#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

"Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky,
How beautiful it is?
All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness
There is a poem, there is a song.
Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring.
When the spring comes, it again fills the tree with
The music of many leaves,
Which in due season fall and are blown away.
And this is the way of life."
- Krishnamurti

I do not have a poem for Thursday workshop, is what I am thinking, and off to the morning river, the steel sky, absence of wind, presence of cold. A freedom to my walk this morning, a stretch of time ahead, I take it, this time I have given myself, and cross the trestle bridge into the un-grassed meadow. Flattened, all the last year’s grass, and it’s crisp and crunch as I cross it. Nod to the milkweed tatters, fallen to earth, spilled out. In my waterproof boots I inch into the wetlands with scraps of ice and open water hidden beneath the brown straw. This is the season of red willow, and the landscape is so grateful for this bolt of color and silky bark. Branches resting in Zen-like stillness across a stale bed of leftover snow. I turn back and a light light snow, a faint shower of flake is falling as I cross the trestle bridge with the cold-black river to my right, to my left, and underneath my booted feet. I go to my poetry workshop, and listen, and eagerly comment on the exceptional craft of others, and trust a poem of my own will come to me soon. That’s what the red willow sticks stop me to say.