Everyone is a Writer, Family Writing Part 4

Duke Cramer

When my dad was in a writers’ group at his assisted-living residence, he sent me a small amount of his writing, and—I liked it! It had voice and sensory details—scenes, smells, sounds, tastes, and textures. I felt proud of his writing and heard that others in the group called him a “star.” As an engineer, he had been quiet about his writing, keeping his love of it to himself. Only once I heard him say, “I do my best writing at 10,000 feet,” but I was too self-involved to inquire.

Sky Art

On this middle July day at 5 a.m., I looked out my window and noticed a pale pink sky that had no design or configuration. It was just a gentle color that would change as the sun rose farther up. However, it reminded me of notes taken in 1996 from the sliding doors on my deck at 4123 Post Avenue in which I had carefully examined the sky over Greenwich. I dated these mornings and tried to put on paper what I saw with the best description that came to mind at that time. So I am here reproducing those written notes to record a sense of color and structure that was evident to my inner self at the moment.

Morning Sky Over Greenwich Bay

4 to 5 a.m.

Opaque, ruffled white fading to light blue as a white sun climbs.

Feathers of white separate its withdrawal from the blue.

4 to 6 a.m. 

White above, all shapes of gray fragments below scurrying to the

north. It’s a leaden morning following showers.

4 to 6 p.m. 

Loose, cotton shapes, underside tinged in orange and pink, tops

are white looking up toward a fading blue sky.

4 to 7 a.m. 

Horizon a nothing-white to a milky-blue. A white, hot sun giving a

wide reflection of a still bay of a newly-forged, broad sword.

July 17, 2004

Wellington Cramer

My realization is, “The act of recording changing colors and structures of the sky may be more than a describing of visual details, but also an effect on the inner self where we feel without words.”