#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Up early, but not rushing out the door, taking my time. Then, a phone call. Frank, on his way to tennis, says, go out and see the moon setting. And so I leave my coffee, almost full, and I go, walking quickly to the beach. The sky is brighter than it has been in days. It’s early, but I meet a shell picker, and a runner, I can see it will be busy this morning, with no threat of rain. There is no moon that I can see, but there is still a sky growing pink and the shorebirds busy with breakfast. Soon, I see it, the worm moon, it has been behind a cloud! What stunning beauty. I’m so glad to be out. I meet a woman, about my age, she is walking slowly, her head down. She is in a bright, seashelly turquoise warm up jacket. Her blonde hair is pulled in a pony tail. She looks familiar, perhaps like someone who would have been one of my mother’s tennis friends. I wonder if she is sad. Passing, I say hello, and she says good morning, so much like she means it, like she is really greeting me. I ask her if she has seen the moon. The moon? No, I have had my head down, she says. Well, it’s behind a cloud now, but when it comes out, you’ll be glad you saw it. Oh, thank you, she says, and she means. it. We are walking in opposite directions. I have a thought, standing on the pier, it just comes. Perhaps I will write a novel. When I turned forty, I was walking a beach in Florida for my birthday; my husband took me on a trip to Clearwater. And I was walking the beach and I had a thought: perhaps I will write plays. Then, a year later, I did. But I also thought about my poems, the post card poems. I am writing them now, and I had some thoughts about what they are that seem helpful. Tonight, at dinner, we were outside with my son and his fiance, and suddenly, a bright orange ball appeared from behind a purplish cloud, low on the horizon, fiery and perfectly round and full, rising and lighting the night.