#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Sunday needs a new poem. Will it be done? Squeezed in? I need room to write this poem. And when I go down to feed the dogs and the rooster I see a kit with a note: This gingerbread house can be made by anyone who wants to make it with Wave. And, as soon as I’ve had my coffee he is up, and I’m the handy one, and he wants to build it before breakfast. So, of course, we open the box. He eats the chimney stack before I get the gingerbread walls up. Much of the candy too. And then it’s time for breakfast. Its’s a very sloppy looking house, my fault. It’s beyond me this early. To him, it’s quite good enough. Later, we go out for a hike, up to King Philip’s Overlook. I warn him my back won’t be able to carry him today. We climb the steep hill. Then follow the trail. Lots of people out. Where are the blackberries? When will it be summer again, he asks. Yet, it’s sunny, and lovely, and we strip layers off. I carry all the extra shirts, scarves, jackets. The granite rocks of the overlook are full of other hikers. I have an impulse, perhaps not a wise one, and suggest he and I climb down the face of the overlook to the river’s edge. We’re careful, it’s slippery, tree roots and rocks, pine needles and dirt. We make it well enough, and play with throwing some rocks into the river. Sun on our us. Then I have to turn our return into an adventure. There’s no real path. We have to walk the river’s edge, trying not to get wet or stung by prickers and overhanging branches. I know it’s too much, but I encourage him on. We’re pioneers. Our horses were stolen while we slept. We have to get back on foot. This sort of works, a little bit. But his foot inside his boot gets soaking wet, and that’s the end of his patience. I forge another path through the brush to find our way back to the trail. I find one of our horses It’s me, my back. He climbs on. Still unhappy with the wet foot and I’m hot. But I find the trail! We’re on our way home! We cross the tracks, and we’re close to home, but then I trip on a root under the leaves and we collapse. He’s even less happy now. We have to call Papa an he comes, carries Wave home. Then I read my poem at a poetry reading for Passager––it was a lovely online event of poets. Then I got a few hours of quiet time in my room. Didn’t make dinner. Shut my door and made a poem draft. I don’t know if it’s much. But it’s what it is for now, for workshop tomorrow. A beginning, part of the new manuscript, the Athol poems.