#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Brook After Storm

“November--with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes--days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew.”
― L.M. Montgomery

First stop, the brook under the last of the gold leaves, ripping, disturbed. What a storm, tearing screens, splitting a huge pine in half. All night the door knocked against the frame, the wind howled, the dogs roamed. Out early, groggy from little sleep into the mess. Before that, I decide: I won’t bring either of the poems I’ve considered to the poetry workshop. I choose another, older. It has been workshopped before. It’s close to being done. There, I’ve decided, and we walk over the downed branches and ruined trees and the leaf scatter into November. My husband has always teased me for how much I love November – who loves November? When the trees are stripped. The nests, all the hidden nests appear, and the hives, up in the trees, the sliver-papered hives. I drive to Concord, the loveliness of all the hardwoods edging the narrow streets, and wave to Thoreau while passing Walden Pond. The group is smaller than predicted, some absence, and I feel quite at home after all, welcomed. I’ve chosen the right poem. I see, quickly, what it still needs with the help of the feedback. I appreciate the chance to share what’s working in the poems of others. Later, I take out a prose piece I wrote exactly a year ago, Day of the Dead, and workshopped and worked on. The storm last night revived and reminded me. I open it and don’t know what I’ll do, but I begin right away slicing it into a poem and stay with it for the afternoon, revising and revising. I still do not know what I’m trying to say exactly. Still, mystery. Mystery and a desire to know more. Month of my father’s birthday, November. Month of when we buried his ashes. I take the dogs out, a second walk, because it’s the last night it will be light at this hour before dinner for some time. November.