#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
“Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines. . . ”
This morning, we walked early in the meadows, fields, wetlands and woods of the former Medfield State Hospital, as we often do. We took it slow. Now, it's September. I wanted to look, really look at everything. and take some of the warm, late summer gorgeousness home with me. Especially the hydrant, bright red, overgrown with brambles and dried vines, abandoned in the unused meadow that used to be a functioning farm. We crossed the street, walked the main old hospital grounds, then off into the woods and meadows on the way to the river. Crossing the footbridge over the wetlands, I love this bridge through the stillness, I turned around to see the morning from another view, and there was the sun beaming on the bridge we had just crossed. It's September now, and I am crossing to sixty, so satisfied with the summer and all the ways I found to be active and productive and creative and quiet and connected to the people and places I love. At my desk, I responded to a lovely request from a journal I have two poems about to be published in this fall, Split Rock Review. A fall poem and a winter poem. A father poem and a mother poem. A childhood poem and an adulthood poem. The request was for contributors to submit a voice recording of poems, and also a 500 word "contributor's note" about some facet of writing the poem. So I recorded both poems and wrote my note, and felt very satisfied with the entire process, and also, a little sad, because I found myself immersed in the emotional worlds of the poems about my parents who are gone. But writing about the poems was also very satisfying, to see them more clearly, what they are saying and why, is what they mean to me.
All photos and text ©Kelly DuMar 2018