This past weekend, I went to my very first writer’s retreat, in Sea Girt, NJ, hosted by Women Reading Aloud. It was a wonderful, terrifying, restorative, educational, intimidating, passionate experience. I feel reticent to share details about the weekend, particularly the workshops themselves; I almost feel as though it would violate the community we writers built together. I also don’t feel comfortable sharing most of the pieces I wrote there, partly for the same reason, and partly because they’re unedited. I think that was the hardest thing for me- writing straight from the gut and not having the chance to write a second draft before I had to read it aloud. (That, and writing with pen and paper. I ALWAYS work on my laptop, and I have terrible handwriting.)

But I do want to share a short poem that came to me as I was waking up on Saturday morning in my comfy, fluffy-white bed at the B&B. The poem is remarkable to me only in its existence; I am not a poet, and have never thought in verse until this retreat.

Waking Time

I am drunk on sleep.

I burrow into the covers, making a nest for myself,

delirious at the choices before me:

To sleep, wake, turn, then sleep some more,

drifting on waves of comfort and dreams.

It’s been so long since I could be careless with morning time.

And then I wake, to drenching sunshine

and I laugh, because the clock says 6:25

Only twenty minutes after my usual waking time.

I wrote this short entry later that morning, based on the writing prompt “When I awoke…”

When I awoke, I had a poem in my head. I grabbed a pen and wrote it down. I stretched against the pillows, wondering if that half-conscious poem will be the best work of my day, and if so, I am already satisfied.

I went for a walk before breakfast, and I thought about my poem. Not its content, but its existence. I have not written a poem since I was forced to in high school; I have not written a poem since I became a writer. I feel my grandmother’s influence this weekend, in the yogic breathing, the strength of the kula, even her name among the group of women here. Maybe my grandmother, gone six years this month, is still writing poetry through me.