It's Fall—make some noise!

(sorry, was that too loud?)

A friend texted the other day, from where she was reading Crone Tree on the porch of a New Orleans hotel, and wrote, "Nurse Log is lovely. It begs to be read aloud."

And I smiled, hearted her text and thought to myself, "Yeah, that'll never happen. I'm no poet. I won't be reading any poems aloud any time soon, much less my own."

I'm not the only one, right? Tell me I'm not the only one with curly-edged sticky notes gummed to my bedroom wall, scrawled with lines from a hopeful day in therapy—I want to learn to take up space without apology I wrote one day, eager for the confidence to stride into a room with a little bravado. Eager, but clueless about what school I should apply to for this lesson.

I guess that's the beauty of this book I made, the beauty of self-publishing, the beauty of making words and pictures into a tangible object, smooth-covered, heavy-paged, real. It's its own brand of bravado, this book.

As an object, this sweet little book takes up space on shelves and tables, it has presence, and begs to be shared, cracked open, dog-eared, taken on walks.

Yes, I took my book for a walk this morning, this first day of fall.

We walked out past the woodpile and into the woods on the way to my container, and we scuffed leaves and propped ourselves on stumps and smelled the change in the air.

And I found a seat in my favorite maple, a tree coppiced in its younger days, now made up of a half-dozen moss-felted trunks, built for canopy-gazing.

And as I sat there, fidgeting to see if I could get the knot digging into my mid-back to work out the knot in my shoulder blade, I decided to give it a try. To give voice to my words. To sit in the middle of the woods (hopefully) completely alone, and read aloud to the wind and spiders.

Now, I read my work aloud all the time, to be honest. In workshops and salons where I write in community, at my friend Gail's house just the other day, where we all brought a dish to share, and piece of writing, too. And often before I declare a piece finished I will read it aloud, quietly, to make sure it flows. But this was different. This morning I allowed myself to wonder what it might feel like to perform a piece again. To read it in front of an audience not just of bark beetles and tree frogs, but real, live, breathing people. The last reading I did was on Zoom, and I was so mortified afterwards I vowed I would never write another word. Clearly, I didn't mean that last part, but, also clearly, if I'm going to consider another reading anytime ever, I should probably learn what my voice sounds like, and learn to like that noise.

So this walk in the woods became a rehearsal, and after one or two tentative run-throughs (runs-through??) for the birds alone, I hit record and started to read. Between trains and planes and stumbled-over words, it took a few tries to get a take that sounded like me, and that's what you found at the top of this page.

I know I probably could have just shared it without this lengthy explanation, but baby steps, baby. One thing at a time. It's all about the life-long learning, after all.

Oh, and if you want to read along to Nurse Log and get to know some of her companions, it's not too late to get your very own copy of my new chapbook, A Portrait of the Artists as a Crone Tree. You can find me on Venmo @Abigail-Braithaite or PayPal at paypal.me/morgwaitemama. Send me $20 and your address and I'll pop a book in the mail for you! Oh, and you can also find this book and a host of other brilliant chapbooks by fine writers at http://literarykitchen.net. Just hit the "Shop" tab to see the rest of the collection!