Retreat

I’m currently in Colorado Springs, on the last day of my solo writer’s retreat. I’m been learning new techniques, vocabulary, art history; I’ve been experimenting with different writing styles to expand and stretch my creativity.

I thought that I would try my hand at some stream-of-consciousness writing–where the words are written without any structure or punctuation. It’s a pure way of writing. The words just simply are.

• • •

Retreat

The mountain town welcomes me with snow capped peaks and a cafe serving decaf coffee with a french couple chattering beside me my high school mind picks up on a few words they speak and how they spill onto this paper and are carried past the botanical and butterfly posters out the wide open door on the bright blue tempered day and though my reason for this visit is to retreat and write it really was predestined so I could reconnect and reopen my mind to the spontaneity and surprise that plays sweetly through song and through the cherry blossom blooms against the heavens and all the while I look back out towards the horizon and see the snow capped peaks

Here.

I wrote this poem this morning, when the family was sleeping beneath comforters in various rooms, and the robins began swooping from barren branch to barren branch. Its title is today’s date, though its theme is the name of this post.

Here. Moving past an adverb, this word is a state of presence that tugs at me to stay within the moment. In a time where anxiety can run rampant, this word reminds me to put it into perspective, and take what’s in front of me. What’s here, and find the light in it.

• • •

April 6, 2019

Today, the Colorado mountains
surround me, lungs treated
with rich oxygen, rejuvenated
from the pines, untouched
by man’s machine.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back home,
where my residence’s finale
in this town has only begun.

Then, I’ll be flying clear
to the other coastline,
soaking in D.C.’s museums
and art, and eat guac from a
once-familiar Mexican restaurant,
I first visited a year back.

From there, I’ll become lost
in thought, 30,000 feet
above the ground; traveling
from Nashville to Atlanta,
allowing an hour to breathe.

And while Colorado is not
my home, I’ll return here
in less than 30 days,
leaning against a white wall
looking out the window
into the thick of pines;
limited cell service,
endless writing.

But for today,
I’m in the Colorado air,
bird’s call almost tangible,
their echo lingering throughout
the valley; I wish my
father well, as he buttons up
his coat and shifts his lunchbox
to the other hand,
admiring the sky.

And I’ll watch the deer graze upon
the land–my mother’s almost
emerging flower plants.

And now I admire the sky,
and how it meets the cities,
on all parts of the earth.