#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

. . . Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems. . .

Joy Harjo, excerpt from “Remember”

Warmer than I expected. Dreary sky, but I walked under it, from the start, in a pleasant trance. My hands wanted contact with the bark of trees and the tufts of straw and dead rotting leaves on stumps, softly disintegrating. Lichen, scratching the palm of my hand. Thorns and prickle. Deep breathing, letting the steel gray moisture into my lungs, and out. Presence. Awareness. The tops of trees above my scalp. I found, then, in the wetlands of my property, in the crunchy edges of the swampy water, the wetlands woman formed in yesterday’ ice, and for this sighting of her, I was grateful and hummed along, deeper into my mood and the November trees. Tonight, at dark, I set off after dinner into the city with my poem, to the Monday workshop. But, I was tired, and in the small room, with our poems, my feet were hot, my clothes were too tight, my brain was mopey and the consensus was my poem was confusing; what was so clear to me was confounding. I was too tired to be objective. Drove home tired. Now, am very tired. And I was hungry too, and tired and hungry is no good way to consider feedback on a poem. Sleeping and dreaming and waking fresh, this is what I need. What a lovely, lovely wide awake hope and joy I felt in the outdoors this morning.