#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Maple tree bud

It is the season of maple buds spilled, tiny bouquet’s, decorating the ground, on every surface, the brown leaves and broken branches and stumps and boulders display them, and the brook, they float, on the swamp surface they float, they are decorating, like an organic confetti, the woods and all around. They decorate my walk and blood red they show up gorgeously. I take a long early wander and talk on the phone to my daughter who just had her birthday because she is awake too. We talk about our work, take issues apart to get at the heart of the matter. Then, I spend time just thinking. I need to prepare for my poetry reading today with the New England Poetry Club, on Zoom, with poets Ruth Smullen and Ann Taylor. I have fifteen minutes and I want to know exactly what I’m reading and I need an organizing principle to select the poems. At home, I get to work. I find a wonderful quote in my notes from the poet Louise Bogan.

"Poets, traditionally, historically, were those who asked basic (and unanswerable) questions. Who are we? Why do we live? Do we die forever?"

- Louise Bogan

And this gives me my format. I break the quote into three parts, three questions, and find poems of mine that live in these three questions. Then I read them and make sure I’m within my fifteen minutes. At 3:00 I sign in, and I’m surprised to see there are over 90 listeners. And I’m first. I see comments from friends, letting me know they are there, and this is heartening. I don’t have time to be nervous, and I cannot see all 90 faces, and I’m sitting in my own quiet space at home, and so this gives me courage. I’m very pleased with my reading. And surprised at myself, because I feel, when I’m done, and muted, and trying to listen to the next poet, that I am quite emotional. More so than I’ve ever been after a reading. And I realize that this process, choosing the poems from the questions, the poems I chose, instinctively, seemed to deepen the emotional experience for me. There are wonderful readings following mine, and Frank, who has listened in from somewhere else high fives me, and I’m so cheerful and relieved and filled up. And my daughters are both home, and my daughter’s boyfriend, and I make dinner and feed everyone, and I feel full of energy, heading into a busy week ahead.