I don’t know how you walked into this story:
The candles were lit, the doors were locked,
the windows closed, the pantry stocked.
The fire was stoked. No one had knocked.

I’d arranged a sealed circuit for this tale:
The plot was planned, the setting set,
characters drawn, expectations met.
The words were gathered. I had cast the net.

Yet somehow, when I turned around,
there you stood without a sound,
like you didn’t quite know what to do,
or you were waiting for my starting cue.

Your presence changes everything–
new characters will shift the telling
Now we must make a new decision,
and begin the tale with a revision.

***
Well–I was really excited about those first two stanzas. They raced themselves out the doorway of my brain and onto the paper. Then the whole train juddered to a halt, and I had to force the last two out with crowbars. I’ll let it stew a bit, and maybe I’ll come back to find them readier to be part of the conversation.

Gratitude List:
1. Goslings: Mama Goose had a hatching a couple days ago. Too hard to see through the long grass, but we think there were about four or five babies. Yesterday morning, Jon saw them all walking on the grass across the creek from the pond. By afternoon, they were gone. I hope they went down Cabin Creek toward the Susquehanna, and found a turtle-free place to grow strong and healthy.
2. Ducklings: This morning, we had to stop class and watch as Mama Duck paraded her eleven ducklings around on the roof outside my window. She had her nest outside the French Room window. We called the office and they called Herb, and Herb climbed a ladder to the roof. Mama flew away, and Herb gathered her babies into a bucket and climbed down the ladder. He’s got experience with this process–he says ducks are always building nests on the roofs, and then sometimes the little ones can’t get down. Presumably babies are all happily following Mama down the MillStream.
3. Community baseball. Ellis had a game tonight. Wrightsville was trounced, worse than we trounced Windsor last week. It’s fun to spend the evening outside with other folks, watching a game.
4. We got a little panicky when we got home and couldn’t find Fred. I hadn’t seen him since I left for school in the morning. Jon went out with a flashlight and checked every farm building. We can’t just call like we used to, because he can no longer hear us calling. Jon even walked along the road for a while, but couldn’t see any trace of him. When he came back, he did a loop up behind the house, and there was the old man, sitting quietly next to the basement window. So grateful that the cat came back.

May we walk in Beauty!