#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
A dog barks, a rooster crows, a bird's wings thrash wide tropical leaves, grassy mud puddles slosh under my feet. Awake for two hours, at the table on the deck, under the swirl of clouds I have sat before walking – through two cheerful downpours. Then sun. I head up the wet road to my forest trail. Always, for a writer, the day something goes into print is a satisfying day, and this morning I have news of a publication, a short, hybrid sort of nonfiction piece I wrote at the end of last summer, inspired by three photos from my daily walks on the remote beach where we stay in Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard. Three photos, all from different days: a dead dolphin I found on the beach one morning, a penis someone sculpted from the natural clay of the cliffs onto a boulder; and surf crashing on beach cairns under a bright sky.
This piece is different from most of my poetry and prose; somewhat risky and startling. So, it found a home in StormCellar, "a journal of safety and danger," is what it calls itself. Perhaps a picture, some pictures, from these daily walks in Martinique will inspire a new poem or prose piece. The sun is so bright, the wind is so playful, the clouds so carefree, it's a challenge to think of crafting something new here – yet. Even revision, I haven't found the inspiration to open a poem - composed in such a vastly different climate– for fine tuning. The piece published today didn't consciously enter my imagination until after I returned home. So, there's reason to hope, to trust, there are poems in the making, invisibly frothing somewhere mysterious within.
