#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

To the lighthouse, I thought. That’s where I will walk. I woke in Edgartown in my hotel room, early. I wanted to walk before driving to Featherstone to my poetry workshop with Billy Collins. It was bright and already very warm. I walked from my Inn toward the water. It was only about three miles there and back. And it was fun to be on the quiet Main Street without the summer crowds and traffic. The workshop was very good, and I saw what I needed to do with my poem. Soon after the workshop, while I waited for the ferry off the island, I made the changes and felt very good about them, very complete, and drove the two hours up to Cambridge to my Monday night poetry with my revisions done. Quite a long weekend of poetry and travel, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I arrived in Cambridge early enough to shop and walk a little around Harvard Square, and as I passed through the Radcliffe courtyard, there were the peonies, burst and spilled and drooping and shedding and blown out of their bodies into an exquisite demise. My poem in the workshop was well received. But Tom’s eyes on it and his feedback went toward a bit more complication that appeals to me, I think. I feel a bit confused tonight from all the feedback. Good. Confusion is good. What a journey this day in poetry and lighthouses and peonies this has been, and now home, to bed, and the dogs happy for a cookie and the rain watering all the new plants after a day of penetrating heat and sun. To sleep by my blindless, uncurtained windows tonight.