A Long Time of Nothing
By Mary Ellen Talley
(a found collaborative poem created from snippets of a phone chat with housebound Millie Renfrow, age 84, on 11-16-2020)
Somebody sent me a sketch book
They started some doodles
I kept scribbling
It’s all black ink.
You can go from very light
to very very dark.
I’ve had a great time.
Another thing I’ve done,
I watch Sit & Fit
from a Spokane station
Monday through Friday mornings
if I wake up in time.
Even that much movement
has made a difference
in my feelings of fitness.
It’s not totally up the creek
but it’s crazy.
Right now my drawings
are all really abstract,
you have to look at it carefully
to see if there’s anything
recognizable. Maybe it’s
what your brain looks like
under house arrest
Mary Ellen Talley’s poetry has been published in multiple journals and anthologies. Her chapbooks are “Postcards from the Lilac City” from Finishing Line Press, “Taking Leave” from Kelsay Books, and “Infusion,” from Red Wolf Editions. She participates in the Greenwood Poets critique group and Poets on the Coast.
One of Millie’s sketches
Washingtonian Millie Renfrow was a Seattle area teacher, artist, and poet who was born in 1936, grew up in Ellensburg and passed away in Lynnwood on January 15, 2025.
She took classes at Seattle’s Hugo House and completed the UW Certificate Program in Poetry. When Covid-19 threw the world cattywampus, Millie was unable to transition with her Greenwood poetry critique group to meeting over Zoom.
Over the years, she participated in Haiku Northwest, Poets on the Coast retreats for women, and visual art getaways. She won the Phyllis L. Enne’s poetry prize at the 2016 Skagit Poetry Festival.