#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

. . .Above me, far away, the pileated
woodpecker looks like a buzzard—
red dot, dark body, patient in its rhythm.
. . . . I love its massive head

leading the rest of it from tree top to welcomed
tree top, immersed in sunlight, in all this hope,
yet it’s sad to know that I couldn’t see it
clearly, that I misplaced it for something else.

by Jacob Stratman

Awake early, out early, blue sky after sunrise, early and to the river and there was a bit of ice, it was cold. Cold, and I wondered if I was dressed warmly enough, and I wasn’t, but I kept going, a long ramble, I rambled past the wetlands and past the brook, and into the Trustees and walked the trail, passing the swamp, what a racket of knocking. I looked up. The pileated woodpecker perched on a dead tree under the sky, over the swamp. I watched him for a while, and I listened to his noise and business. I kept going, walked through the open field and around the wooded trails and back home and felt cold but satisfied with the sighting. I had a very good writing and revising day. After my client hour, I stayed in the quiet of my office and used a few hours. It was hard to get going. I didn’t feel like revising. Then I just decided: use this time. So, I opened the poem from yesterday and revised until satisfied. Then, made another choice. I have two poems about haircuts, and I revised the most recent. Then, someone in workshop suggested I would need three. So, reluctantly, feeling like I didn’t know where to start, I started the third. And it went somewhere. And I finished a draft. And then I was tired, but I saw another client, and felt so grateful to have written today; not wasting the time, not getting stuck. My youngest came home, we had lovely conversation in the evening. Frank talked about my father, my father mentoring him in business over the years, and I was quiet, listening, missing him, missing him so much. Wanting him there, in the living room with us. For ten minutes, even. For, even just the amount of minutes I stood admiring the red headed woodpecker. I thought of the afternoon, my father’s garden, after he had met Frank, my friend, for the very first time, to talk about his career. And my father guessed that I would marry Frank; that day in the garden, he knew it before I did.