A living tree is a changing, sleeve shape, a wet, thin, bright green creature that survives in the thin layer between heartwood and bark. It stands waiting for light, which it catches in the close-woven sieves of its leaves.

Alice Oswald

Two walks: morning, afternoon. Charlie and Suzi have grown to count on this and there are fewer people around to make this happen. I am the beneficiary. The September light woos us outdoors. I wake up and re-write the assemblage from top to bottom and put it away, out of my system, done for now. The impulse is satisfied. I feel finished with it for now. I move into fairy tales, with my morning coaching session and then into my prep for the Wednesday morning writers: more fairy tales and poetry, I get lost. It’s bright and cooler. The plants outdoors still need watering, they soak up the sun, so I stretch my legs. In the late afternoon we go out to Medfield State and I meet my friend and her dogs and we go for a fast, long romp around the hospital grounds and into and across the meadow and into the woods, along the Charles, stopping to breathe in the beautiful light on the changing leaves of the trees. The blue river is placid and sunlit. We cover all our usual territories of mothers and daughters and writing and politics and plans for the coming week. Poor Suzi’s energy is lagging. Tonight I meet with my poetry pals online, Marlon and Randy, across the miles of this country, the south and the west and we each share a poem. Theirs are exceptional. I share my newest one and they appreciate it. There is nothing I’ll change for now. Randy suggests I read three poems of Theodore Roethke and I look his poems up right after our call and fall in love with this one:

We have decided to leave the arch and the roses as they are. This morning, before rising, I looked out the windows of the french doors and realized that I could actually see the arch standing far across the meadow from my bed. Soon, I walked toward it, and the sun.