Arlene Ang’s Comments

“Scrying sand” is probably the third, if not the fourth, poem I wrote using the same title...which, in turn, was supposed to be the title of a poetry collection I’ve never finished writing. An obsessive gypsy in my mind kept saying, “No, no, no! You’ve got it all wrong!” Hopefully, this time I’ve got it right.

All five poems were written during a difficult time: faced with my father’s terminal illness, I pushed myself to write every day with an online group of poets to stay “socially active” and avoid brooding. I stared out windows. I watched television violence. I picked at scabs around wounds. In other words, the intermittent presence of flowers in my poems can be traced back to guilt feelings towards plants that didn’t last in my care.

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