NaPoWriMo #5: the road not taken

Another good prompt at Read Write Poem inspired this poem:


Hindsight

Long after the wake of our breakup
subsided to a ripple
you stirred waves again in my heart
wrote letters
met me at the airport
had me over
then never called back.

It took me a long time
to stop feeling like
a green striped sock
with no match
a crumpled wad of masking tape
after the painting is done
a doll with one blue glass eye
and no eyelashes
a long time
to stop wondering
what I had done wrong.


Now
I can only thank you
for in leaving me behind
you chose better for me
than I would have
for myself.

NaPoWriMo #4: conversation

Read Write Poem had a great prompt the other day: converse with an image that means something to you. It took me a few minutes to think of just the right image, and then it came to me.

If you've read much of this blog, you know I'm a great lover of Andrew Wyeth's artwork. And the first concrete image I thought of was my favorite Wyeth painting, Christina's World. It was considerably more difficult to think about what kind of conversation I would have with that image, but I took a stab at it.


Conversation with Christina

Andy painted you at high summer
a slender figure framed in fields of dry grass
faded pink set against burnt gold
silver-streaked tendrils of dark hair
barely stirring in a lifeless breeze

My favorite half-remembered tale of you
may not even be true: you crawled every day
to visit the graves of your mother and father
then crawled home again
so I must ask

were the gulls wheeling in the salty morning sky
when you first reached up, turned the brass knob
and pushed open the weathered door?

did the sun-baked stalks crackle under your weight
tearing at your ankles and calves
as you dragged yourself down the hill?

were you thirsty by the time
you reached the bottom or did it take
until you were halfway down the road?

did the gravel leave an imprint
on the calloused heels of your hands
and tender flesh of your palms?

were the graves as you left them yesterday
bleached headstones skirted with neatly weeded grass
and flame hued geraniums in a jam jar?

NaPoWriMo #3: re-write

It's probably a bit early in the game to be pulling out the re-write card, but we've been at a family reunion at Zion National Park for the past week (that's a whole other post) and so I've got some catching up to do.

I originally wrote this poem back in Febrary 2009 and since then it's been through five drafts. For the past couple months I've been workshopping it in my poetry group, and am pleased with the direction it's taking—though I'm not completely satisfied with it yet. Here's the latest incarnation (from this afternoon).


My Valentine

You learned to cut making valentines
clipped carefully along pencil-traced lines
frustrated by each failed attempt
finally threw down pink plastic-handled scissors
cheeks flushed under freckles and hot tears

In that moment I stood still
stopped, saw myself reflected in
the fierce furrow between your brows
the stubborn set of your shoulder blades
the way you clenched your blunt scissors

I wished I could have taught you
before you learned to care too much
but I think you always have

So I breathed in, breathed out
smoothed your hair, stroked your back
took my own shears in hand
showed you how to make small, slow cuts
tried not to make my own too fast or straight

Cautious, you snipped, then cut
then shredded with assurance
through a sheaf of construction paper
I wondered at your persistence
praised every jagged heart of red, green, and blue

I wished I could have taught you
before I learned to care too much
but I know I always have.

NaPoWriMo #2: weather

I woke up to snow this morning: a half-inch or so sticking to the rooftops and starting to build up in the grass.


April Fooled

Nature's little joke:
sun-kissed skies on April first,
snow April second.

NaPoWriMo #1: beachcombing

April is National Poetry Month, which for me means NaPoWriMo. Time again for a sustained burst of brief, intense, frenzied poetic scrawling—or typing, as the case may be.

I confess, I rarely write in longhand anymore, simply because the computer is so convenient and keeps the whirlwind of paper to a minimum. The following poem, however, did start its life on a sheet of notepaper, when a thought came to me yesterday morning while I was in the shower, and I scrambled to find something to write it down on before it escaped me. This morning when I sat down to flesh it out, it took on a life of its own and decided to be a tanka, which came as a surprise to me.


Beach Glass

Bright cobalt, sea foam,
bottle green shattered into
scattered shards too small
to be crushed again, frosted
smooth by turn of tide and time.

Seven

Amazing to think this picture was taken seven short years ago. Happy birthday, sweet boy.

You heard it here first

Yesterday afternoon I went in for my eight-week prenatal check-up.

Yeah, that's right.

My OB cautioned me it was probably too early for the Doppler to pick anything up, then (mostly to humor me) he tried anyway. It took a minute or two, and then we heard the baby's heartbeat, soft but strong.

Toothsome

On Saturday a good friend of ours threw an 80th birthday bash for her dad at the Museum of Flight, and the invite included free admission to the museum for the day. So we headed out of town bright and early, drove over the pass, did a bit of shopping, had lunch at Duke's on Alki (mmm, mahi tacos!), and then headed to the museum. We did and saw lots of cool stuff, including walking through a retired Air Force One jet, checking out a model of a PBY (my grandpa flew one with the Black Cat Squadron in WWII), learning about the life and career of Amelia Earhart, and Jimmy's favorite, taking a spin in the X-Pilot flight simulator.

The party was finishing up so late, we stayed at a hotel for the night before heading home on Sunday. That morning before we checked out, Jimmy yanked out his third tooth. It's been dangerously loose for several days now, and I think the threat of losing it while eating breakfast gave him the courage to tug it out (he lost his first tooth last fall in a bite of banana and promptly swallowed it).

This morning he came bounding into our bedroom to show off the crisp dollar bill the Tooth Fairly left him. Funny, I remember back in the day feeling like the dime she left me was a veritable fortune, because I could take it to the dairy around the corner and buy a cherry Popsicle all by myself.

Good times.

Another byline

Boston Literary Magazine's spring issue went up today, and with it my poem "Gooseberry Pie". I can tell this is going to be a good week!

Geography according to Jimmy

A few weeks ago Jimmy got a new clock radio. The idea was for him to not only have a visual reminder to help him get his morning chores done on time, but also help him to get up on his own every morning in time to say goodbye to his dad before Jim leaves for work.

The clock radio also has a CD player, so Jim let Jimmy choose from our vast collection of mp3s and burned him a mixed CD. It's pretty eclectic; everything from "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry to "Dancing Queen" by ABBA to "Panama" by Van Halen. One of the songs, which is Jimmy's new favorite, is "Nations of the World", from the cartoon series "The Animaniacs".



For the last week he's been humming it around the house, and this morning it occurred to Jim and I we were missing the educational opportunity this song presented, so we printed up the lyrics and gave them to Jimmy. He disappeared into his room and we could hear him singing the song to himself with great gusto.

About five minutes later he emerged with a look of profound realization on his face.

"Hey, Mom! Panama is a song and a country!"