Gratitude List:
1. Being Fourth Runner Up. (At the beginning of November, I started this blog as a way to force myself to keep doing the regular exercise of writing a daily poem with Writer’s Digest blogger Robert Brewer’s prompts for the Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge. I gathered the poems from that month, formed them into a chapbook with help from some wonderful women, and submitted it to the contest. This morning I found out that I am the Fourth Runner Up! That’s sort of like Sixth Place. There’s no money or publication or fame attached, but it feels so good. And the poems of the Winner and the Honorable Mention that Brewer posted this morning–they were really wonderful. Now to prepare the manuscript to send to Finishing Line Press for their contest–deadline extended to the middle of March.) Happy dance!
2. Crows flying across the field in an Ursa Major formation
3. Jen Brant’s amazing chocolate raspberry flour-less cake deliciousness
4. Joy, joy, joy
5. Hugs
May we walk in beauty.
Poetry
Sticky Situation
This is Saturday’s poem. It is so easy for me sometimes to let myself feel caught or bound by the whims of fate, or by other people’s expectations. I often forget the principle that when I feel stuck, it’s usually my doing. Here’s a poem about that feeling.
The fingers, the wickets, the Bandaids, the rut,
Raspberry jam on a three-year-old’s face,
It’s where I am in the middle with you,
Between that rock and hard place.
I’m rubber, Baby, you’re glue.
You know what happens when that stuff
bounces off me toward you.
You have me cornered in this muddle, this muck,
Wheels spinning in the mud,
Won’t you get me unstuck?
Prompt for Sunday
I’m going to leave the prompt open-ended today and see what finds me. Join me?
Gratitude List:
1. Sparkly greens
2. Kale burritos
3. Hard questions to consider
4. Always something more to learn
5. That singing purr of a warm cat on my lap.
May we walk in beauty.
A Poem, A Prompt and a Picture (with a Gratitude List)
Poem
First, the poem. Today’s prompt was to begin with “All that I have ever been. . .” My own chosen prompt, and I really struggled with this one. I realized as soon as I started working with it that I set it up to be too navel-gazingly self-referential. Ah, well. Here’s an attempt:
All that I have ever been
meets in this moment
with all that I will ever be.
Yesterday I will be different
than I was tomorrow and yet the same.
Do we grow backwards into time
as well as forwards?
Time, we know, is no fixed line.
Perhaps it is a plane,
a blank surface which we cover
like a collage.
We slide across the surfaces
laying down colors,
images, and text.
Tomorrow’s Poetry Prompt:
Last month I wrote a poem that opened itself up to some really fun collaboration. It began “I keep Forgetting. . .” Tomorrow I am going to finish the “I keep Remembering” poem that I began shortly thereafter. Join me? Write one or the other, or both!
Photo:
And now for Winky’s annual re-enactment of a famous literary quotation. Any guesses about the T.S. Eliot poem she is thinking of?
(Joss was looking at the nativity scene today and explained to me very carefully how our set is missing the pony with wings.)
Gratitude List:
1. Easy-open citrus
2. Fun crafting time with the kids today
3. We will get well again
4. Every day brings more light
5. Really heavy antique quilts
May we walk in beauty.
Gratitude List
1. Collaborative poetry!
2. Looking out into the dawn, through wrought-iron curliques to the walnut tree beyond.
3. That snugglefest with a cuddlesome boy and a purrsome cat. (Couldn’t type for a while.)
4. Yesterday afternoon in the kitchen, fixing up the veggies.
5. The NYT Sunday Crossword.
Namaste.
The Milk of Heaven
Poem-A-Day Prompt 30: Write about Milk. This is the last prompt of the month. I might take off a day or two before I get back into a poem-a-day groove, this time with my own prompts, perhaps.
Somewhere in the world, the milk is falling,
raining in great drops from benevolent heaven.
Cup your hands into a bowl.
Feel it splatter into your palms
and trickle through your fingers.
Wash your face in it.
Splash it over your eyes and you will see again.
Anoint your forehead and see further.
Pour it into the gaping wounds
where the frenzied creatures
of habit and risk, of anxiety and anger and hate
have gnawed at your insides.
Drink it in great gulps
and feel it soothe your weary voice.
Take it in, breathe it,
bathe in it.
Then lie back like a new babe,
and let it dribble from the corners of your mouth.
There will always be enough.
Title
Poem-A-Day Day 26 Prompt: Write a Collection Poem about something you want to collect.
I want to collect titles, like the illustrious,
the megalotitulargrandmastermaniac himself,
Idi Amin Dada, His Excellency, President
for Life, Field Marshall Al Hadji,
you get the picture,
except he didn’t think you would,
so along with a collection of
interesting initials, he declared himself Lord
of all the Beasts of the Earth
and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror
of the British Emperor in General
and Uganda in Particular.
Yes, really.
Anyone who could greet him duly
must have passed out at his feet at the end
for very lack of breath.
Me, today I add to my title hoard
Conqueror of the Clutter
in One Small Corner of the House
in General, Queen of Two Cats
and a Flock of Grateful Chickens,
Field Harvester, and,
in this instance in particular,
Spewer of Grandiose Poetry.
You may bow now.
The Truth about the Tree Poem
Poem-A-Day Day 24 Prompt: The title begins, “The Truth About ______”
When I said that I was transformed into a tree
perhaps it would have been more accurate
to say that I became a raven
my roots curling into claws
my branches melting into blackness
the rush of the dawn wind in my ears.
Did I say “roots” again? Pardon me.
My feet are roots, of course, when I am a tree,
but also when I am a rainbow.
Did you know? A rainbow has roots too
great arcing roots that mirror and reflect
their sky-form. The earth spectrum of the underworld.
When I am a rainbow, I am a perfect circle
holding the world in my colors.
It may be closer to the truth were I to say
that one fateful day I became a stone
and sank deeply into a stillness so profound
I could not hear even my jeweled heart
burning with the brilliant fire of the Earth.
I cannot recall what happened to my night-black wings
on the day I turned into a stone.
You may think it is not possible, not true,
that right now I am actually hearing you say, “But
a person does not simply turn into a tree
or a stone, into a rainbow or a bird.”
Now, see, I have told you your own thoughts
and you can feel free to be amazed.
But how can I not hear you
when you have become
the gentlest of breezes
and whispered your protest
with a smile
into my ear?
Only Time
Poem-A Day Day 21 Prompt: Write a Song Title Poem. Choose 5 song titles at random and write a poem which weaves them together. I stood at the CD shelf and closed my eyes and chose 5 CDs, then chose the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th songs on the CDs. I had a pretty negative feeling about the potential layers of the 5 songs that came up with that pattern initially–an angsty darkness that is not mine to claim, even accidentally. So I shuffled the 5 CDs and chose the odds again. So, mostly random, and for some reason, that matters a great deal to me. The list of songs follows the poem.
This is not the only time
when we eat this bread,
when we shine like stars,
when we are filled with plenty
from the horn of abundance,
from that curling cornucopia
showering goodness upon us
from the fields of the beautiful ones
who shine, the watery ones,
those western stars.
Who is this old man
stepping slowly along the path
out of the twinkling shadows
the moon makes over the hills,
a rangy hound at his heels?
Will we remember to ask his name
when he stands before us?
Will we think to thank him
for the names he will bestow upon us?
Only time will reveal the story.
Only the stars will hear the answer.
(“Western Stars,” K.D. Lang, Shadowland; “Only Time,” Enya, A Day Without Rain; “Horn,” Nick Drake, Pink Moon; “This Old Man,” Pete Seeger, A Child’s Celebration of Song; “When We Eat This Bread,” The Dave Brubeck Quartet with the Cathedral Choral Society Chorus and Orchestra, to Hope!)
Breaking Through
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.
The Map Home
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.
