Category Archives: Poetry

More found (prompt) poetry

Posted on May 20, 2020 | Leave a comment

Again I found inspiration in a journal prompt at Lightning Droplets:

https://lightningdroplets.wordpress.com/2020/05/13/shelter-and-write-prompt-14-everything-changes/

Describe in one small detail the change in your life

Think of one very small change
that offers a window into this time:
a crayon drawing, seeds
you planted, a mountain
of toilet paper.

Write down whatever comes
to mind; leave nothing
out. How does this small
detail relate to everything
else in your world?

Show us the colors and textures
you notice when you look
closely. What is the history
behind this? What meaning
does it hold for you?

Tell us why you noticed
this change, what captured
your attention. Show us how
it connects to something
larger in your life.

 

may daffodils

April Queen daffodils, a lovely gift from my lovely daughter

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Prompt as poetry

Posted on May 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

Lightning Droplets has been posting journal prompts, but as we all know, prompts are prompts. 😉 Here’s a sort-of found poem from Monday’s post.

https://lightningdroplets.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/shelter-and-write-prompt-18-the-plot-twist/

Prompt 18

Shelter and write
the pandemic as a turning
point: on what trajectory
was the year before the outbreak?
How does the virus change

things? It should alter life
decisions and goals, reshape
relations, spaces, and time,
transform who we are
as people.

 

may allium

Allium schubertii almost ready to bloom

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A derangement of Celtic wisdom

Posted on May 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

Derangement of a quote from Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom posted yesterday at Latitudes of a Day. 

https://latitudesofaday.wordpress.com/2020/05/14/commonplace-may-2020/

Blessing for the road
after John O’Donohue

In your journey
a kindness of rhythm
will teach you
but more important
where you need to go
it will take you
if you do.

Yourself
indirect, oblique
you can trust this
your future, therefore
has the map
your soul alone.

Your destiny
knows the geography of
your soul.

 

may chives

chives, curiously untouched by the freeze

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When you can’t write

Posted on May 13, 2020 | 3 comments

Today’s post at Brevity is timely because a lot of creatives I know are struggling (though others are finding plenty of inspiration in these strange circumstances). Sometimes we are so eager to mine our experiences for creative potential that we neglect to live them first, kind of missing the point.

https://brevity.wordpress.com/2020/05/13/when-the-muse-doesnt-come/

Jilted by the muse
after Sarah Eshleman

But I tell you: do not write
about the experience
— not yet. Let go
your feverish pursuit
of instant transcendence
and ready inspiration.

Silence holds its own
substance and purpose.
Delay is essential
as momentum, and motion
does not equal progress.

We live now and divine
significance later, rarely
absorbing the full weight
of a moment within itself.

 

spirea may

Something that wasn’t killed by the freeze

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Anxious weather

Posted on May 6, 2020 | 4 comments

It has been a lovely spring overall, though we’re about to get blasted with a late hard freeze certain to kill almost everything that has emerged. I feel so sad and powerless; I expect a cherished magnolia will die as a result, as it has already lost all leaves twice this spring to previous unseasonable hard freezes.

Meditation on my morning walk

‘Tis a grey day in May,
much colder than anyone
expects, with a hard freeze
predicted for the end
of the week. I long to throw
a blanket over the whole
yard, big enough to cover
even the mature ashes
with pinnate leaflets unfurling
tiny and chartreuse.

 

yellow irises 6may20

other likely victims of the impending freeze – naturally, this is the most blooms we’ve ever had on the yellow irises

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Day 23, NaPoWriMo 2020

Posted on April 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

This is a found poem from Kelly Thompson’s post on Brevity: https://brevity.wordpress.com/2020/04/23/come-together/

Speaking from the sixties

“The world is acting like it’s going to lose us,” I said.
His smile was wry. As was mine.
Tender wry.
“Well, they’re losing us anyway,” he said.

No, I won’t die for capitalism, for Trump, for Wall Street.
I would for my girls, for my grandbabies.
But for consumerism? For the lie that there is not enough?
Not a chance.

Like my husband said, “You will lose us anyway.”
We are in the third act.
Age is a construct and so is time.
But death is not.

 

2020 National Poetry Month Poster-50

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Day 22, NaPoWriMo 2020

Posted on April 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

Today is Earth Day. I am thankful for the astounding planet-wide system that sustains us, but feel I should be wearing sackcloth and ashes as a sign of grief and repentance for the terrible damage we inflict upon it daily.

Covid-19 is Us

A virus moves about the Earth at will
destroying
occupying
re-engineering
adapting
whatever other living organism
it comes across
without respect or regard
for whom or whatever
may be affected

Sooner or later this planet
will shake us all off
like a bad cold

(This poem was inspired by a blog post: https://ipledgeafallegiance.wordpress.com/2020/04/21/earth-strikes-back/)

2020 National Poetry Month Poster-50

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Day 16, NaPoWriMo 2020

Posted on April 16, 2020 | Comments Off on Day 16, NaPoWriMo 2020

This is not an actual dream but a series of images that came to mind as I was reading poems other people had written about their dreams.

Unconscious

At the beginning of the dream
I stand at the end of the pier.
A light north breeze blows steady
so the leaves on the cottonwoods
flap like church fans and whisper

among themselves. The water
ripples dark and translucent, a sheet
of shifting obsidian flakes. No boats
or cottages or people or other piers
are there; I am alone with the lake.

In the middle of the dream I drift
above the deepest part in that green
rowboat with the wooden oars,
the lake so clear I see the bottom
criss-crossed by large torpedo

shapes some hundred feet below.
Smaller fish glide or dart through
the intervening space, every shade
of green with flashes of gold
and silver, turquoise and emerald.

In the end of the dream I float
just below the surface and watch
the slow undulation of seaweed
in distant shallows. Minnows
nibble at the hairs on my arms

and legs, tickling. My face
breaks the surface and I take
deep, slow breaths before I sink
a few feet and jack-knife
toward the bottom.

 

2020 National Poetry Month Poster-50

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Days 14 and 15, NaPoWriMo 2020

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

This came from a prompt in the April 2020 issue of Diane Lockward’s poetry newsletter.

Irrelevancies

It doesn’t matter what
herbal supplements you take
or if you don’t believe the news
reports or believe in the absolute power
of God or burn sage every day or feel
sure someone is concealing
important information;

It doesn’t matter that
you wash your hands religiously
every 10 minutes or have 10 packages
of toilet paper from Costco (30 rolls each)
or drink 100 proof alcohol or live in the Arctic
or eat 12 cloves of garlic every day
or flush your sinuses with saline;

It doesn’t matter who
you think is doing a great job
leading or exercising appropriate
power or not or if you have gone
to a summer home in the Adirondacks
or hold a seat in the Senate
or haven’t left your house;

The virus is no respecter of persons
nor powers nor wealth in any degree
nor what any of us knows or believes
to be true because it is only a protein
molecule that mutates living cells
it encounters and it cannot
nor does not care.

 

This came from the Day 14 prompt on the SLCC Community Writing Center Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CommunityWritingCenter/

Prevarications

You look
great. This won’t hurt
a bit. You’ll feel
a little
pinch. I mailed it
yesterday. I can’t
imagine
where that came
from. Traffic
was insane. My alarm
didn’t go off. It’s
nothing.
I haven’t got
a pen. I never
carry cash. I didn’t
see that
coming. I swear
I touched
nothing. Nobody
told me. It’ll be
fine. I’ve got it
under control. No need
to panic.

 

2020 National Poetry Month Poster-50

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Day 13, NaPoWriMo 2020

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

I wept this morning as crews cut down two large, beautiful, and perfectly healthy sweetgum trees in my neighbor’s yard.

Grief upon grief

Every day I wake to sounds of carnage: nerve-grating
whine of chainsaw, gut-churning growl of woodchipper,
people removing trees like a small child plucks dandelion
blossoms. But trees are not dandelions; their roots

intertwine and share the soil with countless species
of animals, plants, bacteria, fungi; their crowns feed
and house birds, squirrels, insects, and shade our homes
from summer’s glare. They anchor our landscapes, absorb

water from our roofs and driveways, and filter the air
we breathe. They delight our eyes with varied shape
and shade of limb and leaf, our ears with rustle and moan
of windsong. They outlive us, if we leave them

to their ancient work. Isn’t there already too much
dying in the world during this terrible time?

2020 National Poetry Month Poster-50

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