#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Ecstasy comes in lengthier moments now,
            comes when it’s called,
and comes when it’s not.

                       A single thinning cloud disintegrating across this steely sphere of sky.
The one tree standing
            a little higher than the rest on the ridge of a mountain,
                                    in the distance.

~ Excerpt from “Here is a Pilgrim on a Waterless Shore,” Elizabeth Jacobson, Santa Fe Poet Laureate, published in “The American Journal of Poetry”

I am so quiet here. Good. It’s why I came. To write, to listen. Today I walked after writing some, walked the Butterfly Trail in the late morning under clouds, but still, it was hot, and quiet and pleasant. This day brought revisions of three poems. One, I planned to work on. It has been workshopped at least twice. I think it’s done, or very close, now. Two poems I dug out from some time ago; really, just first drafts from pictures of plants, and who knows why these May poems called to me today. They called, I listened. And they are becoming poems to workshop soon. I have imagined three bowls, and drawn them, early this morning, in color, these bowls for my writing retreat. So, I call this my Three Bowls Writing Retreat now. One for new poems, one for poem revisions, and one for this, the writing I do to inspire others to write from personal photos. What I did today was focus. I sat down to work and I worked. I wonder, while on my walk, if it makes sense to retreat in such a stimulating place where there is so much to see and do. It must make sense. Because I am doing it.

I welcome October today, my birthday month.