#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Snowy egret

“My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise. . .”

~ Excerpt from “Dolphin,” by Robert Lowell

Woke around 4:00 a.m. and wrote and read and fell back asleep to half-wake from a dream of being with my mother, and I wonder where I am, and where she is, and if she’s living, and I feel as if she is. I have worked more on the the letter poems, as palimpsests. And I have been reading The Dolphin Letters, those of Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, and I downloaded a podcast to listen to on my walk, Peter Sacks’ lecture, “You Only Guide Me By Surprise,” and I was walking on the misty, rainy beach and just about to listen to the podcast when my phone rang, and my friend who had been here with me called, and while I was talking to her saw beside me a dolphin leaping and darting in the rough surf. Remarkable! What a morning, what a walk, and listened to the fabulous lecture about dolphins and poetry and being guided by surprise. Now that the breastfeeding poem is finished, (I hope), I opened the marriage poem again and found so much to do with it, and I was surprised because I thought it was done. All day I chip at it, closer and closer and finally feel I finish it by returning to the original title I had changed so many versions ago. Frank is still home seeing his mother so I am digging deep and also went on with the letters of my mother; the dream seemed to say, yes, you are spending time with her, she’s growing alive in your dreams. Tonight I went to the theatre in Sarasota, the Urbanite Theatre, to see a play, Sender, by Ike Holter, and my seat was in the second row of this intimate theatre, and the play was riveting and funny and poignant and super charged with physicality and superb acting, it completely engrossed me. This is the kind of theatre I care about: close up, new, fresh, almost shocking, full of energy and surprise.