#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Even the October mushrooms are red and gold

". . . Something needs to be said to describe my moonlight. 

Almost frost but softer, almost ash but wholer. 

Made almost of water, which has strictly speaking 

No feature, but a kind of counter-light, call it insight. . .”

Excerpt from “Full Moon,” Alice Oswald

Yes, the moon was full, is almost full, but waning. After two daytime walks today, under moonlight over the meadow, we went out. Charlie and Suzi trotting across the gold field and there was starlight. They say rain, tomorrow, but tonight, clear sky. And, on the black surface of river, the moon sits, a white frosted nickel. And occasionally, a ripple, unraveling. Like my poem, my heart poem, the one I workshopped last night, I worked on for much of the day in a quiet house. Hoping to meet tonight, again, with my online poetry pals to workshop our poems, but we had to reschedule. And revising my poem today, I opened it, thinking it only needed some tweaking from last night’s notes, but then I broke it. I couldn’t believe it. I was sad and frustrated. Then, I found a way to stay with it, to open it, like the surgery it’s telling about. Scalpeled. Am I making a mess, or making it better? It’s not there, but it’s more than I expected, it’s where I hoped to go, where imagination is leading me. Oh, Charlie. He drank from the river, big slopping mouthfuls of moon river. Suzi sat by the arch and she waited. We lost Charlie on the way back, wayward dog, barking his virility around the edges of woods, and then gone. This worries Suzi who wants him home, and so do I. I call him with cookies. He knows the cookie will be there, when he’s ready. We’re so glad we went out into this quiet where the trees are holding their October glow. I get in the car. Yes, this must be done. I drive up the driveway, and Charlie runs to me. I trick him into the car and into the house for his cookie. I have heard, in the meadow, another line for my poem, and I write it.