#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Somehow I am overdressed. It’s warmer than I expected. Except there is snow to trudge through and the river is part ice, part melt, mixed up after storm messy. The trees are snow free, after rain, and there are wonderful frozen droplets of ice hanging from leafless and thin branches; tiny gorgeous fragile decorations. It’s strange to realize I am here at the river in February for the first time in five years. No tropical climate time; no shorebirds to watch. The wetlands are half-frozen and bluish and bubbling a bit where they aren’t iced, and I am immersed in this quiet beauty with gratitude. There is much to see, I am looking carefully. And listening to the Sylvia Plath biography on Audible, so involved in it, right now, listening to her Smith College years. I have to go in, though, to lead my Farm Pond Writers: a prompt I’m excited to lead on self-portraits. The writing and sharing are, as always, exquisite, in the way this ice drop is. Then, I go to Vanessa Gabb’s advanced poetry workshop where we read and discuss three wonderful poems by Marilyn Nelson. Frank has a little time off and does a food shopping! How grateful I am. And I take the pig food to the pigs at the farm and tonight, after dinner, I’m tired, but I want a poem for tomorrow and so I go into my office, into the quiet focus, doubting and hoping, and starting from scratch, scratch up a poem that has been on my mind. I just begin, and then it comes. It’s a very rough draft. I won’t judge it. It’s a rough draft, and now it is written and sent. And this is why having weekly workshops is so helpful; the commitment to showing up with a poem draft. This, too, this draft, rough as it is and with much work to be done, perhaps, yet, in this moment, just for this moment, my own ice drop.