A Workshop with A View

This photo is the street view from the entrance to our workshop, the river Tagus is the lovely blue water that you see. Streetcars frequently rumble by and we are just across the street from the apartment building where Fernando Pessoa was born. The next photo is a bica and pasteis, the small espresso and custard pastry that Lisboa does so well.

Our first workshop was today, and it is a pleasure everytime this group gets together. We marvel that this may be the biggest gathering of Portuguese-American writer's to ever take place. We discussed in detail what this meant to us, our charge, and the how we would go forth from here after this moment-- both unusual and authentic.

I saw a woman discussing writing quite intently, the sound of the city swirled all around her as she spoke as if the sounds had wings. She used her hands in an unusual fashion when she spoke, the movement was so charming and odd that I wanted to save the image in my mind and use it somehow in a story. I always capture images like this as poetry, it helps me remember them more clearly. Fiction is not as emotionally phtographic as poetry to me. Or else the moment was a poem itself.  Either way I'll share share it, just here:

The woman cups air like water.
Her mouth a faucet pouring phrases.
She pushes her palm skyward
and tempts three angels loose above the street,
hungry from heaven's neglect.

See them just there,
hovered above the trash cans and cracked sunlight
feather's dripping like candlewax in the heat,
they bend low toward her offering
and tongue words from her fingertips
silent as water seducing stone.