Today marks one month since my brain surgery. My recovery is going well, but I’m still not back to full strength.

I’ve been walking in my neighborhood to build up my stamina. I’m still using the cane I received when I was discharged from the hospital, but I hope to ditch it soon.

When I walk, I don’t listen to music or podcasts. For safety reasons, I need to hear cars approaching, and I also keep my ears open for stimulating sounds—birds, wind chimes, children playing, etc.

A lot of times, I get ideas for poems while out on my walks. Often, one line will pop into my head and start me down the path of writing a poem. Recently, I was walking and thinking about the end of August, and this line came to me: It’s always sad when summer ends. I jotted the line down in the small notebook I carry with me. After some work, this is the poem I produced:

Late August

It’s always sad when summer ends.
But avoidance of the inevitable is impossible.
And in this season of life, a little winter must come.
So I tell myself to stop being disgruntled
by summer’s death and autumn’s arrival,
and instead get to work—starting with
descending the cellar steps and bringing up
the long johns, flannel shirts, and heavy wool socks.

It’s not the greatest poem in the world. But I like that I followed the trajectory the poem wanted to take—starting with one line, then others scribbled in my notebook, followed by revisions on the computer.

So I recognize the importance of awareness and paying attention to both external and internal stimuli to use as raw material for poetry (and stories, etc.).

And this reminds me of a line from the Grateful Dead song “Scarlet Begonias” (thank you, Robert Hunter):

Once in a while, you get shown the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right …