A walk to the river, it’s below freezing, and the ice patterns are gorgeous. The poem I began yesterday was, upon waking, still interesting. I worked on it before going out, and recorded it, and listened on my walk. I liked it well enough, and heard some minor tweaks. All day, the time for my writing. I work this new poem to a finished draft I’m satisfied with for today, about my mother, about the cheese puffs. Except I’m still fussing with the final line. But I moved on, into revision, and tried and tried to get the pew poem to work as a poem, and still it wants to veer into prose, and I tried to have it work that way, but finally, stopped again for now, stuck. I picked up another revision, a piece I’ve workshopped twice, and made the changes I could easily see. Tonight, I met with my two poetry pals, men I met at in Truchas, New Mexico at a retreat, and one’s in Mississippi, the other in West Texas, and we workshopped our pieces and they had good things to say about the piece I brought, and very minor changes. I was pleased, and relieved, they found much to appreciate and so little to fuss with. It has come so far and it’s working.
