. . . now I'll die a happy man. . . 

First, I walk. Warmer – not warm – the brook has an edge, the thinnest layer, of ice. A leaf, sinking every so slowly beneath the surface, leaves an ice tracing of its shape like a fine skin it has shed.

Isn't this the way a handwritten diary entry or a letter from long ago leaves a trace of a day as a life lived sinks and cycles beneath the surface?

This Monday morning of silence I'm reflecting, about my writing, about what I want to be working on after my poetry retreat, a kind of transition that has not become clear. 

What does become clear: my attention is called to layers, layers in nature and layers of handwritten texts, letters, diaries and original and archived photos combined and the glorious process of enlightenment of a moment, a time, a day, and of decomposition; how light is leaving the leaves, how I can see it happen in a bright, colorful shape on the earth, or even, still dangling, so delicately hung, in the necessary cycle of letting go.

I have always been a diarist, and must be, still.

I've been keeping this daily nature and creative writing blog now for 15 months, and I'm warming up to a creative change, yet I hold fast to the idea of the experience of a day: awareness of nature, the place I am walking, the place I am noticing, landscape and lifecycle, weather and psyche and consciousness – being present – in this new day.  How can my blog change and hold onto what nourishes me most as an artist and human being?

Artistic change springs from intuition rising into consciousness now. 

Home, I comb the diaries I kept for my three children from before they were born. I open notebook after notebook, flipping handwritten pages, searching for any page with today's date in any year past. . . finally, here is one for Landon, November 13, 1996. It is a day I am pregnant with my third child, Frances. This day, I tell Landon his father and I have decided he can be present at his sister's birth. Above, you can see, layered over the leaf on the brook in the ice of this day what he said on this day twenty two years ago. 

In three weeks Landon will turn 30. He's not married, has no children - yet, but he's in a serious relationship, so, it's likely all this happiness is in store for him, even though his wish to see at least one baby born before he dies has been fulfilled.

All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2017