Still, at Sunset

Here's a Monday rest for your eyes.  For those in the mid-Atlantic and on the East Coast, nope, I sure didn't take this picture this weekend.  Hope those of you in the severe storm area are safe, warm and shoveled out.

Happy Monday.

The First Snow After

It starts in the evening.

Graining our reflections

it arrives absent 

chrysanthemums of joy.

Instead, 

a snake of memory poisons us.

Waist-high paths mapped 

with deer prints,

ewe trees gnawed to stub.

Standing tiptoe over

a bowling alley driveway. 

Piles, carted by dump trucks

that lingered to May, 

late spring birthing 

sludge and oil

where dirty white 

used to be.

No.

First snow this year

coats us in trepidation.

We wake to four inches.

At dawn, the window panes 

and tree trunks,

hold on to the grey-light,

the ground over-exposed.

Black and white picture

developing into day.

Oops!

I sat down at the computer today to get in my morning writing, and realized I hadn't even thought about a blog post for today.   It poured rain all weekend, and since I don't have much in the way of current photos to save the day, for fun, I scrolled without looking and then just stopped. Here's what you get.  Page 70 of my first draft of my current project. Happy Monday, everyone!

Doug finished shoving a bait bag into a trap before answering.  “I have a friend who uses my boat to go fishing sometimes.  He pays me with portions of his catch.  I grill up some of it and when there’s too much, I stick it in the freezer for other uses.”

            “What kind of fish?”

            “Mackerel, bluefish or striper, mostly.”  He rubbed his belly.  “I love me some bluefish on the grill.  But enough is enough sometimes.  Like I said, I’m single.  A man can only eat so much.”

            Cal studied him.  His neck between his hairline and collar was tanned, and the stubble that had appeared on his chin glinted in the sun.  The light hairs streaking down his brown arms, ended at a horizontal scar on the top of his wrist.  His T-shirt was spattered with salt water, his cut-off shorts bleached blue-white.  It occurred to her that other than with Jack all those years ago, she’d never been boating with someone who didn’t dress in white-soled boat shoes and nautical Polos. She glanced down at her linen capris, now wrinkled and speckled from the salt water spray.  Turning her attention to Doug and Will, she realized that while they hadn’t touched each other since the high five on the dock, they worked together without words, in a rhythm only possible between two people who had known each other forever.

            The lawyer caught her staring.  “Something on your mind?”

            Cal lifted a shoulder and dropped it.  “Lots of sharing going on.  You take care of your late friend’s son. You give your lobster away and get meals in return.  Your friend uses your boat and you end up with bate.  It’s just different.”

            “Different than what?”

Winter Competition - IWSG

It's the first Wednesday of the month and time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. To read more writers in support of other writers, click here!

Ah, January.  My least favorite month, really. Around here, real winter, true winter, sets in right after Christmas, with cloudy skies and breathless cold.  And worse, ever since I became a mother, the month has always seemed filled with fits and starts.  Having taken time off work for Christmas, my little family would slog back to work and school, only to encounter snow related school closings or illness, the stress of unplanned time off compounding the letdown of the holidays.  While I’m off the hook on some of that now, I still dread the arrival of the first month.  Perhaps it would be different, if, as it is for my Australian sister, the New Year ushered in full summer and blooming roses instead of a harsh and frozen earth.  But it’s likely I’ll never experience that. Schooled in my own long history, I wake up on the first work Monday of the New Year, dreading the four weeks to come.

I know this though.  I just have to get through it.  So this past Monday, as I have on every work day for the last four years, I got up an hour early in order to write.  I had a bad, toss and turn night, and on waking at 5:45, a ghost of a thought slipped through my brain.  What if just today, I didn’t get up early?  What if just once, I turned over?  

Even in my sandy-eyed, drag-myself-to-the-shower exhaustion, a gem of pure pride sparkled up because that weasel of a temptation hadn’t gained a toe-hold.  Instead, I made myself oatmeal with all natural peanut butter and banana, drank my orange juice, wrapped myself in a down comforter and sat down at the computer.  After reviewing the last chapter I’d finished over the weekend, I began the next.  Five hundred and thirty-six words later, my “time-to-get-ready-for-work” alarm rang out. 

The score so far? Liza one.  January zero.