#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
“The river and the garden have been the foundations of my economy here. Of the two I have liked the river best. It is wonderful to have the duty of being on the river the first and last thing every day. I have loved it even in the rain. Sometimes I have loved it most in the rain.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
I felt the impulse strongly to be on the river first, before walking. Frank was done with his meeting and Sunday-free from his schedule, and I asked if he wanted to walk a bit with me and Charlie and he said yes. There was cloud cover, impending rain. But the river was still. Let’s go for a kayak, I said. But what about Charlie, he wondered. Well, I thought he might wait for us on the river bank, and we tried that, pushing off in our kayak singles into the Charles. I was wrong. The boy started howling and moaning. It seemed too much trouble to walk him back and leave him unhappily indoors. So Frank managed to get him into his kayak. We set off, and mostly Charlie was happy, except he couldn’t be quite content if he couldn’t be in both our boats at once. Frank and I saw the head and tail of a baby beaver paddling to shore, and fortunately, Charlie didn’t. The river was glassy and friendly and easy. We saw the heron. We saw a flock of blackbirds, and then we took restless Charlie back, sooner than I wished. But then he and I went on our walk and I returned home to work all the afternoon in the rain indoors, finishing the prep for my webinar Tuesday, and attending a wonderful poetry reading for the New England Poetry Club where I had signed up for a slot in the open mic. Almost 100 people on the Zoom videoconference. Imagine! That crowd for poetry on a Sunday afternoon! There were, of course, many pandemic poems, but not all. What there is, I think, is a desire for sharing feelings and meaning and beauty and companionship. There is a desire to listen to people trying to make some sense of the incomprehensible. Wanting, like Charlie, sweet Charlie, to be included, to be counted, to ride along.