I led my monthly poetry workshop on Zoom this evening with a group of talented, wonderful writers. The theme this month was "Ecstatic Ekphrasis." We spent the night responding to various works of art, visual, poetic, and musical. I'm always astounded by the depth of thought and reflection that emerges from participants of such diverse backgrounds (retired English professors, yoga instructors, piano teachers, physical therapists, visual artists, life coaches). It humbles and inspires me.
That is my miracle for tonight--writing with people who bring out the best in me every time.
For that, Saint Marty gives thanks.
And, to prove that I actually did some writing at the workshop myself this evening, a little sample:
Spring Choirs
by: Martin Achatz
The spring crickets and peepers were loud as interstate traffic tonight, calling and singing to each other under gauzed light. I had just turned off the living room lights, shut the windows, put my lunch in the fridge for tomorrow's work. And then, I went out my front door, stood barefoot in the grass, and listened to the choirs of insect and amphibian, with an occasional dog adding tenor or baritone. The universe at that moment, that instant, seemed all right, as if nothing could be wrong anywhere in its vast concert hall. No discord of plague or war. No disharmonies of famine or hatred. Just wet grass and mud under my toes, dark fingers of lilac branches reaching up to the starry, starry keyboard of night. And the crickets and peepers serenading moon and comets and cosmic dust.
Try it now. Slow everything down to the life span of a cricket. Until one breath is a minute, hour, day, month, year, decade, century, generation, era, epoch. Until that breath spills out like a woodwind in an orchestra, playing one, true, clear note into the ear of the universe.
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