#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

I've known a lot of really nice, intelligent, capable, talented people who seem to be afraid of poetry. I always suspect they weren't given poetry as children. Oh, they might have been forced to memorize lines of poetry, or taught poetry by someone who was also afraid of poetry, but they weren't really given poetry, as a gift like a favorite hand puppet or a music box, to be loved forever. A world without poetry is only part of the world, but if you give your children poetry, you give them access to everything, you give them the universe.
~ Excerpt from Sue Alderson, “Illuminating Texts: Giving Children a Piece of the World Through Poetry”

Trickster, dear trickster did me a favor. Set my alarm for 6:30 p.m., NOT a.m., and so I woke later, quite a bit later than planned, and this was a wonderful thing. Because my morning walk had to be shortened. Charlie and Suzi were not happy about this. I made them a promise I kept – a second walk. This morning, I was ready for my Wednesday writers with my prompt, on writing about an exciting meal experience. Wow! What wonderful writing emerged around the room! (Readers, if you want me to send you this prompt, I think you’ll really enjoy it. E-mail me at kellydumar@gmail.com tomorrow.) I am aware, as I walk in all this glorious golden light, how soon October will become November, stripped trees, pewter skies, I will love November too. But it’s still damp and yet warm and the reds and golds are fiery and warm the spirit each day. It’s hard to go indoors. In the late afternoon, it was nearly 5 p.m., I kept my promise to the pups and we walked to the river and stopped to gaze at the foliage. And in the stillness of the surface, I saw approaching a pair of Beaver, just beginning their workday, skimming toward us. I pointed my camera, and watched them swim in the gleaming gold.

. . . The beavers graft another
layer on the dam.
They slap their tails
so loud a sound
like falling dice
skitters the smooth,
unfrozen surface of the pond.
Or what had been the pond. . .
~ Excerpt from “Etiology,” by Maggie Millner, in the New Yorker

The beaver swam straight toward us after slapping his tail. I think he was being territorial. Warning us. So, smartly, Charlie and I backed away and let the beaver pass in peace. So, I felt Trickster had done me an incredible favor. I was so blissed out in the late light, and I kept walking, and traveled over the trestle bridge into the wide open mowed meadow, and then, the light! Through the seed fluff of the milkweed! Oh, my, what an afternoon sundown. Another lovely surprise happened. A reader who has been subscribing to my Aim for Astonishing weekly writing prompt, (and I think she’s a reader of this blog too) sent me some lines of a poem she spontaneously composed from being inspired by her autumn landscape. I felt honored that she trusted me with her writing, that she gave herself this permission, and that she trusted her impulse and followed it. Excited that she is engaging with her writing life, taking risks. We need to express our experience of beauty in this world, to ourselves, to each other. There is so much beauty. There is a blade of green grass by the river, and all last night, in the dark, it was rained upon. And the sun rose, and it lit the raindrops on the grass as I passed. And my day was so much better for this.