Rainy Morning and A Beginning

The rain awakened me last night with its persistent tapping. Acorns hit the roof and the wooden stairs leading up the hill to my house. It sounded like heel clicks and I envisioned a posse of women in black stilettos arriving at my door. What did they want? Perhaps they were the harbinger of a changing season and they soon will be trading their heels for insultated boots.

One manuscript has found a home and another was a finalist in a contest. Although being a finalist does not get me publication, it feels like a tiny validation from the outside world. I will go back to it, reorder the poems, perhaps delete some and add others. I may retitle it.

As the days grow shorter, my narrative grows longer and I wake up with stories perched on the nightstand. First lines haunt my dreams. Today's first line: "I am not a stalker." Go ahead--you write the story. Make her an unreliable narrator. Perhaps she has an addiction to texting and is compulsively texting someone who has made it clear that he isn't interested. Throw in a few other habits, a complicated family dynamic--and there you have it. A beginning.

Settling In

The nights are getting cooler and there's a fire-tip on top of the oak tree down the road. It's quieter and darker. I find myself gathering in, dreaming of winter nights with a persistent wind knocking at the window. My life is tightly scheduled again with decisions to be made almost daily. When will I see friends? How many hours can I devote to my caretaking role and still balance all my teaching? How will I find the time to finish two manuscripts and submit my work to journals? When I am discussing poetry or writing, the world drops away and I find myself immersed in words. I know that magic captures some of my students--I can see it because they get very quiet. I remind myself that the younger students will someday remember this. There is a synergy that happens in a classroom. When I leave, I take that energy with me, remembering that teaching is like learning which is like observing which is a vital part of writing. I try to stay in the moment, honoring all the voices in my many classrooms. I am lucky enough to work with all ages which keeps me from getting tainted or too fixed in a genre or attitude. Like life, my interactions continually change. There is always something growing, even in winter.