#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

“because rites of passage—like wildflowers—are only awesome accidents.”

~ from my poem, “By Water, By Fire”

It’s delightful to be home in my habitat on the Charles. It’s warm and quite wet from the rain last night. I have energy and decide to run instead of walk. By the brook I look up into the wild grapevine in the morning light, and I am so grateful for this morning entering the woods. I am thinking about what poems I will read, later today, at the Boston Poetry Marathon. After my run I make a plan and choose the poems. I want to read one from each of my three collections. By the time I arrive in Back Bay for the readings, at 1:00, I have what I think is a good plan. But sitting and listening to poets read for eight minutes each for the next four hours, I keep changing my mind. I scratch out new plans in my notes. In the end, I read a poem I haven’t read in years as my first: “By Water, By Fire.” It’s a prose poem about being baptized in my late 30’s along with my son and two year old daughter, Perri. Why this poem now, I wonder, as I follow my unconscious impulse. I need to think about this more, tomorrow, perhaps, as I think it’s connected with her getting married, another sacred ritual. My head is tired now, filled to the brim and clouded with words, ideas, images, feelings. After the poetry I had dinner with two poetry pals and it was such a rich meal of delightful conversation about growing our poems and sharing our poems and being a community, with and for each other. Now I must rest and dream a dream that will help me start a poem tomorrow.

Reading at the Boston Poetry Marathon