#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Front window, evening view

This is different. This is one nation. Alone. Standing fast against overwhelming odds. Fighting with every breath. Men and women alike. Ordinary citizens banded together against a pitiless enemy and giving no quarter, never yielding, laying it all on the line for their families, their friends, their homes, their country.

~ Perry Perez, Letter to the Editor, NYTimes, Feb. 28, 2022

Frank and I sleep for ten hours! Wonderful to get the rest from our travel home that we apparently needed. For me, again, a morning ski; the skiing is very good, even if a bit icy today; I avoid downhills. Charlie and Suzi keep up, happy to have me back. I listen to Ukraine news, the NYTimes The Daily podcasts from Friday and from today. Sabrina Tavernise, a national correspondent for The New York Times, is reporting from Kyiv. She’s on the spot, the audio of her interviewing Ukrainians in the war zones is terrifying and compelling, taking the whole idea of what’s happening there out of the abstract, putting it in human, moment to moment terms. Quite moving and disturbing. And, the news throughout the day gets only worse. Frank keeps asking me if I am going to poetry workshop tonight; I tell him, I don’t know. I don’t have a poem yet. My office is quiet. My daughter hard at work at her desk in the office next door. We do not disturb each other. I have prep to do for two webinars that resume this week. Then, I have no idea about a poem. But, it’s now or never. I am blank. I spent time on the plane trying to come up with an idea. Nothing. I don’t know why, but I open a file I’ve saved discussing the poems of William Carlos Williams, and I seem to know, intuitively, not consciously, that I will start a poem somehow. I scroll to his poem, “Nantucket.” Stop, read it. Think, okay, I will use it as a model to write a poem about Nosara (Costa Rica) where we stayed. And, that’s what I do. I have just the right amount of time for the draft. Frank comes in as I’m finishing. I send it off. He says, he knew I would come up with something. And, tonight, I get excellent feedback and much appreciation. Thank you William Carlos Williams. Here is something lovely about the Special One during our absence: his progress in imaginative play. Before we left, he made the roar of a lion. Now, he is the lion roaring.