mr. Right turns out to be Mr. Couldn’t-Be-More-Wrong. She needs to make some major lifestyle changes—if she can figure out where to start.
Kain is a werewolf afraid of the vulnerability that comes with life with a pack. Nevertheless, werewolves are made to protect, and his instincts kick into high gear when he meets a bruised and battered Sydney Hall. He is determined to help her see herself as the strong woman he believes she can be.
Friendship grows as two damaged people find hope in each other. Can Sydney and Kain maintain their promise to remain friends without benefits? Or, is love inevitable as two wounded souls learn to heal together?
EXCERPT
Kain froze when he saw Sydney
and the darkening bruises marring her skin. His nostrils flared as he scented
blood and his eyes took on a familiar glimmer.
Sydney’s attention was directed
inward in her misery. She didn’t even notice the newcomer until he was next to
her.
“Who did this to you?” Kain
asked, his voice soft.
Sydney didn’t answer. She just
shook her head and sobbed harder.
Bending closer Kain placed one
finger under her chin, raising her gaze to his. His eyes flashed gold as he
exerted his will. He repeated, “Who did this to you?”
Haltingly, Sydney gave him the
information he sought. “Vince. Vince Thornton.”
With an abrupt nod Kain stood, turned,
and strode from the room.
Sydney looked at Maggie through
puffy eyes. “Who was that? Where is
he going?”
“That was Kain, and I suspect he’s
going to make Vince wish he had never been born.”
“Kain? Didn’t you—ouch—tell me
he’s a werewolf?” Sydney believed in werewolves about as much as she believed
in Santa Claus, but now was not the time for that discussion. She paused in her
efforts to get back on her feet. Talking, breathing, and moving was still a bit too much to try all at once. “Why would
he defend me? He doesn’t even know me.”
“It doesn’t matter if he knows
you or not—protecting people is what werewolves do. But, that said, Kain has a
real problem with anyone who abuses women or children.”
My Papa’s Waltz is a short poem of
16 lines comprised of four stanzas with a rhyme scheme of ABAB. Sadly, this
poem has been taken apart, turned upside down and inside out, and analyzed
under literary and scholarly microscopes to find the deeper meaning—the true
meaning—that Roethke intended beneath the surface.
To literary critics, I say,
Sometimes, a dog is just a dog.
(Fair warning: If you are a literary critic or subscribe to that approach to enjoying poetry, the rest of this article is not for you.)
Back to the dog...
What pleasure do we get from poetry
if we rely upon someone else’s professional opinion and interpretation to tell us
what the poem really means to us? Why do we have to read for symbolism in order
to have a poem touch our heart, speak to us in a uniquely personal way, or have a special meaning that is ours alone? I think literary critics would do well to employ a
little less Freud and a little more heart in their literary evaluations.
Poetry is personal. Poetry must be
savored, thought about, read and read again, spoken aloud. What shouldn’t
happen is poetry analyzed to the point of it being an impersonal list of institutionally
scrubbed and disinfected words strung together.
I’m not including links to these literary
critiques. Google the poem’s title, and you’ll find plenty.
My Papa’s Waltz takes me back to my
happy childhood. For me it is a straight forward, captured-moment-in-time of a
playful and loving dance between child and father (or grandfather). I stood on
my grandpa’s feet and danced like this many, many times, and my ears did occasionally scrape his belt buckle. When I read this poem,
I still smell his whiskey, beer, cigarette smoke, chewing tobacco, garden dirt,
and wood workingthat make up my
olfactory memories of him. He was my maternal grandpa who lived just across the pasture and around the pond from me.
Spring 1958 – Me with Grandpa on his roof.
The back side of his house was built into a dirt bank,
so it was easy to crawl up and sit on the roof.
Christmas 1956 – I was almost two years old.
This was my 5th birthday.
Some interpretations of this poem insist that Roethke was frightened of his father, because of his father’s drinking and violent behavior, which is, apparently, evident in the poem. *shrug* That may well be true, but I don’t read this into the poem, because I don’t have to. It's not my experience, so the lenses in my world-view glasses have a different color.
I was not scared of my grandpa. He was not
violent. He was a carpenter, a gardener, an outdoorsman, a musician, a self-taught scholar, and a teacher of life skills to an attentive granddaughter. He taught me to play the harmonica by ear. He raised pigs and
chickens. His hands were often dirty
and his knuckles often battered. He was of the blue collar working class.
We sometimes danced around the kitchen and
knocked things off shelves, but we had a darn good time. By today’s standards,
I suppose he was an alcoholic, but he did a day’s work every day, because there
was work to be done.
He was an awful housekeeper
(widower), but I didn’t realize that until I was grown. When I was 12, he finally
got indoor plumbing. He cooked on an old fashioned wood stove that also heated
his house.
My Papa’s Waltz is, and will
remain, a cherished poem that takes me back to my happy childhood with a
grandpa who was a good and decent man, despite the whiskey on his breath…
Here is Theodore Roethke reading
his poem, My Papa’s Waltz.
I’d love to hear what your favorite poems are. Sometimes,
leaving a comment on Blogger is problematic, so pop over to this article where I’ve
posted it on my Facebook page and comment there, if you are so inclined.
