My Granddaughter's Vision

Today's prompt: write a thread poem; what life thread you follow or seek.


What Holds Us Together

At four she was still new enough
to see it shimmering silver
in the air between us,
that thin cord that connects us all,
its links forged in time and space
and love.
When I looked into her eyes
I could see it too, just off there where
the corners of the universes collide.
You can’t look full on once you’re grown;
the light, along with your beliefs, will blind you.
The twin ties of love and blood do not die
with us; love is remembered, blood
carries on. No matter my age, or hers—
the cord will stretch from here to
eternity.

Mine

Prompt: Draw a window and climb through - what do you see?

That kid Harold with his purple crayon
changed walls into worlds.
Mine would be green and I'd draw mountains of all sizes
and great green lakes fed by sinuous turquoise rivers.
Spinach would grow in tidy rows near the lettuces
and corn stalks would thrive, sturdy and tasseled.
Overhead the willow trees would hold their umbrellas of green
Shading my book as I read, and the whole green circle
Of earth would be my bed.

Continuing participation in National Poetry Month

I have been away caring for the grands since Wednesday. Here are poems through today that have occurred to me at odd moments but were not committed to paper until now. Sunday and Monday’s offerings will appear here after the fact as well. The daily prompts were as follows:

19^th - Hatch the metaphoric egg.
20^th - Be an old Chinese poet or talk to or about one. Go anywhere you want with this.  
21^st  - Hand over Hand — The Climbing Out of a Hole Exercise: Let your poem start with a dark mood, a negative statement, or a dire predicament. Through the course of a short poem, rescue yourself.

Heat Wave

The sun rises,

A solid yolk

In a hard boiled sky.

No rain has fallen for weeks:

None is in the offing.

The earth cracks,

Spilling us all into

The shimmering mirage of hope.

Origami Life

Ancient ones know much

About colors and folding;

Art is in the crease. 

Perhaps

She was an angel with one wing only

and could not stay.  Her room

had pink elephants marching tail to trunk

around the walls, and the white bassinet with

its lace and pink ribbons, stood waiting. Perhaps

it was wrong to plan so plainly, to be so sure.

Perhaps I should have hoped only.

Such a fragile thing, hope. And as strong

as stone steps that lead from the precipice

to safety. I look up, up, hoping…

Stories We tell

Looking at the Sky Exercise: Write a poem about looking at the sky or one in which looking at the sky plays a role. 

It isn't really blue, you know 

- the sky - 

it's all done with atmosphere,

smoke and mirrors magic.

The sun's

white light is scattered,

absorbed by gas molecules and 

radiated in different directions.

And white light, you know, is 

really Roy G Biv.

Our eyes constantly perceive 

one thing as another,

seeing blue sky

where light bounces off

matter. But what matters

is that beneath the fiction

we tell ourselves 

- the sky is blue, the horizon exists -

we know the truth

and stick to our stories anyhow.

Seek and ye shall find...

Try a syllable count poetry form. (Mine is four, four-line stanzas - 6-6-6-2, 6-6-6-2, 6-6-6-2, 6-6-6-2 syllables.)

Oh blue-shuttered cottage - 

who would guess the heartache

that led me to your door?

I knew

the moment I saw your

four-walled arms that I'd be

safe, and the violets

that grew

in wild blue profusion

promised sunshine, and rain

that would lull me to sleep

at night.

One could wander for years
seeking consolation 
and then find violets,
and peace.

Otherwise

Today's prompt: Write a poem that is a provisional assertion of yes and happiness, in an “it might be otherwise” tone.

No truer words were spoken

than this too, shall pass.

Joy and sorrow share the same path,

walking hand in hand.

One is wise to remember

it can always be otherwise -

But, oh the joy!

The promise of joy

when life is dark, that

leads us to walk between the two,

 ever mindful that

this too, shall pass.

Fear

Write a poem with an extended metaphor, a metaphor so extended it fills most of the poem.  Your poem doesn’t have to be about the heart.  The metaphor need not be that of an animal.  However, do keep your heart open and welcome whatever creatures, if any, appear.

The chained dog,

tethered for years,

when freed will 

lick your hand,

and stay.

The freed heart

will no more run

than the

chained dog,

but circles the same worn path

waiting for freedom.

Comfort Food

Write a poem a person might actually cook from, but it has to be about something beyond just food.  It should be a poem as well as a recipe.

There are days when, 

in my hunger,

I could open my mouth

and eat the whole world,

but even that would not my assuage

the deep and unbidden craving,

so I settle for sliced ripe tomatoes

and thick slabs of buffalo mozzerella

circling the plate,

to which I add

a handful of chopped onion,

a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar,

a splash of oil,

several leaves of fresh basil,

and a mere dash of black pepper

Eaten slowly

it comes close to satisfying

that gnawing ache inside

that yearning for something not food

that even vinegar cannot reach. 

Believe What you See

Write a fanciful theory/explanation poem.

pals.iastate.edu

I know the water cycle

makes perfect sense but

it's a cover up for what

really happens - 

clouds are not made of evaporated water.

How mundane.

They are composed of our ancestors,

those hardy folk who went before us,

or pets that have gone to their reward.

Hordes of departed souls form clouds

Proof lies in their shapes - 

a galloping horse over here, 

Aunt Winifred's silhouette looming there,

a ragged line of immigrants trudging 

along the horizon.

freebigpictures.com

Endless Cycle

Today's prompt: Single Sentence 55 Word Poem. 


The sun's a winking eye 
on the horizon; night shadows 
slink off like beaten dogs, 
like the remains of sinister 
dreams that haunt me even 
in my waking hours, dreams 
of brakeless cars, lost children, 
of faceless creatures that chase 
me from restless sleep to 
rise with the sun, a 
winking eye on the horizon.




Yikes! It's only day 11 and I'm running out of steam. What's going to happen next week, I wonder, and the week after that? Whose idea was this poem-a-day project anyhow? 

Magic

My mother's hands were worn,

tending children, house and garden.

But oh! they were full

of love and of music!

She would sit herself down,

hands still damp from washing

the noontime dishes, towel tossed

carelessly over her shoulder, and

strike a chord, play some

notes, and we children were

swept up and flung star-ward.

Today's prompt: Try a fifty-five word poem. You get eleven five-word lines. Imagine they become a frame or perhaps an empty bowl. Into it place a picture, colorful, worth recalling in silence, or maybe something edible, nourishing. Begin before it is over to paint with your word-brush. Approaching the poem’s abrupt end, try lifting your earth-eyes skyward.

Geese

Over and over they flock to the pond,

veering over the tree line to splash down,

one and one and one, until the water

is awash with feathers and wings, 

bills and wild eyes; heads dip below 

the surface, water pearls flash in the sunlight,

sharp cries pierce the blue until

the wildness pulls you in, until whatever you were

eons ago wants to fly, to soar, to cut the air with sharp

wings.

Today's prompt: Try a single sentence poem. These single sentence poems must be readable, make sense, and have deeper meaning that gives them a reason to be. You might strive for those basic requirements Galway Kinnell thinks a poem should have:  creatures of the world, beautiful language, and psychic weight.

Share

Today's prompt: Write an Event Instruction Zen Poem 

Stop by the flowers.

Feast your eyes on the colors;

Leave without picking.

How To

The How to Be a Poet Exercise

In poem form write “rules” for yourself.  Remind yourself how to be a poet.  Leave in the quirky humor.

Have fun with words; write often and with joy
but
don't try to be too clever. Cleverness is not wisdom.
Always
read your poems aloud in order to hear
what your words are really saying,
but
don't overstate the obvious -
don't drape blue jeans poems in rhinestones.
Never 
force a rhyme at the expense of rhythm,
but
sit your words on horseback
and teach them to post before they
gallop.

Ha!

Today's prompt: The 16 Word Stanza Exercise

Three five-line stanzas—each stanza only sixteen words. What can you stuff

into this simple form?

Sunrise brings the 

wind that slept

in the night,

blanketed in moonlight,

pillowed on bright stars.

Wind wakes fully.

no shilly-shallying.

It bends the tall grasses

and waltzes with the

forsythia.

Left on the clothesline

overnight, a lone shirt

hugs itself, its

sleeves wrapped

against the chill.

Bending the Rules

Today's prompt: Write a simple poem about writing with simplicity.


I am manipulating the prompt here, I know (and this is one prompt I may come back to after this month of once-a-day poetry is over), but the sample poem was written by Mary Oliver and after reading it, I couldn't think of a thing to say. 

The Art of Perusing the Dictionary
(and writing a simple poem)

open

search

discard

find

consider

claim

ponder

scribble

toss

decide

compose

offer

To Be a Tree

All I want to be

is the topmost branch

of a tree, my feet anchored

deep in the ground,

my head in the company of

clouds.

From today's prompt: 

More Starting Places

“All I want to be

is a thousand blackbirds

bursting from a tree,

seeding the sky.”

Kooser/Harrison

Start each stanza:  All I want to be…” and continue.  

Today's Challenge

Word Palette Exercise

 The poem below could be viewed as a word palette.  Don’t imitate this poem, but borrow its vocabulary as your word supply. Use the words in a very different order to say something quite different.  This is another way a poem can be a trampoline.

  

    Mind Wanting More

Only a beige slat of sun

above the horizon, like a shade pulled

not quite down.  Otherwise,

clouds.  Sea rippled here and

there.  Birds reluctant to fly.

The mind wants a shaft of sun to

stir the grey porridge of clouds,

an osprey to stitch sea to sky

with its barred wings, some dramatic

music: a symphony, perhaps

a Chinese gong.

But the mind always

wants more than it has --

one more bright day of sun,

one more clear night in bed

with the moon; one more hour

to get the words right; one

more chance for the heart in hiding

to emerge from its thicket

in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day

with its tentative light weren't enough,

as if joy weren't strewn all around.

  ~ Holly Hughes ~

My take, short and sweet because today was a hectic day and I had little time for writing.

Clouds pile like porridge

in a blue sky bowl; let awe

fill in for a spoon.

Modern Sisyphus

Today’s prompt:  Often between the title and the poem itself we find a short, credited quotation intended to suggest the poem’s theme.  Pick a short quotation from anything, one that speaks to you, and let it be your poem’s jump-start.

“It’s heavy to drag this big sack of what

I might have done.”

William Stafford

I had a dream once

born of a broken heart and desperation

wherein I stood in the middle of

a human circle, shouldering a bag of rocks

that I longed to set down, to leave there

in the care of the desert sun and the shimmery folk

who circled me, watching.

And so I did; set down the bag, walked away.

The circle parted. Before me lay the whole world;

in every direction rocks, as far as one could see.

I bent and picked one up before moving on.

Image borrowed from Wishfulthinking.co.uk

A Poet's Notebook

You might think,

looking at that journal,

leather bound and tied with a string,

that she lives her life in fragments,

in brief, punctuated sentences,

but in truth, her life is seamless.

Commas are mere pauses to catch

the breath, periods small knots

that end one thread before another begins.

Exclamation points are like straight pins—

they keep the fabric of her life

from unraveling.

Today's prompt? Write about a poet's journal.

Writing in April

I have agreed to participate with some local writer friends in a write-a-poem-a-day project for the month of April. There will be daily prompts though one need not follow them. I have a harder time writing with a prompt than without one so thought it might be a good discipline to try them.

This morning's prompt was to write a trampoline poem. One can create a new poem by copying the syllable count and word stresses of a given poem, as I did with this one, or use the poem's idea as a jumping off point. I am posting my first drafts. If someday I go back and rework any of the month's efforts, I may post them as well. Come play with me.

If Each Day Falls

If each day falls

inside each night,

there exists a well

where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim

of the well of darkness

and fish for fallen light

with patience.

                        Pablo Neruda

To the River

I would stand here

beside your banks

to listen as you

sing patiently of salvation.

You ought to be pure white light

by now free of distrust

since you have observed life

in fullness.

Is there much a river doesn't know?

What I've Been Up To Instead of Blogging

I'm sitting here with my foot elevated and a cup of hot tea in hand. There's a gorgeous bruise making its way across the top of my right foot where a shelf came down on it just an hour or so ago. The shelf could have fallen on my head I suppose, but my neighbor J's shoulder kept it from doing that.

Back up, you say. Okay. For weeks now I've noticed the shelves in my hallway-turned-closet were listing just a tad. On closer inspection, I saw that the braces underpinning the whole contraption were buckling, some out, some in, and knew that if I didn't take precautionary measures (like unloading the shelves and taking them down manually) the whole structure would collapse, spewing the closet contents willy nilly. Since most of what I own is stored on those shelves and some of it is precious, I began this morning to take everything off. By 9:30, after two cups of scalding tea and still clad in my nightshirt, I'd managed to drag and haul every last thing on 12 shelves into the cottage proper where it languishes still, taking up every available piece of furniture and floor space (except the chair on which my backside is perched).

The other half of the cottage looks equally cram-jammed.

I called J. "I'm afraid," I began,"that if I attack theses shelves with a hammer, the whole thing will come down on my head. Want to come help me so it can fall on your head too?"

J's a good sport. She came right over. She wove her way through the path I'd cleared from the closet to the front door and stood looking at the sway-backed shelves. She reached out and gave them a jiggle. The shelves leaned toward her. "Well!" she exclaimed, pushing them back. "This shouldn't be hard."

She took hammer in hand, whacking at one of the supports and then another. I was holding the top shelf against the wall when all of a sudden the whole structure collapsed on itself. The top shelf caught J's shoulder and the bottom one landed on my foot. The two of us yelped in unison but the shelves had done their worst and settled in a heap on the closet floor. J rubbed her shoulder while I inspected my foot.

"Now, if my husband were still here (J's husband G was a carpenter. He passed away a year ago), he'd have held a conference with all of us, then cleared us out and dismantled that thing without causing so much as a scratch." She grinned at me. "But who has time for that? Can you walk on that foot?" she asked.

I could, so we began hauling the broken shelves out to the burn pile at the farm. "Who on earth put these things up in the first place?" she asked me. "They're nothing but press board that's been glued and tacked together. Not a bit of it was even fastened to the wall!"

I had to admit they'd been fashioned by a fellow who didn't know a hammer from a soup spoon but had had good intentions, nonetheless. J's son came in while we were cleaning up the mess we'd made. He took one look, turned on his heel and returned minutes later with a couple of sturdy boards and his electric drill. In two minutes he'd braced the second set of shelves on the opposite wall. They just may may make it through the summer without mishap. thanks to his know-how.

You can see how the shelves are buckling. 

Meanwhile, I have to somehow fit all the crates and boxes and miscellaneous paraphernalia that came off those broken shelves back into the closet before day's end so I can find my bed and collapse into it.

Imagine

If I could learn another language

It would be the tongue of nature,

The syntax of trees,

the music of wind and bird,

the grammar of grassland and forest.

Imagine discovering the mystery

of the great silence,

and learning to chant the meaning of the world.

Thanks Hilary!

Seeking Signs of Spring

I joined my naturalist friend at Bartholomew's Cobble (a cobbled mass of boulders, ledges, old growth trees and a meandering river) this week to see the first hepatica in bloom. We have often sponsored walk/writes where like minded people join us for a relatively silent walk through the woods followed by an hour or so of writing and sharing. This day it was just the two of us, our cameras and our notebooks. Here's what came of it all:

Pink, blue, purple or white petals spring from a nest of leathery, three-lobed leaves. The hepatica is a member of the buttercup family and is one of the first flowers to bloom at the Cobble.

Hepatica at the Cobble

The merest hint

of spring brings them out

like small children bursting

from a winter-weary house.

Out of the dark into the light

wearing only leaf scraps

of clothing and flower petals 

round their heads,

they clamber over rocks

and peer down the wooded hillsides

to the wandering river

or lean back to stare, yellow-eyed

at the blue bowl of sky.

How such a small, green, growing thing

can move the weighted earth,

how blooms so delicate, so barely visible,

can reach and swell the human heart

is on of the world's

finest miracles.

Hepatica's eye-view of the river from it's home ledge.

This Too Shall Pass

It's snowed, it's rained. The sun has come out, the wind has blown. We've seen 10 degrees one morning and 60 the next afternoon. Everything is waking up underground. Sap is rising, the first spring flowers have emerged, the summer birds are back and singing. Why, then, do I feel like I'm slowing down? I feel the way I imagine a butterfly feels in its cocoon - my wings are heavy, folded tight, and I'm in limbo. I can feel something stirring but I'm too sleepy to wake into whatever comes with the dawn. That's odd, I think. That's an autumn-winter feeling, that suspension of time, the slow curling up, the resting.

Perhaps it's because this has been a non-winter with temperatures all over the place, very little snow and no clear delineation between autumn, winter, and now spring. Maybe it's something else. I pick three books at random off the library shelves and all three are about the witness protection program. I wake at precisely 1:11 or 2:22 or 5:55. I watch the night skies because I can't sleep. I hear singing when no one's around.

This week I have fallen prey to the stomach bug that is making its way through the student population where I work. Whenever I'm ill my dreams take on weird, other-worldly characteristics. I count, over and over and over, whatever is in sight. All my dreams when I'm ill involve counting. I remember being sick as a child and experiencing what I called thunder and daisies, a recurring dream of an all encompassing, impenetrable black noise that grew to a crescendo then broke over me to spread into the most beautiful transparent light. I had that dream last night for the first time in over 50 years.

There is a dusting of snow on the ground this morning. The birds are hovering at the feeder. Clouds hurry across the sky as if they have someplace else to be. I sit and watch and sip tea and wonder at the paradox of restlessness and lethargy that weights my limbs. Perhaps my blood is like the tree sap, responding slowly but surely to the seasonal shift. Perhaps tomorrow I will be more like an emerging butterfly or a flower shoot pushing up through the frozen earth. Today I must be content to wait.