#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

The morning brook

Awake at what, 4, or 5 a.m.? Yes, adrenalin, for some reason. I put on my ear buds and listen to the Plath biography which I’m really involved in. It’s so granular, and detailed and covering so much territory, year by year. I am just listening to the Mademoiselle Magazine guest editorship in the summer before her senior year at Smith when she spends a month in Manhattan, preceding her first suicide attempt, and detailing the experience that inspired her novel, The Bell Jar. I watch the sky for it to light, I will go out early, early and ski. Finally, morning sky and I ski in the still fresh powder to the river that is frozen now and will be entirely dusted in snow by the afternoon storm coming. No sun, really. And I struggle to find any picture that juices me up. I find this ice image in the morning brook, but I don’t love it. It’s here because I must have one. Except, the stop at the brook was in every other way a peaceful, delicious moment. I ski for about an hour and must come into a busy day of meetings, and the squeeze of what poem will I bring to a peer writing critique that meets on Tuesdays once per month? Yeeks. I look at a poem to see if I’ll revise it; and I find, to my great surprise, I have a draft of a related, but brand new poem that I don’t remember drafting! But here it is! It’s a quick and dirty draft, but it will do. And my peers appreciate it and give me great feedback, and I’m happy to be working on poems with this lovely group of poets even though my day has been a bit jammed full and I have, still, a board meeting for tonight. A powdery refreshment of snow fell outside my window, so pleasantly, all afternoon. And in the morning, I shall have another ski when the sun comes up;