And the place

                                        was water            

                                                                                                            

Fish

      fowl

            flood

      Water lily mud

My life

 

in the leaves and on water. . .

~ Lorine Neidecker, Excerpt from “Paean to Place”

Sweet rest, long sleep, late waking and a little lazily. But then, I am looking at my new poem, and I hope and think I am sharpening, deepening it. My youngest is here, and she wants to walk with me and the dogs, and we go out for a long one in the August cool and blue deep clear sky, we cross the trestle bridge and the meadow and the street, we walk and walk along the river, and we talk and talk, she has so much to say about her work with playback theatre and Bystander Training; we also talk, so much, this morning, about the diaries I wrote for her that she is re-reading. And she’s typing up the entries and she’s reading them aloud to me. She is so appreciating this picture of her young life that I wrote for her, her days, her joys, struggles and feelings and longings. Her stories, being dyslexic, her friendships and family relationships. I tell her that September 2001 will be the 20th anniversary of the publication of Before You Forget - The Wisdom of Writing Diaries for Your Children. And, because she is so engaged and enthusiastic, I say, maybe we should all - her sister and brother too - collaborate on a 20th anniversary edition. She loved the idea. Well, we’ll see. In the afternoon I prepped for my free-write workshop that I offered on Zoom tonight, writing from a personal photo. And then, off to a late afternoon swim with my daughter. We sat on the dock and talked first. And then had a lovely swim in the cool water, the sun, wonderfully on my face as I turned into it. The light is August light. There was the swift ripple of wind over the surface, it felt like fall is coming. July seems very long ago. Tonight I had a lovely webinar with wonderful attendees and the prompt I shared on growing something and harvesting something from a personal photo was really well received. Now, how sleepy I am from this full, full day.