Notes on a Writing Life / 60
April 14 2024
Dear All,
Springtime in Key West is always lovely, but this year after an unusually rainy winter, it is especially green and bursting with buds and flowers, young mangos ripening, mockingbirds beginning their flirtations, roosters pursuing hens everywhere. There’s already a slight sense of winding down after the season, which has been frenetic. We residents breathe two sighs - of relief that the town will be less crowded, but also of sadness to see friends depart for the north.
This will be a short newsletter, as I’m beginning to prepare my departure too – I’m flying to Paris in early May. Our plans for the Writing Retreat in Spain are in place, and eight brave souls have so far committed to crossing the Atlantic to be with me and Kim at the Flores Retreat Center. There are still a few places left, if anyone has a last-minute urge to be in a beautiful place, writing!
Here is the link again, just in case.
I am planning to do at least some of the walk on to Santiago de Compostela and hope to find a companion to do it with me. It’s a transformative experience, walking into that unfolding landscape, moving somehow in tune with the universe – even with blisters and a tired back, coming ever closer to the very edge of Europe.
Meanwhile my recently published books are available online. It’s been a busy winter, bringing out three books one after the other, and I’m ready for a break! Who knows what will come next?
Affectionately, Ros
Morning in May
Grass grows in the night
and early the mockingbirds begin
their fleet courtships over puddles,
upon wires, in the new green
of the Spanish limes.
Their white striped wings flash
as they flirt and dive.
Wind in the chimes pulls music
from the air, the sky’s cleared
of its vast complications.
In the pause before summer,
the wild sprouting of absolutely
everything: hair, nails, the mango’s
pale rose pennants, tongues of birds
singing daylong.
Words, even, and sudden embraces,
surprising dreams and things I’d never
imagined, in all these years of living,
one more astonished awakening.
from "Bonnard's Dog" published by Hanging Loose Press in 2015