#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Ice Flames, Morning Brook

~ Excerpt from “Dream the Prize,” by Dennis Patrick Slattery

Morning Brook

A morning like this, heavy-skied with clouds and mute-gray, this makes the river black. Black river skimmed and coated with ice, thin and thick and places where the black water ripples. There is ice, it’s hard, though, to find interesting pictures. I could say this is the ice’s fault; but I think, no, maybe it is a lack in my own imagination or ability to see. Still, I see ice flames, and I see a spout spewing energy. My youngest comes over for a short time. She has adopted a kitten. Now I am a kitten grandmother, too. Later in the day I go into Arlington and meet the new grand kitty. I am called to be more of a cat person now. For her sake, I will try. Also, I swim again at the health club. I feel great. Glad to be warm in the pool. I am trying to adapt to the presence of workmen in my house all day long; the loss of privacy. In my office I find silence and peace and the pleasure of connecting with my quiet center. What a sunset tonight: black branched trees glowing red in the sky. Tonight, I attend a Zoom lecture sponsored by the Jungian Society of Western, MA, on personal myth with Dennis Patrick Slattery, whose poem is excerpted above. It’s quite stimulating; I feel like the spout in my morning brook, that energy of awakening to ideas. Tonight, I will sleep beneath the bridge, as Slattery writes, and watch for the prize floating in the dark silent silk river just feet from where I dream.