I have been feeling strangely quiet in my writing life recently.

My life is good—and full.

I count blessings each day.

I am feeling better than I had been feeling most of the spring and summer and I am full of passion for making photos.

My grandkids are living near us for the first time since they were born and I love the sound of them bursting into our house full of energy and joy. Their ongoing presence in our life now is a gift!

The artist’s way group that I helped initiate last winter is still going strong and I LOVE each and every one of the wonderful women who joined me in our group. I especially love the belly laughs we share and seeing the growth and change in members’ artistic lives.

We have had more rain than normal and the grass and trees are joyously green. Even as I see the first changes of the season from summer to fall, the landscape remains lush and full.

For the past week 2 green herons have been feasting on frogs in the pond in our backyard. I am enjoying watching them as they are birds I have rarely seen.

Life is good!

This poem by May Sarton, expresses how I feel about my life today:

Now I Become Myself

Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before—”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song;
Made so and rooted so by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!