#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

So long, Aquinnah

Full Moon on Stone

Moon that is linking our daughters’
Choices, and still more beginnings,
Threaded alive with our shadows,

These are our bodies’ own voices,
Powers of each of our bodies,
Threading, unbroken, begetting

Flowers from each of our bodies. . .

~ Excerpt from “Moon for Our Daughters,” by Annie Finch

And so. Rising into a final day in this special place. I write for the first two hours, a newsletter article and a blog about “How Pictures Heal: Expressive Writing from Personal Photos,” for the course I’m teaching for the Transformative Language Arts Network soon. I get those off, and the timing is perfect, my daughter will join me and the dogs. So, we head up Prospect Hill to go down the Trustees Trail to Vineyard Sound. A good, long, deep final vacation talk, and very pleasant. We are talking about the next few weeks of preparing for the life-transforming, remarkable, wondrous event. The sky is feathered with clouds and a deep blue; the gulls and cormorants perch and fly, the tide is low, and the wind too, and the rocks are slick and smooth and I will miss this place very much. We are walking our goodbye for another year. In the afternoon, Frank is back and we go to Aquinnah to the beautiful beach where our dear friends are staying, and the dogs, ours, theirs, all the dogs of the land seem to want to be on the beach, and here there is no one to stop them! What a blissful romp and swim and play they all have, all afternoon, while we are in our books. Only a one book trip for me! Frank, sitting beside me, here tonight, says, out of the blue: “That beach today was so pretty.” Yes, indeed. Our girls, friends from childhood, sun and romp and swim, and they are now adults and professionals. And still, this dear and close time. I take another long, long solitary walk, with Charlie, down the beach and meet no one. My own alone goodbye. I am reflecting on what I want to bring home with me: I have a clear sense of my writing projects, my priorities. I set my goals and deadlines in my head organizer. What I hope to accomplish by when. And then I remember I will need a poem to take to workshop Thursday. I try to imagine writing something new between now and then. Doubtful. We shall see. Near dinnertime, we depart, home to pack. And now the packing is done under a full moon. I didn’t realize, this morning, when I saw the silver rock with the white circle that it was tonight’s full moon calling me. But when I took the last bag to the car and climbed the slope to the house, I saw the beaming light of the moon and then I saw my moon rock. Goodnight moon. Goodnight Martha’s Vineyard. Goodnight reader. Goodnight first day of September.

So long, Vineyard Sound