. . . I have felt my heart beat lighter,
And leap onward with thy stream.
Not for this alone I love thee,
Nor because thy waves of blue
From celestial seas above thee
Take their own celestial hue.
Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee,
And thy waters disappear,
Friends I love have dwelt beside thee,
And have made thy margin dear. . .

~ Excerpt from “To the River Charles,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I woke, groggy and listening, becoming conscious of some opening lines for a poem. Knew I should write them down before I lost them. Too sleepy. But then, I gave in. Didn’t want them to go to waste. Woke myself. They were lines for a poem I began to take some notes on during my Wednesday morning Farm Pond Writer’s workshop, from a prompt on opening a cabinet or drawer or container, a poem to or about my daughter. It didn’t feel, Wednesday morning, as if it was going anywhere. But this morning, I felt it could. So I wrote, inching toward a poem. And then I opened my husband’s heart poem, and fussed with it. This I will bring back to my Monday night workshop, to see if these changes are working. It’s definitely working better. Then, I went out into the cool morning with Charlie and Suzi and really wandered, staying out under the blue sky for a long ramble. Later, they were upset when friends arrived and we crossed the meadow without them to launch our kayaks in the late afternoon on the Charles. An exquisite time. The sun was still sharing warmth and the trees too. The heron rose across the sky. Our friends had not seen this leg of the Charles. What a pleasure it was to glide and paddle and show them.