#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Great Blue Heron

Frank is long gone, even though I wake early, and the house is silent. The birds call, croak, screech outside the open windows. I lie awake, in a kind of liminal space, for some time, rethinking our poetry group from last night, digesting the feedback. Agreeing and arguing in my head with the comments about the post card poems. There is work today and I am doubting myself. Then I get up and before I walk I open the file and tweak a few things; changes, small ones, that I agree with. It’s time to walk. I’m early. For a change, for the first time in weeks now, I walk south, not north to the bridge. I walk away from the shell pickers, passing some resort beach areas. I see two empty blue checkered chairs, so cheerful in the morning light under the blue sky next to the blue sea. They make me feel very happy. All my thoughts return to the poems and the short time I have left. I wonder what will become of them when I am gone from the place that has grown them. Will I be able to revise them in the woods? I can’t picture being absent from this enchanting place. I will not, I fear, hear the voice of these poems. I hear it now, though. I’m walking and the writing is coming, I have to take notes into my phone. Because the doubts are lifting in this sunny, cheerful, hopeful, intriguing place. Hello, heron. I look up from a shell I am photographing, suddenly, there is the heron standing in surf looking at me. Hello. Hello. How are you? He just looks back at me. I ask if I can take his picture. He seems to agree. Keeps posing. As if it’s his job. To stand here on the Gulf of Mexico and have his picture taken. I thank him. I keep going. I have to get back for my client. I’ve stayed out longer than I planned. I get to the beach exit, and decide I must have my dip in the surf, so I jump in, swim briefly, walk swiftly home, un-toweled, dripping wet.