Monday Morning Musings:
The days blend together—
mere words on a page, turned,
the end of one chapter, becomes the start of the next
without pause, the action, or lack thereof continues
one walk becomes another,
but still full of wonder, and sometimes surprise—
the truth in beauty, and I the Sylvan historian–
Morning Moon 
Light breaking through the clouds 
if I ask why on a dreary morning,
a voice within says look, listen—
the sky wakes with a slow, secret smile. . .
and it does.
A Grey Monday Morning 
Hopeful bits of color. Red Bank Battlefield, ©️Merril D. Smith, 2021
This first Monday in January is grey and dreary. I haven’t gone anywhere or done much of anything in the past week. I keep forgetting what day it is. New Year’s Day felt like a Sunday. On New Year’s Eve, we did a Zoom meeting/dinner with dear friends. We ate Chinese food, as we’ve done for decades on New Year’s Eve, and we opened a bottle of champagne, too. I got a somewhat ominous fortune. I made a spicy black-eyed pea stew on a round loaf of bread for New Year’s Day, thinking the year needs all the help possible.
We’ve been catching up on shows. The Good Lord Bird, based on James McBride’s novel, is excellent—funny, sad, and timely. Ethan Hawke as abolitionist John Brown is wonderful, and equally good is Joshua Caleb Johnson as Henry “Onion” Shackelford, a young man who Brown thinks is a girl. Both my husband and I thought the show was good—acting, music, and the Fargo-like sly humor—but we weren’t really caught up in it until about half-way through, when suddenly we were. We also watched a French mystery, Frozen Dead (Netflix) (hoping there’s a second season), and started Occupied (Netflix), a Norwegian thriller set in the near future. The first few episodes are quite exciting.
I’ve read a few novels in the last couple of weeks: Kris Waldherr, The Lost History of Dreams; Cat Winters, The Uninvited; David Gillham, Annelies: A Novel, and I’m currently reading Susan Ella MacNeal’s The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent (Maggie Hope, Book 4–I think I’ve read one and three). I’ve been able to get all of these through our county library’s contactless pickup system. I also have a bunch of books on my Kindle for just in case. 😏
Yesterday and today: Merril's historical musings 
i love the endings and beginnings here, and i’m going to watch lord bird – thanks for the tip
Thank you very much, Beth! I hope you enjoy it. 😀
Happy New Year, Merril! That fortune-dang.
Thank you, Cheryl. The next fortune was better. 😀
Good!!
Boy, that fortune sounds a little dark. I guess it’s good advice though. Happy New Year to you and your family. The first sunrise shot is gorgeous!
Thank you, Jill! Happy New Year to you and your family, too. 😀
Happy New Year to you and your Family.
Thank you very much, and to you and yours as well.
Thanks very much my dear. 😉
Library books and Kindle keep my reading eyes busy too. You are off to a good start, Merril!
Thank you, Marian. 😀
More wonderful skies. Keeping the days straight has gotten more and more difficult. Maybe it’s permanent. (K)
Your Monday Musings are a good reminder that even dreary days have something to recommend them, if we know where to look. Happy New Year to you and your family!
Thank you, Liz. That was exactly how I felt about the dreary morning (and again today). 😀
You’re welcome, Merril. 😀
Always such beautiful photos to go with your lovely poems. I say we take that fortune to mean to live each day to the max 😉
The Good Lord Bird looks fabulous. Dunno if I’ll have access to it though. Sigh.
Thank you very much, Dale. I got another fortune about the light after the darkness, which seemed more of a Merril fortune. 😏. Maybe The Good Lord Bird will become available to you at some point.
Goes to show… you can take ’em or leave ’em 😉
When I had my bazillion channels, I could see pretty much anything. I got frustrated with my cable company and brought it down to the bare bones minimum. They keep giving me channels for a month as a tease and I take advantage of them but no…. refuse to pay for them as I am forced to take packages I don’t want. Bugs me.
And I’m sure it will. All we have to do is be patient.
We often have trouble remembering what day it is 🙂 Usual good photography and poetry; and that pea stew and bread looks just the job
Thank you, Derrick. You would probably have liked the stew–very spicy. 😀
Definitely
Love the line of your poem that reads, “the sky wakes, with a slow secret smile”… The January days can seem dreary…but, every day holds promise, as your poem so aptly reminds us.
Thank you for the lovely comment, Linda. 💙
Lovely photos Merril thanks, always a pleasure to see them, of nature and food and people and prose …
Thank you very much, Susan.