#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Half-Iced Brook
. . . This morning I stepped outside and the blue nearly
crushed me. This morning this planet is so loud with itself—
its winds, its insects, its grackles and mourning doves—
that I can hardly hear my own lamentations. This planet.
All its grooved bark, all its sand of quartz and bones
and volcanic glass, all its creeping thistle lacing the yards
with spiny purple. I’m trying to come down soft today.
I’m trying to see this place even as I’m walking through it.
~ Excerpt from “Planet,” by Catherine Pierce
Clear, dry, cold, fresh. I dreamed I shimmied through a thermal white tube out over the artic ocean and I was mostly curious and unscared. At the river, it wasn’t the arctic, but there was new, thin ice. I was rested in the silence. Not needing news news news of current crises. The grown ups are in charge. Science and compassion are on the agenda. At the brook I stopped and looked into the trees shimmering in ripples from Charlie’s drink. I kept walking, stopped again where the brook flows under the path and bent low to the ice and took a good look into the moment of ice and flow, blue and beige, and the brown stones on the floor of the shallow. I did coaching but no writing today, I felt like cleaning a bit, dusting and throwing out the dry pine branches leftover from Christmas. January feels a bit messy; I was glad to clean up. I walked the branches to the compost heap. And thanked them. Tonight, I am out of books by my bedside that I feel like reading; there are only books I don’t feel like reading, and I have ordered, yesterday and today three new books, a bounty, I hope they will arrive soon. I will need to fall asleep to the audible biography of Sylvia Plath that I’m enjoying very much.