By TINA ARNOPOLE DRISKILL
Sheila Landre wears many “hats” including several of the dozens she has crocheted. She came into the world as an Army-Air Force “brat” and has gathered a world of experience and knowledge to share as she changes “hats” through each and every day.
It would be difficult to say which of her “hats” are most meaningful to her, but it might be safe to say she considers the “hat” of the moment most important as she journeys through a very active and giving life. A poet since age seven, she is a member of the Licensed Fools and has been published in Stanislaus Connections, Zam Bomba, Penumbra, and Modern Bride, among others.
A firm
believer in the spoken word, she has been a winner in local poetry slams at the
Prospect and State theaters, and has been a featured poet at Stockton’s First
Night Celebrations, Luna’s Art Cafe in Sacramento and at Stockton bookstore
events. She also reads at the J Street Cafe, Borders and Barnes and Noble in
Modesto and Stockton.
Her early education might be called “the school of life” as she moved with her family from her birth place at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to Louisiana, San Antonio, Texas, kindergarten in Yokohama, Japan during the Korean War, Virginia twice, a return to Texas, and Heidelberg, Germany.
She married following high school graduation, became a mom to two daughters, and spent 10 years studying in Santa Cruz and Salinas, finally earning her Associate of Arts degree at Hartnell College. While raising her daughters and attending junior college, she also became a charter member of the Salinas Valley National Organization for Women. During her years with N.O.W. she helped start a currently 25-year-old women’s crisis line, was leader of a consciousness raising group, served on the reproductive rights task force and as state archivist.
She moved to Modesto in 1976 and completed her bachelors degree at California State University Stanislaus in 1978. She has been teaching in Turlock since earning credentials in English and Spanish in 1979, first at Wakefield School and now at Turlock Junior High School, where she has taught English, Spanish, alternative and gifted classes, summer school, and Saturday Academy at both the seventh and eighth grade levels.
Aside from her teaching day job, she has served as minister of the Spiritual Science Church of Turlock, presiding over services, spiritual classes, weddings and funerals. She also is a member of the Turlock Arts Commission and finds time to be grandma to two granddaughters and two grandsons. Never time for idle hands, she balances all her other activities by crocheting dozens of hats and afghans and has filled more than 48 journals!
Connections is honored that she has made time to join our growing list of poet activists in A Gathering of Voices.
Time never runs out
in the here and now,
but it can pass you by.
As you stand there in the moment
the hours eddy around you
like a rock in a whispering stream,
like a boulder in white water,
like an island in rough seas.
You stand
untouched
unmoved
aware only of
your own
perpetual wetness.
Sheila D. Landre, 9/25/04
A leopard cannot change his spots
nor can he change
his true nature
to, say,
that of a squirrel.
Not even with the use
of heavy makeup
and a rented costume,
tree scurrying,
nut gathering,
chatter coaching.
See the squirrel!
Be the squirrel!
Eventually he will
kill something
and hang in
over a branch.
He will be revealed as
a bloody leopard
with excessive mascara
and a bushy polyester tail.
He may ask for
help with his zipper
and then
all doubt dissolves
--an expose
of spots
and claws
and fangs!
Fangs!!!
Fangs a lot.
Sheila D. Landre, 9/26/04
This morning I am an egg at the computer
allowing the spermatozoa of my life's experience
to bounce off my mind like cosmic dust particles
or like spermatozoa, all but one doomed to rejection.
I wait for something to penetrate, start
the process that will bring forth poetry,
just a wee newborn poem that I can raise myself
and then gradually expose to the wide world.
Yes, yes, he is my own sweet child, not adopted. Natural born.
No, his father is no longer involved, but I don't mind
really. He never wanted this poem anyway, not with all his
heart and soul--but I did. Yes, I was in love at the time but
love is fleeting. It is the poetry of love which lasts.
Doesn't he have a beautiful simile?
I'm hoping for extended metaphors as he matures,
maybe something allegorical
if I can get him into the right publication.
Sheila D. Landre, 9/25/04
Buckskin Joe's, Colorado--
stagecoach rides and staged hangings
a saloon and dance hall
at the far end of the street
dust blowing and quaint shops selling
penny candy and souvenirs
you could even buy
a sarsaparilla
my father and I sat on a wooden bench
on the weathered boardwalk
watching cowboys ride by
on rough mudcaked horses
we sat there in the heat and dust
trying to absorb
the narrow slices of authenticity
wedged between the boards of
a prefabricated Old West town
more than thirty years
since I was born and had
my photo taken in his arms
him smiling
in his lieutenant's uniform
me in a pink blanket
but this day my father
and I hashed out memories
and truth for the first time
adults sitting on a boardwalk
as a stagecoach rumbled by
and a cowboy
we'd seen hanged earlier
leaned against
a nearby post and
rolled himself a cigarette
