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.

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