I Will Tell You What You Are

Hello Dear Ones!

When this newsletter goes out, it will be (is? was?) the first day of The Stafford Challenge — a suggestion to write a poem a day for an entire year. I have signed up, as have some of my dear creative friends, and I’m looking forward to what comes forward from a regular daily practice. I am choosing to hold this challenge lightly, to write for exploration rather than publication, and to always always remember that the process is the point.

Kind of the same way I write this newsletter.

Today’s draft is a mashup of two days’ morning pages.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI will tell you what you are.Choose to listen or not,it makes no difference to the voices that travel down the mycelium.You know when a movie premiers – or used to –with red carpets, crowds of people,sparkling bare legs sliding out from polished black sedan doors?Can you picture the spotlights on the roof,wider than your arm span(even you, my dearest unusually tall Beloved)bright enough to fizzle every circuit in your brain?See how they sweep across the night sky,pointless, you may think untila single night bird passes throughthe star of its personal premier.You, my dear one,are the sky behind that one night bird.You think you exist in a form with known edgesbut my love,you are the single sliver of a vaster night skythat holds you even as you turn your face away.