Hello Smashwords!

I've just published My Mother is an Old Elephant on the Smashwords platform, which I came across recently. I have to say that this has been the simplest and most straightforward route to publishing that I have come across. An intermediate knowledge of MS Word is really all that's required. The instructions are comprehensive and clear and the book arrived first time.

And in a couple of weeks it will become available for iPhone/iPad via the Apple iBookstore, the Nook, Kobo and Sony e-readers, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, and others, and will emerge eventually on Barnes & Noble, the Diesel eBook Store, Baker & Taylor, and some other outlets I hadn't heard of before, including some who service Android platforms.

You can even get it in good ole PDF, RTF and plain text formats if you prefer.

So here it is! Merry Christmas!

Onto a Vast Plain, by Rainer Maria Rilke

Onto a Vast Plain

You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

From A Book of Hours.

This was on the back of the funeral service sheet of my cousin who died about 18 months ago. I would like it read at my funeral too.