(because I've started getting up early)

There are stories in my pocket. Some are old and crumpled, like grey receipts or shopping lists, pressed into little pills of paper that have been washed too many times. I am emptying these out and throwing them away. They have stayed in my pockets for the past three years, like stones of guilt, like worry. I don’t have to unroll them and try to read the words. I don’t have to bother with them. If I make room my pockets will fill up again.

They are already filling up. There are new stories gathering there. Most of them are too new to take out—but they are there, growing. The pocket is working again. It hasn’t for years. Every day is important. Write every day and make room to think about the same things over and over. Read things that make you ready to write. Keep a pen in your pocket. Never leave the house without paper. Listen hard. Watch the light. Put it in your pocket.

Christmas Dusk

Advent IV

You had a window on the bay, darling, and took walks even in the wind. You had poems tacked on your wall and your left elbow pointed to Jamestown. And I, up-shore and inland, spent the days driving from hazard to hazard with my camera strap looped around my wrist and a notepad in my pocket, my fingers poking through green unraveled gloves, listening to classical radio.

You took the 14 home; I drove in from the west. We lit candles in mason jars and mulled cider in silver pots. We ate our late dinner (squash and winter greens and pan-fried fish) listening for feet on the stairs.

Just before bed, our friends arrived, in coats and scarves, in thrift-store boots and hand-made hats, carrying wine and fruit. And we gave them slips of paper, with scripture verses written in pencil, and we sat in the dark and took turns reading out loud.

(Reading God With Us at Mawney Street, 2009)