Charlie did not have to wait long for our walk. I was so relieved to be at the river, into the woods, the shelter of green in the trees to settle my mood. Last night, it seems wind blew a number of new leaves off trees. I found a beauty resting face down on the edge of the river. I walked for a long time on the trails, there was no one, and toward the wetlands where the Laurel blooms and the blackbirds perch in the cattails. I wanted to find a settled way to think about my poem revision. What I found near the laurel was a turtlehead, where I’ve seen them before, and an extravagantly wild azalea in bloom. These new blooms made me very happy and satisfied. Before I walked I went looking for poems for my Wednesday group and found one by May Swenson I really liked and will include in the prompt, but I also wandered through some writings about her and found the entry below from her diary about reporting one day and I was captivated by her run on sentence and its springing into metaphor and stretching to contain a life in a sentence in a diary entry. All this, and my walk made me hopeful. Soon enough, home at my desk, I lapsed into self-doubt. But, by evening, just before meeting with my Truchas poetry pals online, I opened the poem from last night. Not the latest, but the previous version. And I tweaked it until I was satisfied. I felt settled. Then, I opened another poem I’m revising and made significant changes. Felt satisfied. Felt confident. Felt renewed. had a wonderful sharing with my fine poet friends from the south and southwest, and their poems were excellent, and I shared the one I just revised from last night - they had not seen it, and they gave me a few very small tweaks and now it’s even better. For me, it has been a day of “incorporating essences,” as Swenson says. A day of “doors admitting sun wind and night.” And the milkweed, in bloom.

Turtlehead (Chelone glabra)

By Patricia J. Ruta McGhan

Turtlehead is also known as balmony, bitter herb, codhead, fish mouth, shellflower, snakehead, snake mouth, and turtle bloom. It is part of the Figwort family (Scrophulariacea) and has the scientific name Chelone glabra. In Greek mythology, there was a nymph named Chelone who insulted the gods; in punishment, she was turned into a turtle. The flowers of this plant are said to look like the heads of turtles. Glabra is from the Latin word meaning smooth because of the lack of hairs or texture on the stems and leaves…

https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/chelone_glabra.shtml