#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Between two breaths

". . . A practised ear could hear, between two breaths,
the secret blackness of the snow
come flooding in. . ."

Excerpt from TOTEM (i) (poem) by Luke Davies

Surprise: the lights went out in the middle of the night. I woke from a sound sleep, sensing a presence near my bed. My daughter, with a flashlight. She wanted me to have a light in case I got up. I worried a little, wondered when the lights would come back and the heat, of course. Stayed warm in bed, fell back asleep and heard the electricity come back on some time before morning: relief. Rain fell for hours, melting so much of the fallen snow, wiping the branches clean. It was slushy and messy and a bit mild when I went out. I listened to a wonderful poem on the Poem a Day podcast, quoted above, and it was so sensual and evocative I felt it entirely engrossed me and enlivened the landscape. It was a busy day of prepping my workshop on memoir to open tomorrow and prepping for the Farm Pond Writers tomorrow. Then I led my monthly Aim for Astonishing that meets in the late afternoon, and it went so well. The writing shared was wonderful. It’s a small group, my smallest, and it’s working so well, and small groups sometimes struggle. Not this one. I hope to draft a new poem tomorrow, but it will be a stretch if I do. But, this is what happened last week, so I’ll see. I marvelled at the wonderful quote from the Luke Davies poem, and thought, this is such an astute mindfulness idea: “between two breaths.” Like the melted snow drop on the branch.

Morning Brook