#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
peering from some high
window; at the gold
of november sunset
(and feeling:that if day
has to become night
this is a beautiful way)
~Excerpt from e.e. cummings
I love Wednesdays. Even when I feel a little overtired, even when I feel November fingers chilling my spine. To climb the stairs with a well planned writing prompt, into the studio, the writer’s room, and gather in our circle, and quiet the chattering, and center, and share a poem, and hear the responses, all this gives me energy, fuel. Today, for the Farm Pond Writers, after my walk, and my cold hands and the damp and the downed leaves, I brought instruments, drum and rain stick, chime and thunderboomer, and we read the poem I had chosen, with music. It’s a wonderful poem by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, “Tiger Mask Ritual”:
“ When you put on the mask the thunder starts.
Through the nostril’s orange you can smell
the far hope of rain. Up in the Nilgiris,
glisten of eucalyptus, drip of pine, spiders tumbling
from their silver webs…”
(Reader, if you’re interested in receiving the “Gathering the Bones” prompt we wrote from today, e-mail me at kellydumar@gmail.com.) I sat most of the day, and so I needed a second outing. We left the fire I had built in the afternoon to work by in warmth, and went out into the damp cool late afternoon nearing dusk. The dogs were very happy. At the river, we surprised two male pheasants on the kayak landed. They quickly lifted off. Across the river, the beaver slapped his tail at us. My body felt tired and also energetic. Strange, all day like this, tired by not tired. Can’t explain. We stayed out shusshing through the leaves for a long time, until darkness settled, in fact, and felt refreshed. Tonight, I didn’t think I would write more, I was tired, but I had a new line for the poem I worked on last night, the poem I plan to bring to my Friday workshop, and I wanted to get it in. I stayed in the poem for longer than I expected, making progress. Good progress. I think this Novembery weariness might be missing my father, near his birthday, now. Little flickers of anger. There is no point feeling angry at a disease. I just miss him. Yes, it’s a little bit of feeling fatherless, this November. We are coming into the short short days of less and less light. Suzi lost us, inexplicably, on our walk tonight. She just went missing. Breathless, she caught back up to us as we neared the brook, heading home. Suzi! What happened? I thought we would find her safe at home, But here she was, out trailing us, looking for us, lost. Fortunately, I had some medicine in my pocket. Two cookies, much appreciated.
