40 years

Forty years ago, I was photographed on my first day of school. 

Shielding my eyes from the bright morning sun, I looked into the camera without the slightest idea of what the future held in store.

Recently I returned to the scene of that photo for a "half time" check-in:  if gene patterns held, half of that future had been lived and half remained. Again I covered my eyes, but now I looked up into a sky that held optimism and promise. 

Three years ago this fall, I took an inspiring writing workshop which redirected my energies from the non-fiction writing I'd done for many years to a then-moribund novel. 

85,000 words and countless re-writes later, I'm in the final stretch of edits, working on a book proposal, and diving into my next venture:  an MFA-Creative Writing program. 

Where will this path lead? 

I honestly don't know. 

Will I become a creative writing teacher? 

Ideally. 

A grant writer? 

Possibly.

An editor in a publishing house? 

Perhaps. 

Will there be opportunities that I can't foresee? 

Undoubtedly. 

What I do know is that I'm excited about the journey.

Let's talk about the weather

She 

She left a year ago.

We had danced every morning at dawn in the thick of October, 

communed by the dock after I'd tossed bread to the ducks, 

unwound on the beach under a smeared auburn sunset 

and then she was gone.

A year passed and she had yet to return.

Yoked to Magical memories I walked in circles

through cold, damp days, telling myself 

she was not the one not the only one not the be all end all;

I stopped looking at the calendar.

Wednesday morning I awoke and she was there. 

Suddenly I was whole, aglow. 

I hummed “Ode to Joy” in the shower, 

sipped coffee black and rich, 

burst out the front door into seventy degrees
sun and blue sky far as the eye could see...

I felt connected

to the spandex-clad couple jogging through the park, 

the lazy arc and ebb of the Frisbee in the field behind them, 

to young fresh faces that glowed-
-and burned.

I felt connected 
to her everflowing presence

with a hitch in my stride, 

bouncing up and down like a bobbin on a purling stream 

gleaming with the spirit of her,

my long lost Indian summer.