NaPoWriMo mo' catch up 22 thru 24 April

A catchup day again: too much homework that needed to be fine-tuned, a lovely production Death of a Salesman to go see, and quite a bit of reading for lit. And after the last poem a song...

Toothpaste  22 April

Gravity protection.

Olive, emerald, lime  23 April

The front door blind hiding day;
sunrise through willows;
the County Fair’s painted cinderblocks;
just baled alfalfa;
John Deere tractor in the barn’s yawn;
sparrows stealing gooseberries;
1974’s crushed-velvet pantsuit;
rhubarb leaves unfolding;
my sister’s eye-shadow;
hummingbirds over honeysuckle;
shadows hitting stained glass;
deep water all the way to lake bottom.

Love survives 24 April

                        It’s the mundane:
the carpet path tread at midnight
a baby slung like wet laundry across
your shoulder, your tongue shush, shushing
as you pace.

                        The need for ceremony:
a song sung each bedtime
the hug that has risen from a hip squeeze
to a chin that brushes your head
as good night is whispered.

                           We turn our backs
after our final words, content
to wrestle quilts until we sleep
and then find that all through
the night legs are touching,
hands have found each other
like mating birds, fingers nesting
in the other’s palm.

We interrupt this NaPoWriMo for this

Becoming A Horse

by Ross Gay July 2012 The Sun 

It was dragging my hands along its belly,

loosing the bit and wiping the spit

from its mouth that made me

a snatch of grass in the thing’s maw,

a fly tasting its ear. It was

touching my nose to his that made me know

the clover’s bloom, my wet eye to his that

made me know the long field’s secrets.

But it was putting my heart to the horse’s that made me know

the sorrow of horses. Made me

forsake my thumbs for the sheen of unshod hooves.

And in this way drop my torches.

And in this way drop my knives.

Feel the small song in my chest

swell and my coat glisten and twitch.

And my face grow long.

And these words cast off, at last,

for the slow honest tongue of horses.

 

Day 20 and 21 (a twofer) NaPoWriMo

20 April

At the overflow pond, at the decorative fountain of Fountain Parkway
the goslings – the goose-lings – wander the manicured lawn
like puffs of weeds, eight balls in motion with their overseers
the gander and the goose, up and down the hillock.

At the nearby bank, beside the ATM drive another goose
couple have built their nest; fierce looks whenever a car
drives by, how close to the busy road are they, how close
to foxes and coyotes coming from the farmer’s fields.

These geese do not care here where the bank manager use to place
a decoy coyote to drive the geese away and how the whole
bank staff watched the morning a gander took the decoy apart
and then plopped down on the welcome mat until well after opening time.

21 April 

Senate

Smug mugger Josh Hawley (R-MO) tells a lie
a bona fide, hero woman, Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)
calls his lie and holds the truth to the light
it is what it always has been – no one is listening.

Class Roster

The Rylees, the Kylees, the Emmas, Hannahs, Saras,
Sarahs, Sashas, Lamiya and Trinity are all here.
There is no other Mary, after so long what relief.

Day Nineteen NaPoWriMo

I try to start each morning
not with what would be known
as prayer or meditation,
though poets would know it
as exactly such when reading
or writing a poem. Often, I am
worshipping joy with Brother Ross Gay
as a way to make myself pay
attention to the day ahead.
Though a chickadee somewhere
in the maple can also set focus
or the sound of mourning doves
in duet no grief in their song.

NaPoWriMo Catch up 14-18

Day Fourteen

Wind, hail, rain & more wind
but subterranean we only listen
like moles pondering echoes

Day Fifteen

The neighbor’s black cat
comes to lie beside
my birdfeeders.

It has taken
a year for her to know this edge
of the cul de sac.

Now she is queen.


Day Sixteen

The lonesome pine
has burst, so much new
growth, its arms full of song,


Day Seventeen

white blossoms
exists along with pink
bees visit each
safe at any door
in this neighborhood

Day Eighteen

Along Old Lincoln Trail Road
a man carries a large toy dinosaur:
needed wonder.

The day lightens and then lightens more (First Anniversary repost edition)

Heavy writing homework, tornado warnings and homecoming have kept me from posting poems. And today is filled again in other ways. I was at Playa last year when I wrote this, watching snow, listening to silence. But I repost it today for those two crazy kids who hopped over to Iceland... love them both so much. 

Overnight the trees bloom
monochrome blossom, soft down.
& the birds are silent this dawn
yesterday’s sun & activity
ushering in this morning.
Quiet & rest. The snow
still sifting down, heavy
with water & promise.

Along the pond the only sounds are ducks plunging underwater and then popping back up; the puddled softness of snow falling into the water from the overhanging branches. A snowy pond music, a mid-April melody. The day lightens and then lightens more. I make the first human trail. I see goose tracks, a rabbit, something went under the snow across the path and their tunnel has since collapsed. Bird tracks everywhere: how do I read these notes?

The snow is so wet, heavy, melting everywhere (in the back of my mind, please don’t freeze – don’t get colder) a steady stream of water off the lodge roof; at my cabin, I could hear the snow compressing, crashing down.

It is quiet off the lakebed (how many times have I written quiet this week?) the view limited. An insect lands on a bare stalk of yellow grass, “Careful,” I warn, “the swallows are out.” As if on cue a hawk on the willow flinches as it is dive bombed by a bold swallow. It shrugs off the attack like the snow on its feathers.

The clouds rise. The far ridge can be seen still holding a shawl of cloud over its shoulders but clearing above. The lakebed visible again. It is eight o’clock. This weather is only a needed pause.

It is Saturday, the 16th of April. Miles away, thousands, in another country, another time zone, another wide place, my baby girl, my Bambina, our lovely and loved daughter is getting married. Their wedding day, like her life the way she wanted it, they. It’s as though the snow brought such perfect silence so I could lean into the world and almost hear their voices. That simple promise, “I do”.

Day Thirteen NaPoWriMo

There has been talk lately about a poetic form called a golden shovel, this is not one but it's what came as I thought of a shovel...

The shovel

Is the only tool that rests in knowledge
of worth. Year-round it is called upon,
needed to dig and scoop, pile and pat.
The garden, the yard, the flowerbeds in spring
John’s little kitten mashed beneath the tractor’s
tire. Each job the shovel comes to stoic
and silent, ready for each level of gravity.

Winter mornings, across the shoulders, it is
taken to the frozen creek to open the watering
hole (again) for the cattle.