SNOW MOON AND GRATITUDE
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This morning the air carries the smell of grass, and a thread of geese sound in the sky.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a heart shaped object on the ground. I say it is ‘Lovely’, a photograph I took of a discarded elastic band found in the gutter near the end of my road in February 2022.
February this year started with a full moon, and it felt good to turn the calendars over to welcome in a new month before taking time to take a stroll under the Snow Moon. Cloud meant I could not see it, but I knew it was up there somewhere and I sent it a gentle howl!
On the last day of January I took a walk before going to the last session of January Writing Hours with Kim Moore and Clare Shaw. It felt good to clear my head in anticipation of the final session and to give a gentle nod to all the hours I had spent in their zoom room with my writing. It was important to me to mark the ending of this particular daily practice and to think what I am taking forward with me. As well as writing poems in my own style (it’s always right in there!) I have enjoyed experimenting with different forms and approaches in response to the poems and prompts provided. I have some lovely drafts to work on over the coming month and that feels wonderfully celebratory as does the recognition that carving out this daily space has given me the chance to write poems that were definitely waiting inside me.
During the week I also had the opportunity to read my poems at two fabulous online events. First of all, I took ‘Flamingo’ with me to the Stephen Paul Wren’s Molecules Unlimited Online for the bird themed evening. It was an absolute delight to be immersed in David Morley’s work as well as the poems from the guest poets. All the poems opened up my thinking and had me even more in awe of birds and the natural world. And on Saturday evening I took ‘I Can’t Send You Back Can I? and ‘My Sister Went to Live on the Moon’ to Louise Longson’s Last Saturday event where there was a wonderful celebration for the sixth birthday of Mark Anthony Owen’s iamb.
Those readings had me taking a little look back at where I had come from...me the poet who used to only want to read short poems at events in case the nerves were too much and my breath ran out. Today I do a happy poet dance for the keeping going, my belief in the words. I chuckle at the fact that I recorded a poem in one take this month (a trimmed beginning so I could breathe and be ready, and a trimmed ending, but one take nonetheless). I hold huge gratitude for the encouragement from others to say the words, and for the uplifting support I have had which includes the editing out of ticking clocks, invitations to read in welcoming zoom rooms, poets who share their knowledge and skills. And I am glad for all the people who find that my words resonate with them and take time to say nice things about what I have set down in the world.
Here's a poem in celebration of yesterday’s full moon. It was written for the waxing to full moon I drove under on the way to and from work in 2022.
SNOW MOON
For a moment this morning I called you
Tiger Moon.
You let the clouds stripe you before first light.
On my way home you hung low over fields
then winked at me in my rear-view mirror.
When I asked your real name
you whispered Snow Moon
and the storm winds blew wild.
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