#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

. . .The day’s blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

~ Denise Levertov, excerpt from “Variation on a Theme by Rilke”

Instead of an alarm, the barred owl woke early, calling from a tall tree on the edge of the woods outside my window: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you? A muggy, summer morning. I went out early with my daughter and all the blooms of the woods and the unfurled ferns. The blue sky shone in the brook. We had a lot to talk about: plans, visions, change, new experiences, new life just beginning. What we can change; what we cannot change. It was a heartening walk in the company of both dogs and the woods thrummed: summer, summer, summer. I spent the day preparing for my free Aim for Astonishing webinar tonight, and working on a poem for Thursday morning workshop: I took out one I wrote a year ago and workshopped, revised, and have been sending out. But it needs more, I see that now. I began the overhaul of this poem about aging and rain and swimming in the rain and renewal. I think I will have a new draft ready. In the evening, I ran my webinar, had a delightful showing of people who wrote from photos and shared, and I was delighted to have many willing to share their writing, so powerful, even in this one hour experience. As soon as I was done, I got very lucky. Everyone was just getting ready for a walk to the railroad tracks; and I went off with my husband and daughters and my daughter’s boyfriend and the dogs, we went across the meadow under the quarter moon, and past the still and calm river, and the mallards quacking in the brook, and the frog jumping off the trail into brush and we saw the orange glow of a campfire high up on King Phillip’s Overlook, and we stood on the trestle bridge and felt the heat and pulse of the night. All the creatures of night getting ready to prowl their habitat while we sleep.