Joyce’s Flower in the Clark woods

Mom’s been gone for over three years now.  Joyce was an inspiration to me, an artist, musician, writer, and more.  Of course, sometimes she drove me nuts. I’ve become the caretaker of her writings and history.  I picked up one of her diaries recently.  One Christmas, I’d given her an empty journal and written a challenge to her to use it as an “empty but potentially overflowing sketchbook as a place to note a thought, a bit of poem, sketch an inspiration, quote a favorite book, make a wish….”

She followed my instructions.  She wrote something in July 2000 that struck a chord with me:

“I need to put some thoughts down on paper so that I can look them over when the format for a poem comes through!!  Out for a daytime walk, I realized that the stars are still shining during sunny times, we just can’t see them without darkness. I know that when we paint a picture, we use dark colors to make the light look brighter. I realize that we often recover from ‘dark’ times in our lives – deaths, divorce, changes, only to come out of grief and loneliness to find the ‘light’ is even sweeter. Does this make any sense? I’m sure these aren’t original thoughts, but I do hope to make the ‘stars’ into some poetry. Has everything already been written about starlight?”

I guess I know where I got my inspiration from.  I don’t think she would mind me sharing her thoughts with you.