the unbearable lightness of monday

it always seems to go this way...i read a book, poem, or essay that blows me away and then feel muted as a writer in its path...the past two weeks were the perfect yin and yang of being a writer...accepted into a workshop, rejected for publication...but back to the workshop...next month i will be attending a poetry workshop at the southampton writers' conference...and the writer leading the pack will be mary karr...although i have read so much about her, and some of her poetry online, i hate to admit, i never read any of her memoirs...and so i went to our new library, got my card and got going...backwards, as i started with "lit", her latest....i could not put it down, and i find myself thinking about so much of it, so often...so, of course, i start thinking about my poems...my work...and then, of course, i think about the peanut m&m's in the cabinet...the new bag i bought to replace the old one i almost decimated last week as i struggled to write something more than a grocery list...the one in my basket at target this morning when my cell phone rang...a call from the conference coordinator happy to answer my dimwit questions...but i can't hear him because every aisle is bursting with the cries of rugrats..."i want this, i want this, i want this"...as i find a quiet corner, i chirp happily into the phone, as my inner voice yells, "hey, kid, i want this too"...and you're not getting my m&ms...