#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Autumn Leaves

This morning’s walk into the woods is a very chilly one – 36 degrees and so I stay out for a shorter time than usual and add a short swim indoors. This morning is my Wednesday group and I need time to finish preparing. I’ve chosen, as a warm-up, a poem by James Wright, “The Journey,” to read before having them write from a personal photo they’ve brought from some travel of their own, recent or past. First, before reading it aloud to each other, we’re listening, spellbound, to a wonderful recording of Charles Wright reading it.

…I found the spider web there, whose hinges   

Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,
Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging   

And scattering shadows among shells and wings.   

And then she stepped into the center of air   

Slender and fastidious, the golden hair

Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,   
While ruins crumbled on every side of her.   

Free of the dust, as though a moment before   

She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself…

The journeys shared are varied and fascinating, as well as the insights from the questions I pose after the poem: trips to Yemen, to sea caves, to bathtubs with newborns, to hitchhiking in Ireland, to orphanages in developing countries, to morning coffee with a grieving friend, to a trumpet flower growing on a chain link fence in Florida – we bring our travels into the here and now, we discover truths we didn’t know we knew, and the beauty of our adventures, the writing, rough and not yet shaped, is heard and appreciated just as it is. Whether or not it becomes something more than these words on these pages shared in the studio in each other’s presence, it has moved us, inspired us, connected us.

Farm Pond Writer’s Collective