#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Morning Brook

Thanks to the word

that says thanks!

Thanks to thanks,

word

that melts
iron and snow! . . .

Excerpt from Ode to Thanks By: Pablo Neruda—translated by Ken Krabbenhoft

Wake to full sunshine. Sky colors the ice and the brook. It’s bright and cold. The brook ice is at the hard crack stage of candy making. I have not that much time, but enough. I have not yet finished preparing for the Farm Pond Writers; I have not yet finished preparing to post my week’s lesson for the monologue course. All will get done. But I go in early, get to work. The Farm Pond writer’s workshop is, as usual, a juicy morning of wonderful writing: we dive into polarities and oxymoron and paradox. After, I work on the monologue course, and in the late afternoon, there’s a nap by a fire. I have to make a decision: after dinner I must decide what I have time to write for a poem for Thursday workshop. I thought I would revise a previously shared poem. But I have an inkling of an idea for something new inspired by my photo-text assemblage I just completed on weather. If I start the new one and it doesn’t take, I’ll be left with nothing to bring. But that’s what I choose. I work the evening on it and come up with a first draft and send it off. The snow was not good for skiing today. More snow tomorrow, perhaps it will be powder. Dear Texas: I am wishing you all the energy you need to be warm and fed and safe tonight.