Goodnight Week

Nothing like friends, cider, a movie (Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic), a group dinner, rest after a week's work - not that I got any novel writing done. Everyone needs a Sabbath.
It's more difficult maintaining a high level of reading when trying to write 5-10 pages each night, or even every other night; it's more difficult balancing friends when locking myself into my room, slaving over a notebook, transcribing ideas and paragraphs from my quick, chicken-scratch onto the computer; difficult managing sleep when my best ideas often arrive late at night; difficult remembering to call people back, or text, once I've stepped into my writing zone.

I know the worth, at the end - this is my third such novel. But the duration is frightening, exhausting, intense, difficult, lovely. When do I read? My mealtimes are erratic, my sleep schedule wonky, and my additional writing suffers from lack of ingenuity (thus). Still, every night I open a book, and breathe in words that are not mine: Mary Oliver, Orson Scott Card, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Keats, TS Eliot, Genesis, Job, Faust my companions this month, and more, as they guide me through writing, and dreaming.

Thank you, friends, for supporting me, carrying me in your thoughts, even if (when) I disappear.

A strange season, the tulips rise again, then fall -
it's autumn, so why, sunflowers,
do you lift your heads
greeting this sun?
oh, yellow faces, I whispered goodbye
long, long ago
you fled south with birds and song, leaving
grey skies, low and lovely
my heart torn in twain

My eyes are drooping, and it's not yet even eleven. Another poem, another piece unfinished for the time. Tomorrow will be a busy day, a creative day, a writing day. Friends, I love you and pray for each of you, even when I cannot see you. I miss you each moment.
Sleep well, dream well, be.
Goodnight Moon.



I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.

From Sleeping in the Forest 
© Mary Oliver