#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

First Violets!

. . . and whilst bouquet sounds a bit grand,
just one in a tooth mug in any hotel
can make a bare room an arbour,
a bower, a dell. . .

~ Donny O’Rourke, Excerpt from “Violets”

My youngest spent the night and woke unsore and better from her post-Covid vaccine slump and so we walked in the cheerful sunshine to the river, into the woods, across the meadow, by the brooks, by the wetlands, talking, talking and talking about graduate school and drama therapy and cohorts and pandemic learning and it was wonderful to have so much time to ramble. And in the swamp, I saw the maple leaves strung over the mud from tree branches, lanterns, and then, the whole time, I was wondering about the violets, had they popped uup anywhere from the brown leaves yet? and we stopped to talk to some passing friends and dogs and then I saw the purple petals of my first spring violet. I led the Farm Pond Writers after and we focused on George Floyd, the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict, and read poems by Terrance Hayes and Kyle G. Dargan and Toi Derricotte and then wrote from a prompt. I wrote a draft of a poem very quickly myself, which I rarely do during workshops I’m leading. Later, I worked on it, and sent the draft off to Thurs. morning workshop. Frank surprised me in the late afternoon with a trip to Maine to the shore that we may make at the end of May and I thought excitedly about the photos I hope to take. And, for today, so grateful for the wild flowers and maples wings of these woods.

Maple Wings over the Swamp