A week away

I spent this past week at Varuna, The Writer’s House in the Blue Mountains (about an hour and a half outside of Sydney) on a Varuna Fellowship and I’m still coming down from it. I won’t rabbit on about how wonderful it was to have a week solely dedicated to writing, with no domestic chores or distractions. Or about how all of that silence inspired me to push my boundaries, or how I sat down to dinner every night with four other writers to talk about books and words and read our own work. Or about how the walks and trail-runs through the National Park and surrounding bush gave me time to contemplate and turn over new ideas.
Or maybe I will!
Here’s a picture of my desk, I was in Eleanor Dark’s garden studio, and this is her original desk. It faces the garden for a view of rose bushes, surrounding paperbarks, magpies and raucous cockatoos.
And here is a poem that I wrote, with a disclaimer. I write dodgy poetry, but I found myself at the foot of a waterfall thinking about the contrasts between the rushing water and the stones.

This slippery trickle
swift rush
cascade.
And I wonder if
falling
is everything.
I forget, waterfall:
it takes still, steady stones
to direct you.

Now, back to the laundry and lunch boxes and lunacy. Truly it’s wonderful to be back, but I’m hoping to retain some of that stillness in my head.