“I write poems because I require them –– to navigate my own life.”

Jane Hirshfield

I woke just before my alarm. I didn’t want to oversleep as I was meeting my friend in the meadow for a walk and it was quite cold. We dressed warm and walked briskly with the dogs catching up with our lives, wearing our masks. I felt the vigor of this walk and went longer than I have been going. At one point, though, Suzi sat down on the trail. She was done. Cheerful, but done. I realized I needed to cut our walk short and take her home. I’m so grateful she has the desire and enthusiasm to keep coming. I visited the brook on my way to the house to see the ice. While Suzi rested, I wrote and sent my weekly Aim for Astonishing blog. Frank came home from tennis and built a roaring fire, and we put away the train set which has been dominating the dining room since before Christmas. My daughter and the baby watched us take it down, pack it up, putting the season away for good. We had a lot of fun with the train this year! Then Frank and I did another household cleanup project and it felt good to get clutter cleaned up. I napped, and woke just in time to attend a Hudson Valley Writers webinar reading featuring Jane Hirshfield and Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Wow. I’m such a huge, huge fan of Jane’s poetry, so to hear her reading from what appeared to me her own meditation room (!) was a remarkable treat! It was stunning and moving, and in the conversation afterwards she shared the quote above about why she writes poems. How she writes them for herself to navigate her life. Exactly. I didn’t draft a poem today, but I wrote some raw material that turned me in a surprising direction, away from what I was writing about to a more specific idea. I think I will try to write this germinating poem this week, and I created a folder for my notes and pictures. I am starting a new six week webinar this week for the Transformative Language Arts Network on writing stage monologues, so it will be busy. Still, I will get a poem from the letters written for tomorrow, and then hope I’ll get a draft of this new germinating poem. Hmmmm. We shall see. A storm is coming, a February snow storm, about a foot of snow, perhaps. There will be snowshoeing and skiing again. And shoveling too. There were 236 listeners at this poetry reading today. 236! For poetry! Hooray!