A Maine Marsh

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth."  Henry David Thoreau

Paul and took a little field trip to the Scarborough Marsh today. It was a lovely day....a little windy....but it was good to be out soaking in the sun....and saying hello to mother nature in a new and different setting.

The tide was high....so there may not have been as many birds up close....

.....but we enjoyed seeing the egrets....and a few other other marsh loving birds.  There were lots off in the distance...and a few up close.  I tried to use my new zoom lense...but it was a little difficult to maneuver in the sun and wind.  I'll be better with it sitting still in the backyard.

Marshes are interesting places....and Maine has lots of them.

Becky sent me this today....and I thought it was worth sharing.  

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent:

 “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!"

Kurt Vonnegut

I did the assignment....I just used 6 words in my poem....rather than 6 lines...I'm calling it "My Wish."

I have fond memories of a six word story art exchange that Tracie, Becky and I did back in 2013....I loved the challenge of saying something meaningful in just six words. I wrote about it in 2015....the formatting on this post is terrible....it was still all pretty new to me back then:

https://joyfulputtering.blogspot.com/2015/01/six-word-story-booka-shared-art-project.html