Milestone
A milestone birthday is a time to celebrate but also to reflect. This month I turned 80. Since the first phonetically spelled story I scribbled in Grade One, writing has been an elemental part of my life. As Natalie Goldberg1 wrote: “Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.” Even while my creativity slows, I am grateful to have made it this far. But mourning the loss of old friends marks time with a new urgency: a decade, even a day, can no more be taken for granted.
As a poet, how to best use that time? A daunting decision.
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Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, 30th Anniversaray Edition (Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications Inc., 2016) p. xxii.