Up late, out late into the green, and moist, and coolness of a summer day. Then home to what I hoped would be a writing afternoon. Of sorts. The warm-up is slow, the distractions are enough. But I tweak a few poems. And the main work of the afternoon is to collect thirteen that are ready for, or are already in, submission. With the others, new, that have already been published, there's a chapbook here in need of assembling. It feels like a start back to work on it.

Because my most gorgeous picture from the woods today is this lovely fern, with its tightly furled tip, I go looking, tonight, for a fern poem to quote. But what I find is "Fern Hill," by Dylan Thomas, which isn't a fern poem, really, but it is a poem about delight, about freedom and play and memory and joy and sensuous joy and sensory awareness, and simply, a magnificently moving description of childhood summer, and it made me feel so happy, uplifted, and ready for a good night's sleep and dreams:

All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2018 unless otherwise attributed