Poem-A-Day Prompt 20: Two-in-one. Write a Gathering Poem. Write a Letting Go Poem. I’m going to do a tanka (5/7/5/7/7).
Gather the dawn and wind.
Breathe in sun and frost and song.
Hold for a moment.
Breathe out birds and words and joy.
Breathe out moss and stones and hope.
Poem-A-Day Prompt 19: Write a Wheel Poem. Sort of reminiscent of the Circle Poem way back on Day 7. But I like the roundness. . .
Me, I think the world begins on that inward turn of the wheel.
The poise and the pause, the moment of balance.
Autumnal Equinox. Prepare for the coming of night.
Then swing a notch toward the dark and fall
between the worlds. Part the veils and listen
for the words of the ancestors.
Turn the wheel again, into the dark and darker
and the mother is groaning in her labor pains,
the heart is listening like a young rabbit in the warren.
Seeds of crystals grow and glow.
And turn again, and into light, sharp and newborn,
emergent. What will you bring with you into the sun?
No wonder the whistle pig is the icon of the day,
fresh, transformed, and blinking in the snow-blind glare.
Another spin into the light, the time of the egg
and the bud, the time of the singing, the blooming.
The world washed clean and wind-shriven.
Back to the balance of Equinox.
Yank the wheel another notch and throw off
the kilter of spring. Enter the riot, the bustle.
Use the words fecund and fertile and wild.
The wheel turns and the sun stands like an ancient hero
on the vault of the sky. What fills your soul?
Where do your dreams go? Follow your fire.
After that zenith, the shape shades to dark once more,
but the loss is lost in the haze of the days.
The first wheat is harvested, baked into loaves.
What will you make of your harvest?
Follow the bark of the goose to the next turn,
and the world begins all over again,
folding itself into darkness.
Prompt for day 18: Write a glosa. What a great challenge! Use a four-line epigram from a favorite poet. Write a four-stanza poem, ten lines each. The four lines of the epigram provide the last line of each stanza. Lines 6, 9, and 10 in each stanza rhyme. I panicked. I froze. And then the adrenaline kicked in. What fun!
“If these words can do anything
I say bless this house
with stars.
Transfix us with love.” ~~Joy Harjo, “The Creation Story”
Let love be born in us and borne in us.
Let the stars fall on us and into us.
Let us be the memory of their light
the story of the stars remembering themselves
so that we will remember our own beginning,
that we may always hear them sing,
that we may shine their signs among us,
a web of story drawn between us.
Let it be in the hope they bring,
if these words can do anything.
If they can shelter,
if we can find our winding way
through the crooked paths to the truth
to find some meaning in the signs
that bind us to each other,
to read it in some oracle, to scry, to dowse
to hear it in the songs of stars,
in the echo in our hearts
to pronounce the benediction, in whispers, in shouts:
I say bless this house,
This house, this farm, this town.
Bless this whole chaotic messy world,
all these proud, these tragic,
these hopeful, shameful,
wounded, healing hearts,
this landscape scarred by wars,
ravaged by avarice.
Rain healing down–
fill hearts, and lakes and jars
with stars
Falling and shining,
giving birth to the world
again and again,
to wash the world clean,
to crack open the heart,
release the dove
to carry the seeds of a new beginning,
transform our hearts
from outside, below, within and above:
Transfix us with love.
Poem-a-Day Prompt 17: Write a How To _____ Poem.
Start this way: take a good long look in the mirror.
Then look into the mirror of the mirror.
Make those reflections dance together a while.
Choose a new name.
Lay out the maps, the cards, the itinerary.
Plot and plan, scheme and dream.
Then be ready to throw it all into the wind
if the need arises.
Trust that the Universe will guide you, give you signs,
but sign up for the work yourself, and keep your eyes peeled.
Struggle. Struggle hard. The struggle is the whole point.
You will be handed challenges a plenty,
but there will be gifts in abundance also.
Sometimes these are as hard to accept as the challenges.
Time will come when you think you have arrived,
completed your tasks, done your work
only to be hit with another wave of
insecurity or loneliness or loss.
Don’t let it throw you for a loop.
There will always be dragons to meet.
Let them be your teachers.
Pick up stones, make cairns,
trace the journey in pebbles.
Watch for the changes in light.
Mourn the road you did not choose
and move on the one you did.
You’ll find it, around the very next bend.
I am learning quite a lot through this daily process. Today’s big lesson is to not wait to write my poem until I am dropping from sleep. Check out Nancy Willard’s “How To Stuff a Pepper” for a really excellent how to poem.
Poem-a-Day Day 16 Prompt: Write a last line poem: take the last line of your previous poem and use it to start this one. (I cheated and went back two days. Yesterday’s was too poem-specific.)
Recite it every night before bed:
I am the daughter of
the daughter of
the daughter. Of
Ruth, of Lura, of
Mary Emma.
I am the daughter of
the nephew of
the granddaughter. Of
Richard, of Elizabeth, of
Catherine who was called Mammy.
Remember these slantwise lines,
that take you back and back.
This is the map home,
the twisted strands
of the genetic story.
Recite their names,
these other, twisting lines,
like rivers on the map, like poetry:
Sojourner, Susan B,
Uncle Walt and lonely Emily,
Harriet who was called Moses.
Lines on the palm,
on the map,
in the blood,
roads and rivers,
a point drawn in a distant past
raying forward to the point
drawn in this moment.
The truth is formed
in concurrent past and future
as the lines are connected,
given shade and shape and weight.
Remember this. Remember.
Day 15 Prompt: Write a tradeoff poem. Swap. Exchange.
I’ll trade you the crumbling stone wall with a little green snake
for your treeful of orange birds. My crescent moon seashell
for your sycamore branch shaped like a flying fish.
Will you swap my word scalawag for your flibbertigibbet?
Your dream of a journey through underwater caves
for mine of flying over the green mountains
with a flock of a thousand white birds?
I have always admired that way you have, of making people laugh
by raising your eyebrows just so. You could have your pick
of my peccadilloes for that one. Take two or three.
Though I am loathe to part from it, you would be welcome
to the view looking east over hills to my River, if I could have
your big lonesome prairie and marsh. For just a little while, at least.
I’d take your bucket of tears for just a little while
if you’d hold on to this bundle of rage. You could keep
the hearth with crackling fire if I could have the gypsy wind.
How about I give you a poem for every apple you share?
If you’re not using that magic wand, I’ll trade it to you for my broom.
And if you have a little extra motivation, I’ll take it
for an old morale boost I have lying around somewhere.
This is my favorite way to work a poem, to pile up apparently unrelated images and words into a loose structure, and let the meaning arise out of their juxtaposition. I wouldn’t call myself an Imagist, really, because I do intend for the final structure to gather some sort of meaning or import or weight, but I like when a poem comes together by the sewing together of images.
Day 14 Prompt: Write a stuck poem. This one is sort of a place-holder. I know what I want to do with it, but I need to let it percolate a while. Let’s call this Draft #1.
Order the frog legs.
Turn off the television.
Choose a secret name.
Knit yourself a nightcap.
Put on white gloves
and a pillbox hat to go to the grocers.
Plant your lawn in potatoes.
Dream in the daytime, not just at night.
Take apart your broken toaster
to see what makes it work.
Become an artist. Create something every day.
Wear a cravat.
Befriend a wild creature.
Live out of doors for an entire week.
Memorize a sonnet by Shakespeare.
Recite it every night before bed.
Day 13 Prompt: Write two poems in one. Write a recipe poem. Write a letter poem.
Dear Grandma,
I never could get it just right,
that flaky crust, and the perfect
balance of corn syrup and molasses.
Wet bottom, surely, but not so soggy
it mucks up the bottom of the pie dish.
The thing is, the only thing Dutch
about my mother-in-law
is the family she married in to,
the blood that flows downriver,
in her sons and grandsons.
But her fingers know the secrets.
She can bake a shoo-fly pie to rival those
that Sadie Stoltzfus sells
along the Lincoln Highway.
And me, I’m so inbred
I’m my own eighth cousin
at least once, and I couldn’t
bake a shoo-fly pie to save my soul.
I’ll just have to put
the whole wheat flour out of reach,
buy myself a bottle of corn syrup,
and get out the rolling pin again.
Day 12 Prompt: Write a poem about a techie gadget that does not exist but should. This one is easy, particularly today.
There oughta be a thing
you can hold in your hand
some sort of device
that can access the internet
when you are away from home
so you don’t have to rely
on a squishy old dinsosaur
of a hotel computer
that crashes at random.
Oh wait.
Oh well.
Day 11 Prompt: Write a veteran poem from the point of view of a veteran.
It was like I had slewed into an alternate reality
just one notch over from the one I’d always known.
On the surface, everything was as I remembered,
but almost imperceptibly off.
The sycamore tree out behind the house
was just coming into leaf
with that almost impossible gray-green
that sings out at you in the morning light.
When I came home, it was as if
someone had clicked that off,
turned down the volume.
The swaggering pink of the dogwood
was on mute.
Everything was like that,
like a veil had been thrown
over my senses,
like I was under the burqa.
Setting the table or sitting on the porch
talking to my mother
I began to feel that I could
no longer trust the distances, even.
Had I grown? Or shrunk?
I worried that I would miss contact
with the surfaces around me,
slide out of existence.
One thing. One thing remains the same.
No matter where I am in the house,
I can still feel the attention
of that crazy old dog, searching me out.
If everything else is slightly less real,
then this is more so.
When I roll over in bed,
I can sense him twitching his ears
where he lies downstairs on the kitchen floor.
Even when I am off to town
I feel the silver cord of his hope
mooring me, holding me solid.
And when I sit next to him
watching the sunset,
inside the bubble of his wakefulness,
the colors begin to sparkle and sing
almost as clearly as they used to.
Mockingbird Chronicles 