Bright sun and clean wind.

I will be editing this morning, and then I will be making blueberry jam. Every summer, writing gets to be the last chore I check off the list. But on the bright side, I do a lot of living. I try to think of living as a bright side.

Yesterday I picked blueberries raspberries beans sage lemon balm peppermint baby leeks parsley basil tore out the poppies cut down the marjoram made bread made pizza made tomato sauce. This morning I put all that work into a sentence and thought about punctuation. I suppose this is not an inspirational story, but still it's writing.

Just a moment ago I wrote down "but it's still writing." Then I swapped the word order. This is revision. I revise to match the music in my head, and by music I mean word stress, pacing, rising or falling pitch, etc. I have no idea if this is how Frank Zappa did it. I do have a fairly clear idea that this is how Hayden Carruth did it.

Funny, how one hears the sound of someone else's verse and can say, This is a brother in arms. Though "brother in arms" is a cliche, I'm guessing that it must derive from either a companion in war or a cuddled little brother. Therefore, I feel perfectly justified in using it for poets whose rhythms echo in my head.