The water like glass

Reflects rippled clouds, a golden streak of sunlight;

The lake bottom is clear, small bits of white shells like baby teeth strewn about.

Black bugs pirouette above, briefly land to touch their partners: their silhouettes.

A fish disturbs the surface, leaving popples as it dips back beneath.

Something small — a minnow — skips across the water like a stone.

Overhead a great blue heron flies by, with a rhythmic pumping of wings.

The sun, which moments ago examined its face in the flat surface

Like a mirror,

Tucks back behind the clouds.

Another minnow leaps, this time 1-2-3 skips.

Beyond the water’s edge, birds chirp and twitter, simple sparrows. But is any of this simple? And isn’t it all?

A boat rumbles closer, traffic sounds rimming the lake pick up. It is a work day.

The spell is broken. And yet, it doesn’t have to be.

This snapshot, like a postcard, will remind me: I was here. I breathed this all in on June 19, 2019.

Like the dancing insects, like the shy sun,

I saw my heart’s reflection here,

and in the memory of yesterday’s unexpected visitors: a turtle and a toad (carrying messages I so needed to hear).

These can bring me here again and again

Until I return next year, to this place, to these writer friends, pen and notebook in hand.

Writing is risky business. You are a fisher of pearls.

You must be willing to jump in with both feet, submerge yourself (yes, head under water), go deep, scrape the bottom.

(While you’re there, sit awhile, like you did at those underwater tea parties you had with your childhood girlfriends. Enjoy yourself.)

Look around. Notice. See what you see. Then pick up treasures, as many as you can. Tuck them into your T-shirt, bottom edge rolled up into a long pocket. Fill it — and then fill it some more.

There will come a time when you can hold your breath no longer. Swim back to the surface (kick kick kick), breathe, empty your pearls onto the waiting page, and dive back in.

I stopped in for Chinese food after my prison writing workshop. This was in my fortune cookie. ☺️

When I posted a photo on Facebook, my friend, Nanette, responded, “You already have!”

Bless you, Nanette. ❤️

I’ve neglected this space for two weeks.

I wrote a little bit about the reason — the birth of my granddaughter — here. But that’s only part of it. Honestly, I haven’t felt much like writing. I lost my appetite for it. Maybe just briefly.

Hopefully just briefly. Writing has always been my way in the world.

Mind you, even now, it’s not that I have nothing to say. Thoughts run wild through my brain. But I won’t pick up a pen, even to journal, although I tell myself I really want to. Why don’t I?

It feels heavy, like too much work. And who cares anyway, is what I tell myself.

Over the weekend I delighted myself by “Just do[ing] it” with regard to sone housework tasks I’ve put off, because it feels like too much work. I heard my friend Bobbi’s voice: “Sometimes how you feel is irrelevant. Just do it.”

I just did it. I folded piles of laundry, washed dishes, changed out porch lightbulbs (all four — burned out since I can’t remember when), cut the mailing labels off a box of writing magazines to take to my prison writers. (I’ve been tripping over that box for a month.)

It felt great, hence the delight.

Even this post. I began it five days ago and there it sat. For no reason other than I didn’t feel like writing it. Even though I wanted to. Which is baffling to me.

So there. I did it. I finished the blog post.

Now to that journal.

Here’s a beautiful piece of art I just found on the Joss and Main site: https://www.jossandmain.com/Ebern-Designs–Courage-by-Olivia-Rose-Textual-Art-on-Canvas-In-Gray-Brown-Turquoise-CD85156990024F37B8B7E6280B2D159E-L1318-K~ENDE1133.html?refid=FBCF450_NNVRDPA.

May it be so!

I’ve been off the grid for a wonderfully beautiful reason.

My daughter, son-in-law and grandson welcomed a new baby into their family on Mother’s Day!

My granddaughter is perfect and precious, and I’m so grateful to have been with them for this miracle, which puts everything into a new perspective.

As my friend, Jeannie, said, “It just reminds you how pure we are when we start …”

How hard it is to work our way back to that knowing without this kind of blessed reminder!