I’d love to see you in one (or both!) of our two remaining fall four-hour Zoom workshops: The Intuitive Leap on November 14, and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame, on November 17. Click here and scroll down for all the details.

Last year, my parents sold The Homestead (150 acres of woods and fields and creeks and ancient farmhouse in far upstate New York), a huge endeavor which meant many hours of sorting through sixty-plus years of belongings, including a number of little ceramic bowls and planters with my initials on the bottom.

As I held them memory came back to me: of my high school pottery class and of the semester in college when I bought a pass to the basement pottery studio, hours of calm and peace spent sitting at the wheel, shaping clay into bowls.

I too was once my own storm–okay fine, I still am–but these tiny bowls remind me that calm and peace also live somewhere inside me.

Keel, by Keith Leonard

That half-moon smooth beam,
I think someone made it because
they had a spine and wanted
to make a stronger one,
and they sent the little skiff
out to sea for years,
and it went on boot-thudded
and shoal-scraped,
and it went on boot-thudded
and shoal-scraped, and it held
all the while like it holds
in the boatyard, though
it is belly-up on blocks
to keep out the rain, now,
and it does rain here,
and did again this morning
when I was walking your dog,
Love, thinking how I, too, 
have been boot-thudded
by love, I was my own
storm once, so young
and eager to raise the sail
of my wanting, and I just wanted
to tell you I love this old boat,
this settled-in thing.

Click here for more information on poet Keith Leonard.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter