Let us travel to Zanzibar . . .

Forodhoni Park, Zanzibar

Let us travel to Zanzibar,

wander the streets in Old Town,

past open air stalls, beaded crafts,

past women draped in brightly colored kangas,

down cobbled streets edged with

plumeria, tree ferns, and flamboyant trees 

filled with flame-red blossoms. 

The music of a language we don't understood

follows us to Forodhoni Park,

where men wear long white aprons and

lean over open pit fires to turn skewers of fish.

The boats come in from the sea, safe.

When the day is done,

we’ll return to our rented room,

draw the mosquito netting close,

and tell stories. We’ll remember

the sweet tastes of fresh coconut,

the smell of cinnabar and mint tea.

As I look at the pictures we took in Zanzibar, there's so much that is hard to put into words. We're home now, it's snowing here in Spokane, and Africa seems very far away. But the writing focuses everything else and it's time to close down this Sunday with my ROW80 check-in: 

• WRITING: pretty good progress on reading/making notes for Years of Stone; lots of work on Author Info sheet (bio, market plan, deadlines).Can't quite blog daily re the Africa trip, but a few poems are starting to emerge, posted on this blog (See more photos on the Travel Blog here). 
• READING/CRAFT: Goodreads turning out to be very useful in identifying books I really do want to read. I made a commitment to post reviews for the books I do read. So far, so good. Just finished M. J. Rose's The Book of Lost Fragrances and now must try to read J. K. Rawlings' The Casual Vacancy in three days (can't renew at the library as it's a new book).And The Writer mag just came in.
• MARKETING/PUBLISHING: Taking a dive here and hope to submit by Jan 5, thus avoiding the black hole of the holidays when no one wants to read anything from anybody. Google+ is picking up steam a bit (or I'm learning about circles). All together, it's been a pretty good week, birthday breakfast and food poisoning notwithstanding. 

To all ROW80 participants, may the end of the year go well for you and your writing projects!