POETRY

Update to this page, April 21.

Well, no, I haven't stopped writing poems for this April Challenge, but I have stopped posting them here, and stopped showing the page on my blog.  Because I thought no one was visiting or reading, and decided not to bother anymore.  And then I see that in fact, once in a while, someone does visit.  If you'd leave a comment, I'd know who you are, and if you want me to keep doing this.  I've been putting my daily poems in my private blog, just to have a place to keep them for the month.  So, comments?  Suggestions? 

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Am posting on this page my efforts to meet the Poem A Day Challenge from the Poetic Asides Group on Writer's Digest, held in honor of April being National Poetry Month. It seems so unlikely that I'll be able to write thirty poems that I wanted to sort of hide these attempts, not to be publicly embarrassed when I give up on day eight or eleven, or whenever it might happen. So far I'm finding it fun, and a great exercise for my tired old brain. 

4/10/10 Update:  Now going to leave up on this page just the most recent poems, two or three days worth.  This is too hard, scrolling down through everything every time to get to the most recent. 



 Poem A Day Challenge, April 2010

Day 6 - Ekphrastic Poem 

The Witches Entertainment


There is no moon tonight
and cloudcast hides the stars.
Put on your hats, my beauties,
soon we ride
skyclad
across the  darkling Spanish plain,
seeking louts who wander
from the taverns in the town
wanting only
the warmth of their own beds,
fire on the hearth,
a sodden night of sleep
too drunk for dreams.

We shall remake them
fly them,
dumb creatures of the earth,
to ecstasy and terror in our arms.
By hidden light of dark day stars
cross tossing stormy seas
to visit cannibals
Eaters of human hearts
then drop them
bloody, riven, gnawed
through the forest leaves.

They will hear music
played by monsters
around a ring of fire
deep within the midnight trees
dance with us
strange sisters,
then sleep
abandoning despair.
From unreasoning sleep awakening
 they will not remember.
Will not care


Day 7 - Until_____


(Apologies To Eliot) Until The Lilacs Bloom

December’s not the hardest for a gardener
Bare branches, winter’s barren room.

No, that honor goes to early April

This cold impatient time spent waiting

For lilacs' purple bursting into bloom.

(Not sure here if this is it, or not.  First attempt only.)


 

(Day 8 - Tool)

My Mother's Garden Knife

Blessed is she who weeds her mother’s gardens

And every garden that I've had was somehow hers.

Even this one, so unlike her Pennsylvania stone walls

Enclosing rhubarb, rhododendron, and strawberries,

Roses, foxgloves, peonies, and mint.

She taught me everything I know about a garden,

How to plant,  and how to weed

Garden knife in hand, long days’summer hours
On her knees beside the old red barn

Her cats for companions in the catnip,

In the buzzing herb beds conversing with the bees.

Through years of pain and loss, depression,

In the herbs and flowers she knew joy.

Here in this dry and stony desert garden,
Her steel blade in my hand, 
She gently whispers green thumbed lessons:

Instructs me: Listen,

From the pines the doves are calling,

The redbud’s in full bloom.

Take comfort in the iris,
Take comfort where you can.