“. . . Mothers favor the moon—hook-hung and mirroring the sun—
there, in a berry bramble, calm as a stone

This is enough to wrench our hand out of his

and simply devour him, though he exceeds even the tallest grass

Every mother recalls a lullaby, and the elegy blowing through it”

~ Excerpt from “The History of Mothers of Sons,” by Lisa Furmanski

I wake into that frustrated, broken feeling. My essay is not working. So many pages I’ve written, so many times I’ve shared pieces of it in my Monday night group. Is it a waste? No, never. Except. This morning, I want to put it away forever. Why am I dragging it out when I want to be writing poems? This isn’t making sense to me. So, it will go in a virtual drawer I will shut and be done with it.

Except. On Facebook, I have a message. From one of my writing workshop colleagues. She wants to share some thoughts about my essay that she didn’t get to share last night. And this is the value of having a writing community. Even when you feel let down, your poet friends are not letting you down, they believe in you, as you believe in them, and they want to help and be helped. Her feedback opens the door in my mind that I wanted to open. She has seen and said what I could not yet recognize. She gives me a framework for how to shape what I’m working on as poetry. She suggests I use a framework like the one I’ve created in Postcards from the Gulf, and immediately, I see how I can do this.

Much of the day I’ve been writing and working on this new framework. Before this, I went running, instead of walking, my body says run into a wonderful rhythm of breathing and we ran by the river and into the woods, just me and Charles. And later, at the end of the afternoon, needing to stretch our legs, we go, my son and the dogs, to Farm Pond for a paddle and swim in the heat and the sunshine. On my board I take Suzi; on his he takes Charlie and we circle the glassy warm pond and then return to the dock for a swim, a delicious swim. Last summer, I swam so much with my daughter Perri. This is the summer of swimming with my son, who swims with both dogs to and from the raft. This quiet man, this gentle and brilliant and mindful man with his dogs. I wanted my son to grow up to be my friend. I wanted to be the kind of mother her son would be want to be friends with. Somehow.