"I have come to a still, but not a deep center, 
A point outside the glittering current; 
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river, 
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains, 
My mind moves in more than one place, 
In a country half-land, half-water. 
I am renewed by death, thought of my death, 
The dry scent of a dying garden in September, 
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire. 
What I love is near at hand, 
Always, in earth and air."

~ Theodore Roethke, The Far Field

I wake at 5:00 a.m. as planned to finish revising my poem for workshop. And it takes much less time than I thought, so I get out early into the misty morning, ready for along ramble with Charlie. Happy to be home, to walk toward the familiar Charles River, and follow the trail and then see - surprise - the brook is full again! Thank goodness for this rain. It’s quite damp, dripping wet in the long green grasses. We decide to go to my friend’s dock and swim in the pond for our first time back to fresh water. We go through the morning meadow where all the Queen Anne’s Lace has gone brown and dropping and the summer wildflowers in wilting. But we are cheerful and happy to be in our favorite places. The pond, shimmering and slippery down the stones we go. Charlie fishes, of course, while I swim around the island. I try my best to ignore the goose feathers that cover one area of the water. Charlie is done fishing, is waiting for me on the dock. We walk home. My poem is well received. I may well have finally finished it. And I’m pleased, as this Thanksgiving poem, this love poem for my husband, is ready to go out into the world. In the late afternoon I talk with my daughter after her doctor’s appointment. We are talking about preparation, the kind of talk that naturally arises in this final phase of pregnancy: the final month. The month that can grow shorter, or longer. Who knows? It’s time to pay attention, more and more, to the power surge that birth is, the revelation and the initiation and the mystery. The power a woman discovers she possesses. I sense it rising in this daughter. Like the black bottomed brook filling with rainwater. Holding the reflection of sky, limitless, and trees, rooted. What a wonderful journey this is.