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Poetic Earth Month—30 Days, 30 Poems Challenge

By T.S. Poetry 262 Comments

Boy Rock Climbing
This Poetic Earth Month 30 Days, 30 Poems Challenge was offered throughout April 2019.

 

Thank you for having written with us all month long!

To make more challenges like this possible in the future…

Become one of the visionaries at GoFundMe.

 

Photo by Sonia Joie. Used with permission.

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T.S. Poetry
T.S. Poetry
Helping you get inspired. With poetry & poetic things.
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Filed Under: Blog, National Poetry Month, Poetic Earth Month, Poetry Challenge, poetry prompt, poetry teaching resources, writing prompt, writing prompts

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Comments

  1. Bethany R. says

    March 17, 2019 at 5:12 pm

    Starting small

    What difference
    might it make

    if we called
    the environment

    our environment?

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      March 18, 2019 at 3:06 pm

      Oh, I LOVE that. And that is starting small indeed.

      One. Little. Word.

      A perfect slide-in, three for three letters. So, taking up the same space with an entirely different sense.

      Reply
      • Bethany R. says

        March 18, 2019 at 11:17 pm

        Happy you like it, L.L. 🙂

        Yes, reduce, reuse, recycle,
        replace?

        Reply
        • L.L. Barkat says

          March 19, 2019 at 8:42 am

          That made me smile!

          (There is a new idea out there: “reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse”… which is a little redundant on the “reduce” side but I get the spirit of it. Personally, I like the idea of positive replacement, because most people really don’t like the idea of just giving things up or living within what can feel like imposed constraints, whether those constraints are imposed from the inside or the outside. So, choosing to slip something new and positive in, something that engages our creativity and actually opens things out and feels expansive to our hearts and minds and souls, I believe that can ultimately work better. Some might say it’s just semantics. But words do have power. How we frame something to ourselves and others, in words, matters.)

          Reply
          • Dave Malone says

            April 2, 2019 at 10:27 am

            And I saw this: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair, Refuse.” I agree with you, L.L., couldn’t we slip in something positive. Or even use the order to stay positive: “Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle.”

  2. Sandra Heska King says

    March 21, 2019 at 10:32 am

    Ocean

    microplastic
    plankton to planet
    macroproblem

    Last weekend, our church formed several teams to “serve the city” by partnering with 12 nonprofits for several projects–gleaning tomatoes, working on 5 homes for foster kids, moms, and women in distress, distributing groceries, making care packages for at-risk kids and more. My husband and I joined the team that patrolled a section of the beach and collected 125 pounds of trash, i.e. refuse–most of it plastic of some sort and cigarette butts. I didn’t know that filters contain some sort of plastic. It was an eyeopener for me. Until you really look, you don’t really see. D and I determined to take a bucket with us on every future visit–and not to build sand castles.

    I think the ocean will be my April focus.

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      March 21, 2019 at 6:08 pm

      I love the ocean. It is, to me, both primal danger and soothing cradling. When I am there, I lose myself in its endlessness and the sound of it stays with me for days and speaks in my dreams. I look forward to seeing what happens with you and the ocean during April. I wish you marvels and discovery and vision and inspiration. 🙂

      Reply
    • Katie says

      April 1, 2019 at 11:03 am

      Sandy,
      “Until you really look, you don’t really see.”
      Thank you for filling those buckets on your walks.

      Reply
      • Sandra Heska King says

        April 1, 2019 at 12:25 pm

        🙂

        Reply
  3. Bethany says

    March 22, 2019 at 8:41 pm

    I like that you’re choosing one specific part of our environment to focus on, Sandra.

    Beautiful comment, L.L. 🙂

    Reply
  4. Katie says

    April 1, 2019 at 8:37 am

    streams and rivers
    run to the sea, filled by wet
    clouds, snow melt; happy we

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      April 1, 2019 at 10:07 am

      Starting small, Katie. That’s a happy thing. 🙂

      Maybe you want to focus on water as your place to “just begin,” for Poetic Earth Month? (Sandra’s focusing on the sea. But there are also the rivers and streams asking for our exploration and voices. 🙂 ) Well, and the sea is big. So I’m thinking Sandra would share that with you, too. 😉

      Reply
      • Sandra Heska King says

        April 1, 2019 at 10:21 am

        Always happy to share. 🙂

        Reply
        • Katie says

          April 1, 2019 at 10:54 am

          🙂

          Reply
      • Katie says

        April 1, 2019 at 10:54 am

        Thank you, L.L.:)

        Reply
  5. Sandra Heska King says

    April 1, 2019 at 10:46 am

    Laura, is this where you want us to share our poems from the daily prompts?

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      April 1, 2019 at 12:12 pm

      Indeed. 🙂

      Reply
  6. Richard Maxson says

    April 1, 2019 at 11:25 am

    —after Ezra Pound

    The apparition of these Post Oaks on the hill:
    Feathers on a Texas Spring.

    Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      April 1, 2019 at 12:24 pm

      Nice!

      Reply
    • Dave Malone says

      April 2, 2019 at 10:28 am

      Lovely.

      Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 3, 2019 at 7:26 am

      Thanks Sandra and Dave.

      Reply
  7. Shelly Faber says

    April 1, 2019 at 11:57 am

    Hello April, and Day 1 of the challenge

    look to the sunrise
    find where morning golden sky
    greets the morning sea

    https://myredwinediary.wordpress.com/2019/04/01/poetic-earth-month-challenge-haiku/

    Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      April 1, 2019 at 12:23 pm

      I like the golden photo you paired with this on your site, Shelly. 🙂

      Reply
      • Shelly Faber says

        April 2, 2019 at 10:12 am

        Thank you, Sandra. I’ll be looking for that ‘single grain of sand’, next time I’m at the beach.. All the best

        Reply
  8. Sandra Heska King says

    April 1, 2019 at 12:22 pm

    Poetic Earth Month Challenge – Day 1

    Counting Down Ocean Time

    Find a single grain
    of sand–if you can–beneath
    the seaside debris.

    Reply
  9. L.L. Barkat says

    April 1, 2019 at 1:20 pm

    1

    •

    On my walk today—
    two tiny pine cones nestling,
    my hand a cradle.

    Reply
    • Dave Malone says

      April 2, 2019 at 10:29 am

      Love it! Love the strictness to the 5-7-5, too. 🙂

      Reply
  10. Richard Maxson says

    April 2, 2019 at 9:06 am

    Lovers in the Park

    Lupine stand
    in lavender spears,
    where I notice lovers,
    alone with a Spring rain
    and their fears
    palpable between them.

    They walk with them,
    like a third something,
    ancient like the Cycads
    they are passing.

    He is looking for the bones,
    the artifacts, that abide his sorrow.
    She is remembering an embrace
    worn for days like skin
    warmed by a fire.

    She is chilled by the shadows
    extending ahead of her

    in different worlds as they go
    where the path curves
    out of sight,
    her hand reaching
    through the past,
    touching his fingers
    bathed with fresh rain,
    she turning toward him
    where anemones frame the bend.

    Reply
  11. Dave Malone says

    April 2, 2019 at 10:31 am

    1

    •

    Dark pine bark. Mulched trees.
    Round hills, a robin’s puffed breast.
    Old dirt, finds a worm.

    Reply
  12. Sandra Heska King says

    April 2, 2019 at 10:31 am

    Poetic Earth Month Challenge – Day 2

    Inspired by this article:

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/photos-reveal-plastic-plankton-in-ocean/

    Ocean Images

    in just scoops of time
    deceptively artistic
    a plastic soup world

    Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 14, 2019 at 8:40 am

      Sandy, your haiku well reflects the “deceptively artistic” image. I like the phrase “scoops of time” as well.

      Reply
  13. Mary Van Denend says

    April 2, 2019 at 6:55 pm

    Pond

    You wear many masks–
    today you appear murky
    but I’ve seen you shine

    Small square of water,
    you stare, a mirror open
    to each passing cloud

    Bright fish flash under
    your glassy skin, orange slivers
    who know you as home

    Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      April 2, 2019 at 8:47 pm

      Mary, I love this. The pond as a mirror with glassy skin. And the last part–orange slivers who know you as home.

      Reply
    • Dave Malone says

      April 3, 2019 at 2:16 pm

      Love. 🙂

      Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 4, 2019 at 8:48 am

      Beautiful, Mary. See it with my own eyes; feel the coolness of the water.

      Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 4, 2019 at 5:24 pm

      Perfect capture of a pond. Can’t we just watch them for hours?

      Reply
  14. Shelly Faber says

    April 2, 2019 at 7:30 pm

    Day 2 .. A Hurting Time.

    https://wordpress.com/post/myredwinediary.wordpress.com/4490

    Reply
  15. Richard Maxson says

    April 3, 2019 at 7:22 am

    In the Time of Lilacs

    My coffee has gone cold,
    in the dawdling morning light,
    the dew unsettled in the trees.

    Now, birdsong—the hum
    that shaped the winter air
    inside the house
    has not followed me.

    The disarray of print on blue lines
    rivers away as a spare rain weeps,
    touches me like a hovering ghost.

    The paper binds and then withers,
    its familiar words taken by a finger
    formed and crooked, then
    vanishing from the table,
    where the edge begins and ends.

    Reply
    • Shelly Faber says

      April 3, 2019 at 10:19 pm

      So sensory . Really lovely.

      Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 6, 2019 at 11:50 am

      Richard, the quietly elegant second strophe arrests me:
      “…the hum/that shaped the winter air/inside the house/has not followed me.”

      Richly poignant, evoking time and season plus an almost visual AND kinesthetic sense of spatial volume juxtaposed alongside its absence—as well as sound and implied silence —in mostly one-syllable words, within one strophe!

      Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 14, 2019 at 7:48 am

        Thank you for your comment Laurie.

        Reply
  16. Florence says

    April 4, 2019 at 6:51 am

    Prompt from Day 3: Just when I thought the day had nothing left to give…

    Enough by Florence Brooks

    Just when I thought the day had nothing left to give
    I realized it wasn’t the day
    It was me
    Worn from hours of responsibility
    Of children, of work, of unending lists
    Tired, with sore throat and aching limbs
    I moved myself through what remained
    Watching the clock
    Aware that time was moving fast and slow
    Too fast to do all that needed to be done
    Too slow to take me to a night of rest
    And I wondered how
    How to move through what was left when there was nothing left of me
    And I chose
    Chose to plant in my mind and heart that
    No matter how little there was
    There was much around me that was precious and good and beautiful
    And it was enough
    Enough to carry me through.

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      April 4, 2019 at 8:05 am

      Florence, I love how you played with the “as much as she could carry” line from the end of Mowry’s poem as well, by unfolding it into “enough to carry me through.”

      Yesterday, I was feeling so weary myself. Too many cares. And my 21-y-o daughter leaning into me, tearful, afraid that people won’t end up coming together to deal with the climate issue we are facing. I put my arm around her and pulled her close, there on the steps where we’d decided to sit for a few minutes, to take in the healing air of spring. Then, just for that moment, we found the new crocuses by the steps and she said she sometimes forgets to look at them before they are gone and I said, “Let’s look at them now.” And, “I like to call them little sun cups.”

      I hope you find something today that brings you a bit of sun in a little cup, even if that cup is small and hidden from obvious view.

      Reply
      • Florence says

        April 4, 2019 at 8:09 am

        What a kind response. Thank you. I am the doctor’s office now.

        Reply
        • L.L. Barkat says

          April 4, 2019 at 8:26 am

          Now

          At the doctor’s office,
          the sun seems far,
          and I wonder what
          will be a little cup
          of comfort for me.

          Then it comes
          unexpectedly.

          A kindness.
          A thanks.
          A you.

          And suddenly
          I am.

          Reply
    • Katie says

      April 4, 2019 at 10:00 am

      Florence,

      Thank you for “Enough.”

      “It was me”
      “Watching the clock”
      “And I wondered how”
      “And I chose”
      “And it was enough”

      This puts me in mind of Gretchen Rubin’s: “The days are long, the years are short.”

      Gratefully,
      Katie

      Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      April 4, 2019 at 10:23 am

      “Aware that time was moving fast and slow”

      So true. Sometimes it is just a matter of planting our mind and heart. And that last line made me smile. Perfect.

      Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 6, 2019 at 11:58 am

      Florence, this:

      “How to move through what was left when there was nothing left of me”

      Thank you for saying it, straight out.
      And then those two acts: the choosing, and the planting. Small. Quiet. Bold. An irresistible invitation.

      Reply
      • Florence Brooks says

        April 6, 2019 at 2:26 pm

        Thank you all for your generous comments!

        Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 14, 2019 at 8:16 am

      Florence, the world is large. Large “enough” to contain more good than bad. Your poem is a testament to that.

      Technology has miniaturized the world so that we seem to see so much that is wrong or destructive. It takes a conscious choice, as you and LL write, to open to the many wonders and strengths of this world.

      Thanks for sharing this poem.

      Reply
      • Florence says

        April 14, 2019 at 12:52 pm

        Richard,
        I am grateful for your thoughts. Thank you.

        Reply
  17. Florence says

    April 4, 2019 at 8:31 am

    ❤

    Reply
  18. Richard Maxson says

    April 4, 2019 at 8:40 am

    Burl

    …sometimes those hard women
    who abandon you get you to say, “You.”
    — From “Bad People” by Robert Bly

    You have thought of cutting the burl for years,
    with its silent secrets, held in the bark,
    like a frown of spite for the creek water,
    with its life of smooth stones and dappled light.

    Between the worried rings and lowing song,
    the slow earth ruffles your hair as it turns
    in its nest of space, the way sleep turns you
    toward mornings you do not recognize.

    When the snow comes, the water rolls below
    the ice, never the same, you can feel it,
    more so than the blood that keeps you here,
    circling, like the clouds you cannot touch.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 6, 2019 at 12:01 pm

      “… creek water,
      with its life of smooth stones and dappled light.

      Between the worried rings and lowing song,
      the slow earth ruffles your hair as it turns
      in its nest of space, the way sleep turns you
      toward mornings you do not recognize.”

      Palpable tenderness and loss. Stunning.

      Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 14, 2019 at 8:17 am

        Thank you.

        Reply
  19. Sandra Heska King says

    April 4, 2019 at 10:20 am

    Day 3

    Delights

    Just when I thought
    the day had nothing
    left to give
    and I was weighed down
    and walled in with worry
    over the state of worldly affairs—
    politics (I’ll say no more),
    a college student and a non-Uber,
    local school shooting survivors
    and their suicides,
    compassion versus personal space,
    a female whale (and her fetus) dead,
    found carrying fifty pounds
    of plastic in her stomach,
    a kidnapped tourist in Uganda,
    measles and Ebola,
    someone shot in the face after
    an argument over gym shoes.
    I mean–seriously???
    But then the dog begged to cuddle,
    the Facebook Marketplace table
    was perfect and perfectly priced,
    and the mail delivered
    The Book of Delights.

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      April 4, 2019 at 10:44 am

      Gratis

      On what
      light wings, the butterfly
      carries her

      burden
      (and yours).

      Soundlessly,
      she drifts
      from milkweed
      to white clover

      in the enough
      of this day—

      earth’s price
      for the empty-hearted
      looking, looking for something,

      is nothing more

      than the time
      it takes you
      to see.

      Reply
      • Sandra Heska King says

        April 4, 2019 at 11:06 am

        I see what you did there. 🙂

        Reply
      • Shelly Faber says

        April 7, 2019 at 11:15 pm

        Very beautiful. Your words leave space to breathe. Saying so much!

        Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 12, 2019 at 4:59 pm

        Love this, especially the repetition of “looking, looking” in the same line, though part of different thoughts, an urge toward seeing.

        A reminder of what nature does for us at its own expense.

        Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 6, 2019 at 1:19 pm

      “she drifts/from milkweed/to white clover
      in the enough of this day—”
      “earth’s price/for the empty-hearted”

      I admire this poem’s range of motion and shifting proportions and nudge toward hope. The words pause, early on, to include me, then encompass seekers everywhere, and finally alight in those short lines framed with extra white space: a hush, the voice intimate again, as if to ask me, Will I look?

      Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 14, 2019 at 8:26 am

      God bless dogs! How they can tip a scale with love beyond words. And let’s not forget Ross Gay.

      Reply
  20. Richard Maxson says

    April 5, 2019 at 8:25 am

    5.

    The Tin Box

    Always there on the front porch
    by the door, peeling letters—Milk.

    Sometimes it was the scratch
    and halt of the truck with no doors,

    or the flickering clink of glass
    in the spaces of boots on tiptoes.

    Like the coming morning sun
    yellow, drifting up toward the crowns

    of bottles, safe in their silver shield,
    waiting to be turned upside down,

    cold, sweet and running free,
    like ribbons of pasture buttercups…

    a memory forever deep in my bones.

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      April 5, 2019 at 11:39 am

      I love this. 🙂 It reminds me of my mom’s stories about stealing the milk from the milk box to make beautiful mud pies. 😉

      Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 6, 2019 at 8:49 am

        That would make mud pies almost good enough to eat. 🙂

        We lived in a small neighborhood with brick streets. Nostalgia for me will always carry mornings seeing or hearing the milk (with Elsie the cow on the side) and bread trucks circulating those streets, and of course, that tin box that kept milk cold in glass bottles with a paper top and a little flap that you pulled up to open it. (sigh)

        Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 6, 2019 at 12:55 pm

      “in the spaces of boots on tiptoes”
      “bottles safe in their silver shield”
      “waiting to be turned upside down”

      Thanks for taking me back in time. I’m remembering condensation on gleaming bottles stowed in the shallow cupboard on Grandma’s back porch. And, of course, Grandma.

      Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 14, 2019 at 8:39 am

        Thank you.

        Reply
  21. Richard Maxson says

    April 6, 2019 at 8:53 am

    On Treasure Island
    —for Carol

    If September hadn’t come,
    to wake us from our past,
    whose sunflower would be
    the one I gave to you?

    The rain that dropped our secrets
    in the evening air
    may have let them fall
    into a deep and silent sea,
    to never find a shore.

    We are like two shells found
    along the sand, pearl colored
    open twists, winsomely turned
    inside, where we have listened
    to each others’ oceans calling.

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      April 6, 2019 at 10:19 am

      This is beautiful. 🙂

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 6, 2019 at 1:58 pm

        What a breathtaking remembrance. I love the opening line, the images, the profound conclusion—intimate, yet opening outward. It makes me wish I’d known Carol.

        Reply
        • Richard T Maxson says

          April 12, 2019 at 1:38 am

          I have not been feeling well. So forgive my late response to thank you, LL and Laurie.

          I’m feeling better, so naturally I resume my insomnia. 🙂

          Reply
  22. Linda says

    April 6, 2019 at 10:46 am

    Sweet Boy

    We lost you so many
    years ago.

    You were his brother,
    at times you were our son.

    If only we knew how
    short the time.

    You planted a tree
    that now grows
    so tall.

    Today I look at
    the butterfly string art
    you created for your mother.

    The pain has healed
    but the ache
    is still felt.

    You, sweet boy
    are loved.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 6, 2019 at 1:47 pm

      That image—”the butterfly string art”— captures my attention as well as imagination. I feel the tension between the delicacy of the ephemeral and what we try to fasten down. Love, once shared, then an absence, invisibly filled by the lasting ache.

      Reply
  23. Florence says

    April 6, 2019 at 11:53 am

    Autumn Calls
    By Florence Brooks

    Cool, autumn evenings
    With twinkling stars
    The crush of leaves
    And laughter

    Young boys who dream
    By day
    And grow by night
    It seems

    Make ready to depart
    On roads that lead
    Away from home
    As autumn calls
    Again.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 6, 2019 at 1:53 pm

      “The crush of leaves
      And laughter”

      This pairing grounds me in details I can picture and hear. It also makes me ponder possible subtext: laughter’s complexity.

      Reply
  24. Sandra Fox Murphy says

    April 6, 2019 at 12:30 pm

    Though you’ve been gone near fifty years,
    I still think of you and divine what you’d look like,
    muse at the sound of your words that linger nigh
    the stone with your name in a far-away orchard of souls

    that once sat outside a small town now swallowed by apartment
    buildings that evicted the old Indiana farms—but I remember
    the day I came with your sister, born after you,
    and we picnicked amidst stones under oaks and sycamores

    where spry corn fields hemmed us and the ghosts wavered polite,
    where we visited and laughed, joyful to be near you in the breeze.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 6, 2019 at 2:06 pm

      “the stone with your name in a far-away orchard of souls”
      “divine” (a surprising verb)
      the remembered picnic “amidst stones under oaks and sycamores”
      “spry corn fields”
      “ghosts”

      Lively constellation of details

      Reply
      • Sandra Fox Murphy says

        April 8, 2019 at 9:30 am

        Thank you, Laurie.

        Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 14, 2019 at 8:43 am

      Love this: “where spry corn fields hemmed us”

      I remember getting lost in those cornfields in Ohio.

      Reply
  25. Florence Brooks says

    April 6, 2019 at 2:22 pm

    Day 6 –

    Still Here
    by Florence Brooks

    Slipping away
    overnight it seems
    Wet kisses on cheeks and afternoon snuggles framed by an overabundance of hugs
    evaporate.

    And I wonder…
    What did I miss?
    How did I not see the subtle shift
    the end
    of childhood –
    abrupt, unanticipated, awkward.

    She slips into a chair
    book in hand and phone
    ready to connect
    with others.

    Do I demand? Insist?
    No.
    I wait.
    I yield.
    Much like the gentle rain gives way to the sea to the heavens and back again
    I trust that time will return all we’ve shared fresh and new and full.

    And I treasure
    the unexpected glimpses of
    a child long gone,
    but very much still here.

    Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      April 6, 2019 at 3:05 pm

      “Slipping away
      overnight it seems
      Wet kisses on cheeks…”

      “a child long gone,
      but very much still here.”

      Thanks so much for sharing your poem, Florence.

      Reply
  26. Richard Maxson says

    April 7, 2019 at 10:23 am

    The Way Light Changes

    They’re always going through tunnels
    —from Burlington Arcade by Julian Stannard

    They’re always going through
    tunnels, those days
    the winds rocked
    the trees I scaled high
    over the quilt of rooftops.

    Weightless as a cloud,
    in the blue of my eyes,
    I lifted myself
    into the world of wings.

    Now, my feet remind me
    each morning that I am
    no longer, even for a moment,
    one of those birds few watched,
    small and quick as a year.

    I go there, nevertheless—
    and maybe it is practice for a moment
    to come—the traffic of so much time
    surrounding the way to the light
    at the top of a tree, so much taller now,
    so bright among the stars.

    Reply
  27. Sandra Heska King says

    April 7, 2019 at 5:09 pm

    I’m behind. This is from Day 4.

    The Crabapple Tree

    I don’t have to cut you open
    to know you’ve staked
    the southwest corner of the garage
    for just a tad over half a century.
    Of course, I don’t know how old you were
    when you were grounded. It could have been
    the same day Marilyn Monroe
    sang happy birthday to the president.
    Then you wriggled your roots deep and wide.
    You watched my husband ride his horse
    up the drive when he was just fifteen.
    I didn’t have eyes for you that May when he first
    brought me home to meet his parents,
    but I bet you smiled.
    We moved away, and never did I dream
    that we’d return or that you’d greet me
    every day for twenty-five years.
    I took you for granted way too long
    before I fell in love with you.
    Then each spring I watched you
    resuscitate yourself,
    searched for signs of life in rusty niblets,
    for tender leaves to sprout,
    for rosy buds to unfurl fragrant
    pink petaled blossoms,
    a banquet for the bees.
    Orioles danced in your branches.
    I stood below and inhaled
    your perfume, tried to capture
    your beauty with my camera.
    When you spent your flowers,
    they fluttered down like confetti,
    laid down a velvet carpet.
    Months later, the fruit of your arms
    plop, plopped, and skirted
    a squishy mess around your feet.
    Then you undressed yourself.
    Now you are preparing to bust
    out your beauty again,
    but I won’t be there to see.
    Leaving you sliced a sliver
    from the corner of my heart.

    Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 8, 2019 at 3:27 am

      One of the things that makes us truly remarkable as human beings is the ability to see the soul in everything. Isn’t it all one soul on this planet, that we see?

      This memory of your crabapple tree seems to say so. I was very touched by this and read it again and again.

      I loved the way you weave events into your love and appreciation for this tree and its beauty, which you say stands alone, even after you are gone.

      Beautiful poem.

      Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 8, 2019 at 8:29 am

      Sandra, your The Crabapple Tree is beautiful, lyrical and poignant. Such a visual created with your words; such a binding relationship. I LOVE it. (I, too, am behind. Struggled today to create my first villanelle.)

      Reply
  28. Sandra Heska King says

    April 7, 2019 at 5:44 pm

    l love this so much.

    Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      April 7, 2019 at 5:47 pm

      This was in response to Richard’s “On Treasure Island.” I don’t know how it got way down here.

      Reply
  29. Shelly Faber says

    April 7, 2019 at 6:27 pm

    Day 7 – A challenge, in many ways, this one!

    https://myredwinediary.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/day-7-30-day-poetic-earth-day-and-an-exciting-new-form-challenge-distances-magnitude/

    Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      April 10, 2019 at 11:11 pm

      Shelly, I clicked over to your poem. I like the sensory details here:

      “he smoothed my hair, as cool can be
      around my neck, he gently placed
      a locket, a picture of him and me”

      Reply
  30. Florence Brooks says

    April 8, 2019 at 3:10 pm

    The Sycamore
    By Florence Brooks

    Nestled down by the Little Tuckahoe
    Where murky creek waters trickle towards the James
    She sits wide and low
    Her roots stretching deep to quench their thirst
    In the moist, black landscape
    Her bleach white arms stretched up into a canopy of poplar, birch and oak

    My young sons create their own path
    Through ivy, chickweed and dandelion
    To her breast

    She calls to them
    Behind a thin veil of honeysuckle and scrub pine
    Inviting them to climb and explore

    And one by one they respond
    The oldest wise and sure at eight years of age
    With long legs and strong arms
    Heaves himself up and extends a hand to his younger sibling
    Graceful, the 6-year-old seems to ease off the ground and into her cavern
    And then with no prompting from their mother they both reach down
    Each offering an arm to the youngest
    Not big enough to climb, but curious enough to follow
    Yearning to be with “the boys” in the tree

    The small child runs to her side and reaches up his little arms as high as he can
    Each big brother, braced and sure, grasps one arm and …he’s up!
    In the tree

    The older brothers peer out and shimmy up and down her mighty arms
    Shouting instructions, exploring where other children, long since gone
    Surely did the same

    And she waits patiently
    She seems to know
    To have learned with the passing of time that this place
    Is a haven, a place of wonder and joy
    That will not last forever
    But remains for today

    Her arms strong and sure, swollen with the passing of years, cradle them
    Nourishing their spirits, their young tender souls
    Without whispering a word.

    Reply
    • Florence says

      April 8, 2019 at 3:22 pm

      I should note this is in response to day 4’s prompt – age of a tree.

      Reply
  31. Laura Brown says

    April 9, 2019 at 2:45 am

    Day 5, an ode to food.

    Itinerant Banana Bread

    Someone baked you
    for the coffee hour at church
    the Sunday I was doing cleanup

    so much of you
    that I brought a loaf’s worth home

    double-bagged you
    to preserve in the freezer

    took a piece or two of you
    for breakfasts and evening snacks

    warmed the rest of you
    in the oven at 250 this morning

    toted you back
    for the Friday women’s study

    ate a piece of you
    instead of the muffins Sheila brought

    fetched a piece of you
    for Maude, who hurts when she walks

    tinfoiled the last four of you
    to send home with Angie for her kids

    brushed the crumbs of you
    from the table where the kids ate

    and I still don’t know who to thank

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 9, 2019 at 6:28 pm

      The particularity here, so accessible and authentic and then that last line, Laura! Marvelous!

      Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 11, 2019 at 11:56 am

      Oh so delightful, Laura! If your banana bread rituals aren’t holy communion, I don’t know what is.

      Reply
      • Laura Lynn Brown says

        April 28, 2019 at 5:46 pm

        Thank you, Mary!

        Reply
  32. JoyAnne O'Donnell says

    April 9, 2019 at 12:44 pm

    Mother Earth’s Angel

    I love the tree’s
    they sparkle green lights
    save the earth
    plant new flowers birth
    give to the soil
    enrich the name
    with rain petals
    like medals
    the sun a diamond
    filled with love
    giving all her beauty rays
    dressed in orange dress
    sharing so much

    Reply
  33. Laurie Klein says

    April 9, 2019 at 6:35 pm

    I am late to the party.
    And wowed by the marvelous poems here.
    Here’s one for Prompt #6, love and loss.

    LUCENT

    Once, your arrival meant never
    bypassing a single knob
    or switch plate, my backlit boy,
    obsessed with “On”:

    where one toggle kindles
    each arm of the chandelier,
    and two clicks awaken
    the jointed anglepoise lamp,
    while three tugs on pull chains
    rouse a blue sprawl
    of dragonflies crowning
    the Tiffany knockoff—
    thirty-nine pounds of adamant
    purpose, loose in my house,
    crying, “See the light?”

    Dusk, wrap your shawls
    around me, one more shadow
    now, in a room remembering
    joy incandescent.

    Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 9, 2019 at 9:08 pm

      Laurie – So many beautiful phrases … ‘backlit boy,’ blue sprawl of dragonflies crowning.’ Loving the light. So beautiful.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 9, 2019 at 9:10 pm

        Sandra, thank you so much. I’ve not been able to write for weeks. It’s encouraging to know the words haven’t left for good. 🙂 You’ve really encouraged me, thank you!

        Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      April 10, 2019 at 11:31 pm

      “thirty-nine pounds of adamant
      purpose, loose in my house”

      I love this, Laurie. Thanks so much for sharing it.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 11, 2019 at 10:02 am

        Bethany, thank you so much for reading and commenting. 🙂

        Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 11, 2019 at 11:52 am

      Gorgeous language here, Laurie. I too love your “backlit boy.” Glad you made it to the party.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 12, 2019 at 8:23 am

        Mary, thanks for the welcome!

        Isn’t it wonderful when the apt phrase emerges? “Backlit boy” seemed to capture the literal image as well as a slippage in time, allowing me to see my grandson again—and a-fresh—at that earlier age when reaching out for light was everything. I suppose that’s one reason we poets keep trying to find the words, our own way of reaching for light. 🙂

        Reply
    • Katie says

      April 11, 2019 at 3:17 pm

      “Joy incandescent.” INDEED, Laurie:)

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 12, 2019 at 8:25 am

        Katie, thanks for the rousing affirmation. 🙂 A gift at the start of a new day.

        Reply
    • Richard T Maxson says

      April 12, 2019 at 2:00 am

      Laurie, may words never leave you. They certainly haven’t here.

      Of all the beauty, those of the last stanza are my favorites.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 12, 2019 at 8:28 am

        Richard, I take these words of yours deeply to heart. Thank you.

        Reply
    • Laura Lynn Brown says

      April 28, 2019 at 5:47 pm

      I love this. Especially that economical and luminous last line.

      Reply
  34. Mary Van Denend says

    April 11, 2019 at 12:08 pm

    It’s been hit or miss with me on making time to write poems, tho’ I’m reading them all with relish. Here’s an offering for Day 5 (ode to food). Not a new poem but fitting.

    To a Half-eaten Peach

    What we always wish for,
    what draws us in–
    smooth curve of a cheek,
    the eye’s almond shape–
    is not what tethers the heart.

    There must be succulence,
    sweet interior flesh
    like yours, long after
    we’ve devoured the fruit.
    Something mysterious must linger.

    Reply
    • Katie says

      April 11, 2019 at 3:22 pm

      Mary,
      Your ode to a Half-Eaten Peach reminded me of this one I wrote to apricots a few summers ago:

      Pretty Apricots

      You smiled up at my appetite,
      from the cylinder
      in the salad bar.

      Small halves of sunshine,
      wet and shiny
      mouth-watering.

      Wooing me to spoon
      you onto my plate
      as I smile and drool.

      Reply
      • Mary Van Denend says

        April 11, 2019 at 4:00 pm

        Hi Katie– “small halves of sunshine” Yes! Apricots and peaches are some of my favorite fruits for their beautiful, sensuous shapes and lush taste.

        Reply
        • Katie says

          April 11, 2019 at 8:13 pm

          Thank you, Mary:)

          Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 11, 2019 at 5:05 pm

        “wooing me to spoon”: lovely vowels, and an arresting line break, simmering with subtext. 🙂

        Reply
        • Katie says

          April 11, 2019 at 8:14 pm

          Thank you , Laurie:)

          Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 11, 2019 at 5:08 pm

      “There must be succulence.”

      Lovely repeated vowels and consonants within an irresistible decree.

      Reply
  35. Laurie Klein says

    April 12, 2019 at 1:54 am

    SURVIVAL

    After 100 days of contagion
    and quarantine, pipe bones
    litter my crockpot, oozing
    marrow. Barely scrubbed
    carrots, beheaded, float
    alongside a green corrugation
    of celery ribs. Along the rocked heel
    of my knife, quartered onions fall open,
    evoking tears. How fleetingly French,
    the perfumed rustle of skirts
    when I smash the knob of garlic.
    Then, the crushing—tangle of thyme,
    parsley, bay. Salt and peppercorns.
    Whole cloves. One cider-y stun
    of vinegar. Forty-eight hours hence,
    I practice arrival, become
    my own guest, a leaking vessel,
    swamped, in daily broth.

    Reply
    • Richard T Maxson says

      April 12, 2019 at 2:09 am

      What perfect word choices to describe vegetables and spices:

      “a green corrugation
      of celery ribs”

      “How fleetingly French,
      the perfumed rustle of skirts”

      “tangle of thyme”

      And I love these:

      “Along the rocked heel
      of my knife.”

      and

      “One cider-y stun
      of vinegar”

      You’ve made me hungry at two AM

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 12, 2019 at 8:36 am

        Richard, you night owl, you’ve made me grin. Thanks for being specific about details that are working. Your response bolsters my sense of humor about slurping bone broth every day for 3 months.

        On good days I envision a wiseacre cookbook: “Beyond Broth.” 😉

        Reply
  36. Richard T Maxson says

    April 12, 2019 at 2:14 am

    The Love Song of Alfred’s Fried Quickdogs

    Se ho creduto che ho detto
    una persona non dovrebbe tornare a questo
    corridoio, La fiamma padella non necessita più di me.
    Ma perché burro fritto colpisce profondamente, non posso
    resistere al ritorno qui, è vero, senza timore di coronarie proclamo.

    Let us go then, you and I,
    Where the Ferris wheel circles into the sky,
    Like a funnel cake upright in my fingers;
    Let us go where vendors deep-fry treats,
    Of butter and fat meats
    And restless crowds spend hours as if some spell
    Were cast on them in the House of Haunts,
    A curse that followed them insisting
    On the penitents of Lent
    And the silliness of nutritional type questions:
    Oh do not ask, “Will it make me sick?”
    It’s a hotdog fried in Bisquick!

    At the restrooms people come and go,
    Holding their stomachs and moaning ohhh!

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 12, 2019 at 8:38 am

      And now I’m laughing out loud . . .

      I salute your wit!

      Reply
  37. Richard T Maxson says

    April 12, 2019 at 2:32 am

    Day 10.

    Two-Headed

    It was Indiana where I turned
    left too far, with no intentions
    to go East to Cumberland, the road winding
    toward the clouds then disappearing

    behind me, the curve I followed West,
    like a shattered and forsaken moon
    turning from the gravity of relationships.

    Brand me you snake farms
    and diners, pump stations rising
    like heat on this Mother Road,
    a mirage opening to my last chance.

    Carry me to where you disappeared
    and keep me there. I was not ready then,
    but I pressed close, past my reflection
    in the glass, to see your wonders.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 13, 2019 at 3:27 pm

      Richard, the last two stanzas are magic. I love the energy direct address provides, and the startling specifics (snake farms and diners!), and the hard-won wisdom in a wistful conclusion.

      Reply
  38. Richard T Maxson says

    April 12, 2019 at 2:38 am

    Day 9

    Made Thing

    I have gone into the narrows
    of wet redwood and boxcar roofs,
    baked for miles of track. Poetry
    gleaned in the glide of stacked
    beams out the door, and set
    neat on lath, five wide, ten high.

    In the galloping hammer sounds
    to raise a house, a cadence lies
    and hides the reaching for a nail,
    cantos for the carpenters,
    making stanzas with each room.
    A house and poem live in such things.

    Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 12, 2019 at 5:51 pm

      You had me with the first line, “I have gone into the narrows.” I imagined a water poem coming, but you led us into a workshop. “Poetry gleaned in the glide…” lovely phrase and the last line too, “A house and poem live in such things.” Indeed, just right.

      Reply
    • Laurie says

      April 13, 2019 at 3:29 pm

      So many extraordinary lines here. Well done!

      Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 14, 2019 at 8:46 am

        Thanks, Mary and Laurie.

        Reply
  39. Richard T Maxson says

    April 12, 2019 at 8:03 am

    Catching up here. Still working on “Pretend”

    Day 12

    Uncle Jack’s Tattoo

    There were doors I walked through as a child,
    where I learned the depth of water
    by its color—the way it holds the sky
    against its skin, while the current below
    muscles its way through the thickness of gravity.

    Your tattoos opened for me the worlds
    where you lived—Engineer for the C&O rails,
    rough and crude, and loving. On your right arm,
    someone I knew, Mabel, who made sandwiches
    we would eat on the docks, in the duck blind,
    who smiled at me and spoke with refinement,
    with words different, but inclusive of yours.
    Your left arm—USMC and the insignia,
    an eagle with the world in its talons.

    With every request to explain, a story,
    but the anchor and chain behind the world
    remained a mystery that time has blued and rusted.

    It was a large world you gave me that inclined me
    to stay wild, so that my heart slows
    among the pied trunks of sycamores,
    the brush of pines and seething course of rivers
    that keep you rough and wise in my memory.

    I can’t decide what to sing for you—hereafter
    spreads before me, like an inkblot full of stars,
    ending in a faint line that is neither sea nor sky.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 13, 2019 at 3:32 pm

      So vivid and rich with remembrance. Uncle Jack casts a shadow across my screen. He’s that real.

      Reply
  40. Mary Van Denend says

    April 12, 2019 at 5:39 pm

    LLB, you asked if I could say more about my recent post on food and love. That quote from Sam Wells was included in a mini essay I wrote about what sustains us. The gist of that piece being: In January my husband and I decided to eat vegetarian meals 4 days a week (Mon-Thurs) and meat or fish the other three days, but only if we choose. We love vegetables so it’s not a hardship, more of a discipline to eat lighter on the food chain, and try not to buy or consume feed lot beef (so cruel) or any other industrial meat. Buy local, eat local, as much as possible, in other words. The relationship between land designated for mass-produced cattle and loss of arable habitat is pretty shocking. Also what’s happening to the planet because of all that methane released into the air. I’m not an anti-meat zealot, but am coming to realize we can all make simple changes in our diets that have profound effects on global health and happiness. Forgive me if this is way off topic!

    Reply
  41. JoyAnne O'Donnell says

    April 13, 2019 at 11:27 am

    Meadow

    The colors glitter
    in the meadows
    prayers I say
    lavender and soft grass
    a special place
    at spring
    bunnies playing and running
    birds and cardinals
    bluebirds are so pretty
    woodpeckers hiding in the tree’s
    rainbows on each window to spring

    Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      April 13, 2019 at 1:14 pm

      JoyAnne, I’m happy you’re writing with us. 🙂 These lines stood out to me:

      “Prayers I say
      lavender and soft grass”

      Reply
      • JoyAnne O'Donnell says

        April 14, 2019 at 11:57 am

        Thanks

        Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 13, 2019 at 4:22 pm

      I absolutely needed this image today:
      “rainbows on each window to spring”

      Thank you JoyAnne.

      Reply
      • JoyAnne O'Donnell says

        April 14, 2019 at 11:59 am

        Thanks so much, so happy you liked the image

        Reply
  42. Mary Van Denend says

    April 13, 2019 at 2:19 pm

    For Day 13– prompted by ongoing questions about spring, death, and resurrections of all kinds

    Cabbage Moth

    Common as clouds

    they float above me

    on a morning walk

    just days after her death,

    my mother’s spirit

    loosed into another life,

    unreachable for now.

    They hover in the cover

    of collard leaves and

    San Marzano tomatoes–

    small, fragile, and ordinary.

    Nothing of note, except this:

    every time I think of her

    now these three years past,

    one or two or half a dozen

    suddenly appear in view

    to flutter by my side in

    grief’s long garden.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 13, 2019 at 3:20 pm

      Mary, you’ve so beautifully rendered loss via these ephemeral moments, this glancing, seemingly weightless companionship when sorrow weights the limbs and heart.

      And this breathtaking conclusion:
      “in / grief’s long garden”

      Reply
      • Bethany R. says

        April 13, 2019 at 3:36 pm

        I loved this poem too.

        “Common as clouds” strikes me. How clouds are common, and yet—always point to something more—something beyond us.

        Reply
        • Mary Van Denend says

          April 13, 2019 at 4:53 pm

          Thank you, Bethany. I hadn’t really thought of it like that, but you’re right. They do point to something beyond us. I just loved the hard consonants together, and wanted an image that would speak to the intangible nature of loss. All we have are metaphors really, to try and give shape to our feelings.

          Reply
      • Mary Van Denend says

        April 13, 2019 at 4:41 pm

        Thank you, Laurie. Much appreciate your kind words. I wrote this poem 5 years ago. My mother died in 2011, on April 6, which fell on Good Friday that year. All the more potent and poignant for me. I still see these little moths, often when no other insect is visible. One will appear, literally out of the blue. I find them very comforting.

        Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 13, 2019 at 5:23 pm

      Mary … this poem is so tender in voice and message. “loosed into another life,” “hover in the cover of of collard leave,” and “grief’s long garden” amidst the ever-present cabbage moths. I really enjoyed this.

      Reply
      • Mary Van Denend says

        April 14, 2019 at 12:28 pm

        Thank you, Sandra. It’s nice to share this space with you again and hear your voice.

        Reply
  43. Sandra Fox Murphy says

    April 13, 2019 at 5:35 pm

    I apologize for going back to Day 7 – Distance and Magnitude, but I’ve made my attempt at a villanelle.

    Captured Moment

    The sky browned moody as
    the hues of a storm
    swirled like a painting

    and I cradled the camera
    as we lingered near the sea
    and the sky browned moody as

    a hurricane loomed off shore
    as a family frolicked in cloudy surf
    as it swirled like a painting,

    silhouettes, like children, swathed
    in the draw of the waves that echoed
    the sky browned moody as

    I focused the portrait
    of our farewells in a frame
    where the sky browned moody
    and swirled like a painting.

    Reply
  44. Richard Maxson says

    April 13, 2019 at 5:49 pm

    Are We There Yet?

    They moved like journeys,
    the thick-veined maps
    of your hands, fitting in glass
    the skewed halos of saints
    and wings of angels.

    What was the secret
    you knew then—the loneliness
    of artistry, the trembling fire,
    in the painting cave?

    You are the loneliness of me,
    a journey thick with fire.

    Your child is still enchanted
    with the when and where of angels,
    the home of saints, and how
    the secret painting moved.

    They, like the halos of you,
    are skewed in the subtle we.

    I still have persistent questions
    of a child—where is home
    and when are we going to get there?

    Could you have told me
    to have veined hands going there?

    Reply
  45. Laurie Klein says

    April 13, 2019 at 5:56 pm

    #12, Influences

    MAELSTROM

    Uncle Dunkel skipped rocks.
    He scalloped sweltering air with a stone.

    Six feet of lean, he was lath
    held together by sinew. Before Korea,

    he clambered up trees after cats,
    strode along ridgepoles,

    re-shingled roofs like an urban card shark
    armed with a royal flush. Those hands,

    mapped with cuts and bruises,
    blisters of blood, and nicotine stains,

    lifted a rose-sprigged cup the size
    of my 5-year-old fist, his pretend tea

    never spilled. Nor did he say much
    after his war, half his mind

    languishing, somewhere in Asia, the half
    that might have said No

    to the tree and the noose. Why,
    why did he do it? All those weekends

    he rowed our boat, me, draped over the prow,
    every last dip of his oars conjuring

    vortices, those gaps I fall into
    every time I remember he’s gone.

    Reply
    • Florence says

      April 13, 2019 at 6:11 pm

      Nicely done.

      I am sorry for his loss and yours.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 13, 2019 at 6:24 pm

        Florence, thank you.

        Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 14, 2019 at 9:02 am

      I find these images astounding:

      “re-shingled roofs like an urban card shark
      armed with a royal flush”

      “lifted a rose-sprigged cup the size
      of my 5-year-old fist”

      They are astounding for their distance from one another to describe a complex man.

      I can’t imagine the loss you felt.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 23, 2019 at 10:50 am

        Uncle Dunkel was mythic. Magical. And mine. For a while. The coolest uncle ever. Thank you, Richard, for pointing out one way the range of images is working toward bringing him to the page and to the reader. And thank you for your kindness.

        Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 14, 2019 at 12:51 pm

      “mapped with cuts and bruises, blisters of blood, nicotine stains” followed by “a rose-sprigged cup the size of my 5-year-old fist”
      I love the juxtaposition of images, Laurie, the way you show us both strength and tenderness through his rough hands with their life wounds, and yet so gentle they don’t spill the tea he shares with you. Such loving insights into the kind of man he was.

      And the question lingering throughout the poem, why did he do it? Exquisite and very sad.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 23, 2019 at 10:56 am

        Mary, thank you for seeing him. And for letting me know which lines bring him to life for you. That means a lot to me. I wonder sometimes if the questions, after a suicide, ever stop. Fifty-some years later and a prompt like this one takes me back and there I am, not as reconciled as I’d thought, and still asking. And isn’t this one of the reasons we love and need poems?

        Reply
  46. Laura Brown says

    April 14, 2019 at 8:42 am

    Day 14

    Locked and Goaded

    A friend posts a photo
    of the barstool he has shoved
    under the door handle: “I get scared
    staying in AirBNBs by myself.” At least
    he’ll hear an intruder coming,
    but there’s no barrier big enough
    for the wall-to-wall patio glass.

    After no response
    to knocking or phone,
    one neighbor uses her key
    to open another’s door,
    tries to loosen the chain
    that is simply doing its job,
    sings and hollers her name
    through the crack.
    “You know she sleeps til noon,”
    I say. It’s only ten. Yes,
    but she fell last week
    and may have fallen again.

    She is ready invoke
    the bolt-cutters of maintenance.
    To save our friend’s lock,
    I yell too, until she answers.

    There have been mornings
    when, leaving, I see
    I left myself unlocked all night.

    I think the neighbor
    was truly worried, but
    the thing she couldn’t wait out
    was the grassy basket
    she’d set on the doormat,
    its chocolate risking theft,
    its rabbit patiently expecting
    to be noticed and lifted,
    a return knock
    of thanks.

    Reply
    • Laura Brown says

      April 14, 2019 at 12:46 pm

      Actually, let’s pare that down.

      Day 14

      A Thin Chain

      After no response
      to knocking or phone,
      one neighbor uses her key
      to open another’s door,
      tries to loosen the chain
      that is simply doing its job,
      calls and calls her name
      through the crack.
      “You know she sleeps til noon,”
      I say. It’s only ten. Yes,
      but she fell last week
      and may have fallen again.

      She is ready to invoke
      the bolt-cutters of maintenance.
      To save our friend’s lock,
      I yell too, until she answers.

      I think the neighbor
      was truly worried, but
      the thing she couldn’t wait out
      was the grassy basket
      she’d set on the doormat,
      its chocolate risking theft,
      its rabbit patiently expecting
      to be noticed
      and lifted.

      Reply
      • Mary Van Denend says

        April 14, 2019 at 12:54 pm

        Yes! I love how you find humor everywhere, Laura. This version works much better for me, same great story in fewer words. Lovely!

        Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 23, 2019 at 11:07 am

        And I love how freely and easily you offer the streamlined version, Laura, proving how safe this online space really is (where we’re all risking new expressions without the luxury of elapsed time to see more clearly what’s needed).

        And I really like ending closer to the rabbit. 🙂

        Reply
  47. Richard Maxson says

    April 14, 2019 at 9:06 am

    Day 14

    Suffering With Succotash

    It is the way of payback,
    the distant nomenclature
    for parts: the rare burlesque
    of a New York Strip, or rare
    loin, nasally enunciated,
    as you unfurl the pressed roll
    of a white lap napkin, your suit
    comfortably cut and pieced.

    It is their nature to scratch
    at the bark, and so it falls
    along the walls of veins,
    the white coat explains,
    ears draped around his neck,
    the pen silently tracing
    the map of your heart.

    So it’s kale and romaine,
    if you want to live. You
    recall the Terminator’s
    titanium hand outstretched,
    the surprised Sarah Conner
    succumbing to fear and trust.

    Take heart, no pun intended,
    he says. A plethora of delicious
    sobriquetical cuisine awaits you:
    Ratatouille, Caprese, Chapathi,
    and there is always succotash.

    Reply
  48. JoyAnne O'Donnell says

    April 14, 2019 at 12:57 pm

    Poetry Prompt Day 14: Eve’s Second Garden

    Snakes In Poems

    The scary shake
    seeing a snake
    by the green lake
    or pond
    is such a fright
    to me snakes are sneaky
    they glow in
    when you least expect them
    they are used to keep
    the rodent population
    down under
    from gardens
    to protect our fruit
    so we have more food.

    Reply
  49. Richard Maxson says

    April 15, 2019 at 8:43 am

    Day 15

    My Sun, Moon and Stars

    When I first saw you,
    stars in the nights
    of your eyes,
    where now the sky
    expands, even beyond
    the fragrance of your hair

    Reply
  50. Sandra Fox Murphy says

    April 15, 2019 at 8:53 am

    Day 12 – Father’s Day Short and sweet and real for Father’s Day ….

    My Dad’s Daughter

    Dad didn’t come to be my father in a waiting room,
    but with a signature on a dotted line.
    He volunteered for the job
    as if he were joining the Peace Corps.

    He came like a Sunday drive in his Chevy,
    shiny and steadfast with a bumpy ride
    and obscure destinations, and, in the end, departed
    rusted and weary, his road-map entrusted to me.

    Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 15, 2019 at 10:21 am

      Oh Sandra, I just love this! The whole second stanza, especially. The wonderful vehicle imagery, “He came like a Sunday drive in his Chevy…” and “rusted and weary, his road map entrusted to me.” And you with your love of travel now. Such a fitting legacy he left you.

      Reply
    • Laura Brown says

      April 15, 2019 at 12:20 pm

      Love this. Especially that last line. And the word “entrusted.”

      Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 15, 2019 at 1:53 pm

      Thank you, Mary and Laura. My adoptive father was a gift. The road-map being significant with all our travel and military moves … and, thus, like you said, Mary, my love of road-trips. These prompts and poems here are so inspiring … making April a wonderful month.

      Reply
  51. JoyAnne O'Donnell says

    April 15, 2019 at 12:09 pm

    Day 15: Poetic Earth Month

    My Mom a delicate flower
    filled with roses i.n her smile
    angels in her kindness
    lights my room with everything.

    Reply
  52. Mary Van Denend says

    April 16, 2019 at 10:55 am

    For yesterday’s prompt (4/15)– Sun, Moon, and Stars

    “You Are Here”

    We orbit a paltry sun–
    in a minor galaxy in a vast
    universe of dying stars
    and expanding space,
    the smart scientists proclaim.

    Earth a barely visible speck
    on astronomical maps;
    one’s very existence doubtful.
    Might as well just crawl off
    into the nearest black hole.

    Yet out my window a world
    grows green again, a rotation
    round our small, shining King,
    whose scepter of flame & light
    opens new buds on the French lilac.

    Robins bend to pull the grass
    as earthworms rise to meet
    the warmth of an April day–
    And I vow to remain forever
    your most loyal subject.

    Reply
    • Dave Malone says

      April 16, 2019 at 4:32 pm

      Hi, Mary,
      I really enjoyed your poem. I’m obsessed with the cosmos and the night sky. Love what you did with the theme. Those first two stanzas really draw the reader in. 🙂
      Dave

      Reply
      • Mary Van Denend says

        April 16, 2019 at 5:08 pm

        Thank you, Dave. I had some fun with this one.

        Reply
        • Dave Malone says

          April 17, 2019 at 12:17 pm

          🙂

          Reply
  53. Richard Maxson says

    April 16, 2019 at 6:44 pm

    Day 16

    I Didn’t Know the Cost of Entering a Song

    —from a line by Ocean Vuong

    It was the strum of water flowing,
    and the music that attended you,
    a warmth for the wounds of the day.
    I cried to hear that softness of your heart,

    The music that attend you,
    I was four, the words a mystery to me.
    I cried to hear that softness of your heart,
    the song that must have mended you.

    I was four, the words a mystery to me,
    it was the sound that stirred my sympathies,
    the song that must have mended you,
    if only for the moments of a shower.

    It was the sound that stirred my sympathies,
    a hollow in the wall between us,
    if only for the moments of a shower.
    Through years the words come back to me,

    a hollow in the wall between us,
    there echoes an anguished melody.
    Through years the words come back to me,
    with understanding too late in arriving.

    There echoes an anguished melody.
    a warmth for the wounds of the day,
    with understanding too late in arriving,
    here now, within the strum of water flowing.

    Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 17, 2019 at 9:58 am

      This is mysterious and poignant and beautiful. Your poems raise the bar for me, and this one was truly touching.

      Reply
  54. Sandra Fox Murphy says

    April 17, 2019 at 10:00 am

    Day 17 – Reclamation
    Salvation

    Remember the clapboard house on the dirt road,
    a road between roads, graveled and going nowhere
    but to the only suspension bridge In Texas
    that sways in history? Remember it?

    It once held laughing children and stabled roans
    and chicken suppers and the prairie light.
    Now it sits forsaken and smirking at passersby,
    and the children ran off to teach in the city,

    leaving distracted rooms in search of sunlight,
    leaving the field mice and ghosts to their mischief
    amidst shade-loving vines in the kitchen
    and cedar shrub lifting the porch to new heights.

    Those dark windows stare and plead for crystal
    corneas all the better to see me with,
    and the raised porch asks if I have a can of paint
    and invites me to come in and light the hearth.

    Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 17, 2019 at 1:05 pm

      I like the way you animate this house with life. We do this with abandoned places where we’ve lived, and places still holding enough of the past, like the last green leaf of an autumn.

      The first stanza drew me in with its invitation to share a memory.

      Reply
      • Dave Malone says

        April 19, 2019 at 8:59 am

        I agree with Richard. This poem really draws you in. Love the images, feelings here, and the rhythm. It’s one that’s definitely meant to be read aloud. 🙂

        Reply
    • Laura Brown says

      April 19, 2019 at 5:07 pm

      I remember a house like that. But it was in Ohio. 🙂 So many great images here, Sandra. And the word smirking. I love that it begins and ends with a question.

      Reply
      • Sandra Fox Murphy says

        April 19, 2019 at 7:35 pm

        Thank you, Laura, Dave, and Richard … and grandson Austin for bringing this house to my attention.

        Reply
  55. Richard Maxson says

    April 19, 2019 at 3:47 am

    Day 17

    Project to Widen Fayetteville Road: Notes on the Dray Horse

    Whence will kindness come,
    in the scorch and stark
    sparkling pickets of a city?

    The aging coachman,
    a poet by day,
    night tours, park and crickets.

    He brings fresh apples
    for the tongue,
    a world of words.

    The field of touch is immense—

    holds the symphony of trees
    the common dream—
    tender fescue sibilate in a breeze.

    Reply
  56. Richard Maxson says

    April 19, 2019 at 12:15 pm

    Day 19

    Deep in Brooker Creek

    In the back country,
    born in the lowland loam,
    the quiet rises extant.

    Only a palpate sound,
    like a beating heart
    follows my walking.

    At the marsh Cypress
    trunks rise before me
    as if driven there by Helios,

    their dark hooves reflected
    in the water, like stallions
    standing on cheval glass.

    Reply
    • Dave Malone says

      April 19, 2019 at 12:24 pm

      Wowza! So much to like. What an opening. I read this poem several times. I like the beats, the rhythm, the alliteration, and ultimately what I’m moved to feeling at the end of the poem.

      Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 20, 2019 at 8:51 am

        Thanks, Dave for your great comment. Brooker Creek was a favorite hike when I lived in Florida. When I look at Cypress trees ankled in water, I can’t help but see horse hooves.

        Reply
        • Dave Malone says

          April 20, 2019 at 12:08 pm

          You bet. And now I will see horse hooves, too. 🙂

          Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 20, 2019 at 2:11 pm

      Richard, this poem breathes. It transports me, from moody countryside to the realm of myth. And I like your comment to Dave about Cypress trees “ankled” in water.

      Reply
  57. JoyAnne O'Donnell says

    April 20, 2019 at 12:49 am

    Day 19:

    Angels

    The sea
    is a place
    filled with glee
    swimming so free
    like the angels
    white in the waves
    dazzling water
    innocent and carefree
    the ocean is a part
    of our soul
    happy with God
    who created the seven sea’s
    to make us smile
    to feel the soft sand
    even touching the souls
    of our feet
    to the sun in our hair
    keeping us safe with each prayer.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 20, 2019 at 2:14 pm

      JoyAnne, I am glad to be reminded of the seven seas today, this dazzling world always so much vaster than I remember. Thank you!

      Reply
  58. Sandra Fox Murphy says

    April 20, 2019 at 8:16 am

    Day 19 –

    One Last Ride

    The rollers ruffle my feet,
    sooth my engine as they pull
    the sand from beneath my toes,
    carry the stones and weeds
    out to the deep dark sea

    and I feel the drawn lightness.
    Over and over, breakers taunt
    and tempt me to grab a longboard
    and ride the way I once did,
    out in the deep dark sea,

    the foam giggling at my disgrace,
    my mouth spurting sand.
    Keeling over worth the sea breeze
    as it whistled with me, balanced
    me above the deep dark sea

    only a moment before I tumble
    and the sea’s arms pull me
    into a briny liaison
    where she whispers “welcome”
    and, breath held, I’m lulled
    and linger in the deep dark sea.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 20, 2019 at 2:17 pm

      Sandra, something in me responds to that underscoring line, the deep dark sea, and the subtle ways the changing prepositions reposition my attention until, “breath held, I’m lulled.”

      Reply
  59. Richard Maxson says

    April 20, 2019 at 8:46 am

    Birds in Home Depot—December

    They sing, staccato notes:
    statements that could be,
    queer tree, queer tree…

    Sometimes I see them
    brown dots on a brown beam.

    No easy nest here,
    the spruce branches broken,
    straw sequestered tight in brooms
    wrapped in cellophane,

    except for the threadbare Fall
    scarecrow, braced firmly
    among the colored corn stalks
    and baskets of stippled gourds.

    I want them to see the irony
    under the steel beams
    where they hop and fly, searching—
    the fragments of a home
    imagined new, repaired, changed.

    In the garden center, a sparrow
    contemplates the crocus bulbs,
    huddled on shelves, awaiting Spring,
    under the canopy that lets
    in the sky and cool air.

    I’ve wandered these aisles,
    like today with my scribbled list,
    unable to find a pin for a screen
    door, a number four brass screw
    for a fan, a summer breeze.

    What does that weaver know,
    I wonder, as he tugs at browned
    lily leaves and with a torn fragment flies
    out the wide opened doors.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 20, 2019 at 2:22 pm

      Richard, I really like “under the canopy that lets/ in the sky and cool air.” And the idea of home and the questions you raise. And the way the last line blows open the whole shebang, simultaneously sad and exhilarating.

      Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 23, 2019 at 12:33 pm

      I truly enjoyed the playful nature of these lines. Of what we find when we’re looking for something else.

      Love this line in desire of nest building: “straw sequestered tight in brooms
      wrapped in cellophane”

      Reply
  60. Richard Maxson says

    April 21, 2019 at 9:24 am

    Day 21

    Jasmine Bursting In Air

    In a vase on the piano, flowers
    from the Moorish courtyard,
    fragrance blending with the octaves.
    The slow metronome of coming day.

    The window pane fails to divide the light,
    but leaves its bars along the wall,
    where a silhouette bends and plays
    until evening writes her nocturne.

    Through the morning glass, a vine
    climbs the trellis like a simple song
    that reminds her of childhood here.

    The spaces in the Rowlock
    break sun and shade like keys,
    to lie against the opposing wall.
    The Jasmine blossoms, delicate
    as notes written for the right hand,
    flourish under fingers unseen.

    Hummingbirds play on the pistils,
    draw the sweet nectar from the chime,
    and with their wings—the drone of bass.

    Beauty’s song prevails, even within
    the inscrutable—in this music where
    are the notes for the sound of guns?

    Under distant thunder, the silent brass,
    she stops and listens. This is her fermata,
    a bird’s eye for this lean symphony.

    The flowers of the Fall are red.
    For now, we listen intently;
    Pianissimo blows the wind
    across the strings of hopeful songs
    of victory in the strident streets,
    in echoes from ruined halls.

    Make your anthem from Jasmine’s beauty.
    Freedom knows how it came to be.

    Reply
  61. Richard Maxson says

    April 22, 2019 at 10:28 am

    Day 22

    Oleander

    So many windows
    open to the city’s voice.

    Walls full of moonlight. Sounds
    of distant highway traffic

    strum like strings and fingers.
    And the long, oleandered esplanades

    are not without music leading
    me back to a different night.

    It soothes me like a waterfall,
    this spray of white that plays

    a memory, carried in the air—
    slick and liquored honeysuckled avenues,

    bars pulsing riffs, from open doors,
    evenings lit from balconies,

    their candles flickering in time
    to home and wayward bounding songs.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 23, 2019 at 11:13 am

      What an evocative opening, and the sensual images (“walls full of moonlight,” “oleandered esplanades!”) and seamless time travel enchant me. I do find myself wondering if there is more story . . .

      Reply
  62. Mary Van Denend says

    April 22, 2019 at 11:36 am

    For Day 21: Look for a lovely thing–which I can’t help but do.

    Mark This Day

    Mark this day for the mourning dove you hear but don’t see,
    for deep purple camas and bright spring beauty,

    For yellow warblers flashing past a metal barn where shadows
    lean, and trucks list and grow old.

    Mark this day for its collision of blue breeze and cloudbank,
    for a thousand craggy sisters, their crooked and mossy arms

    Bending down to keep you company on this cinnamon log,
    where your pen bleeds to the nudging tap, tap of rain.

    Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 22, 2019 at 11:54 am

      Mary, every line in this poem evocative and , indeed, lovely. No need to cite different stanzas, they are all amazing.

      OK, there is this one that I love:

      “For yellow warblers flashing past a metal barn where shadows
      lean, and trucks list and grow old.”

      Reply
      • Mary Van Denend says

        April 22, 2019 at 12:22 pm

        Thank you, Richard. High praise, indeed, from one so competent with language!

        Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 22, 2019 at 7:54 pm

      Such a lovely scene, Mary, like a painted landscape, with the coo of a mourning dove.

      Reply
  63. Laurie Klein says

    April 22, 2019 at 4:26 pm

    #22

    Eureka

    An adult on the phone should be acquitted
    for failing to stifle

    one long spontaneous
    shriek, as the nurse imparts

    news no one wants to hear, but
    really, spotting the plastic

    gag gift?—right then?
    Our molded toy cat fits in my palm

    and its painted-on smirk
    looks back at me from the glass

    hurricane. In a three-decade game
    of Seek, we’ve been sneaking

    this feline into a hundred hideouts, so
    despite hearing I’m still sick,

    still highly contagious, what’s clear
    is my turn has come, and I can’t

    hang up fast enough, knowing
    what has not forsaken

    an eccentric, much-tested
    marriage . . . is play.

    Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 23, 2019 at 10:40 am

      Laurie, I confess I had to read this several times to catch what was going on, but finally did. What I love is the playfulness of this poem, how you wrote comic relief into the midst of deep personal trial. I would love to see that smirking cat! We have a plastic “yodeling” pickle that gets circulated in our family, usually it’s wrapped in a fake package for a birthday or Christmas. Not sure where it went last. Uh oh.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 23, 2019 at 11:19 am

        Mary, that’s really helpful, thank you! I wondered afterward if a reader could follow it, or if I’d obscured the story line. I will take it back to the woodshed. 🙂

        Three cheers for the yodeling pickle! I’m going to google to find one for us. Those wacky gifts that keep reappearing add spice to life.

        Reply
  64. Sandra Fox Murphy says

    April 22, 2019 at 7:51 pm

    Day 22

    Hypnotized at Midnight

    Marfa Lights spark
    like a lighthouse beacon
    in the pitch-dark desert,
    like lightning leapt from dust,
    a cryptic phenomenon—
    but it’s our spiraled galaxy
    above that warped my eyes
    heavenward,
    and, spellbound,
    I can’t look away
    from the movement of
    stars, a tide of millions,
    flickering and ticking,
    ticking clockwise.

    Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 23, 2019 at 10:23 am

      I love this, Sandra, especially your repeating “L” sounds– Light, lighthouse, lightning, leapt…
      And how you make the reader turn slowly with you to look upward, to those lovely final lines– “stars, a tide of millions,/ flickering and ticking/ticking clockwise.”

      Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 23, 2019 at 11:22 am

      Magical! I am swept up in the implied sense and sound of the great cosmic clockwork

      Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 23, 2019 at 9:06 pm

      beautifully rendered. What greater phenomenon to observe than the sky spiral where we reside. I can see it in your words. And. yes, magical.

      Reply
  65. Richard Maxson says

    April 23, 2019 at 11:59 am

    Day 23

    As You Lay Sleeping

    —for Molly, German Shepherd

    They came back to you,
    not your best years, chain
    moving, rattle-steel
    on wood bark.

    Then the wolf
    in you, the breath
    opened, breath yet
    rising after you, ascending
    beyond your death
    with the captive rain.

    Before I found you,
    the puzzled streets, yours,
    the gathering of trees, yours,
    frightening and familiar, yours—

    to be free by choice,
    and lost by freedom,
    so much like drops of rain
    you shook from their refuge
    behind the guard hairs,
    nestled in the down.

    What quenched you
    grew deep, grew round,
    with swim or drown, lurked
    between the shadows of woods,
    your shivering and slender shelters,

    Lost is a blade of days
    honed into countless cuttings.

    To be found by fear,
    by shout and sheer abduction,
    a cage without keys inside you,
    formed and friendless.

    Even now, I hear you pound
    the floor with your great tail
    to greet me, story of you
    trapped in language, odyssey of you
    beyond imagination.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 24, 2019 at 4:03 pm

      “They came back to you,
      not your best years, chain
      moving, rattle-steel
      on wood bark.”

      Way to suck me in, Richard!

      “Lost is a blade of days
      honed into countless cuttings.”

      “a cage without keys inside you,”

      “Even now, I hear you pound / the floor with your great tail”

      I come away from imagining Molly with a sense of her complex and wounded greatness.

      Reply
  66. Richard Maxson says

    April 24, 2019 at 8:45 am

    Orchestral Night

    hiding in the reeds
    the sun has gone—begin:

    bantam sinfonietta
    bright and green
    as are my needs

    render me your violins,
    keep secret your red eyes
    in the peeling palms

    cello sustain me now
    be my silent breathing,
    night’s dark nerve―
    door of dreams

    Reply
    • Dave Malone says

      April 24, 2019 at 9:09 am

      Beautiful. I remain ever amazed at your rhythm, Richard. Have you long studied meter and traditional forms? I enjoy and respect your rhythm in free verse poems.

      Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 24, 2019 at 11:23 am

        Thanks, Dave for the encouragement. I haven’t really “studied” traditional forms, other than reading many of them over and over simply because I enjoy them. Frost stands out as one. I love his “dialogue” poems, like Servant to Servant and Home Burial. I love Mark Strand, a master at rhythm. And Eliot’s sense of rhythm is amazing to me.

        When I was in college, I was so slow in completing reading assignments, because I read hearing every word in my head. The rhythm of the prose from writers like William Styron, John Irving, Faulkner are too beautiful to read fast.

        Maybe it’s just that I try to emulate those greats. I write words until they “sound” right.

        Reply
        • Dave Malone says

          April 24, 2019 at 12:37 pm

          Well, that strategy is working, lol. Very impressive. Do you ever read Philip Larkin?

          Reply
          • Richard Maxson says

            April 26, 2019 at 12:39 pm

            I have not read Larkin that I remember, but I will now on your recommendation.

    • Laurie Klein says

      April 24, 2019 at 3:56 pm

      “bantam sinfonietta”

      “keep secret your red eyes”

      “cello sustain me now” (which ushers me into sostenuto)

      And that final stanza!

      Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 25, 2019 at 10:28 pm

        Thank you, Laurie.

        Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      April 25, 2019 at 3:57 pm

      Gorgeous poem, Richard. Oh, that cello…

      Reply
      • Richard Maxson says

        April 25, 2019 at 10:28 pm

        Thank you, Bethany.

        Reply
  67. Sandra Fox Murphy says

    April 24, 2019 at 2:13 pm

    The Holly Tree

    Come, morning of somber skies
    and babbled birdsong,
    bring the rain.
    Bathe my holly tree

    where I’ve buried McGee.
    Like a stuffed animal, he’d charmed
    my daughter at the pound,
    was relinquished to our escapades.

    Virginia forests bewitched
    his slinking forays
    in search of chipmunks
    and dark matter

    and back to Texas
    where he sauntered and feared
    nothing except missing a meal
    always luring him home,

    his shadow tugged like a tether,
    enticing me to our nebulous years
    where he faded to a deck
    ornament warmed by the sun.

    Oh, dismal Morning, I beg you
    bathe the holly tree,
    nourished by McGee’s majesty
    and abundant with red berries
    that tumble to his grave.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 24, 2019 at 3:52 pm

      “bring the rain”
      “slinking forays”
      “his shadow tugged like a tether”
      “a deck / ornament warmed by the sun”

      and those red berries, tumbling . . .

      Sandra, you make me feel the loss of McGee, and a slew of beloved dogs I still miss, and you do it so beautifully

      Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 24, 2019 at 6:43 pm

      So rich, Sandra, this prayer for rain to water a holly tree, on behalf of a long gone canine friend. “babbled birdsong”, “a deck ornament warmed by the sun” ,”red berries that tumble…”
      I feel that I too knew this McGee of yours.

      Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 25, 2019 at 10:26 pm

      Sandra, such a tender rendering of something all us animal lovers have experienced. For me there have been so many throughout my life and I remember where each is buried and think of them at peace beneath every tree, bush or rocky stream. Bless McGee!

      Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 26, 2019 at 5:58 pm

      Thank you, Laurie, Mary, and Richard. It is such a personal ‘prayer’ (I like that you called it that, Mary). Yet, at the same time, our pets are an all-too-familiar gift and loss for most of us as we travel through life.

      Reply
  68. Laurie Klein says

    April 24, 2019 at 3:42 pm

    #24

    Come, Vespers

    Let’s sidestep that shunt of sundown
    lancing through boughs,
    spilling its honey
    like too much hope,

    and skirt the lone hemlock,
    fevered with knobs of blight,
    unnerving and raw as today’s news:
    “Stage 4, inoperable.”

    Wordless as moss,
    we edge into the shade
    and place each foot, like a kiss,
    alongside the living. O Dusk,

    pour us two shadows:
    one, older than night, seeping,
    measure by measure, up from
    this earth, tender as Evensong,

    and the other shadow
    belling outward, tenebrous,
    wrapping us, sheer as a veil:
    gauze, for all our unquiet tomorrows.

    Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 24, 2019 at 6:27 pm

      Laurie, this takes my breath away. So many exquisite lines I hardly can comment on just one, but these are favorites: “spilling its honey like too much hope”, “fevered with knobs of blight”, and “O Dusk, pour us two shadows..” The imagery of shadows moving and footsteps inching into them, the coming darkness both comforting and disturbing. And if this is your story, well, my heart goes out to you.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 24, 2019 at 6:59 pm

        Mary, you’ve really encouraged me. Thank you. I’m grateful you mentioned lines you particularly enjoyed. It’s always helpful to know which phrases are earning their space. Let me rephrase that to absolutely invaluable.

        I started this poem for my father-in-law a while back but could never finish it, so I put it away for a year. After reading today’s poem and prompt, I thought of it again and finally felt able to revise the the original attempt (pretty drastically) and feel my way toward an endpoint.

        Time. Distance. A little more objectivity. And a fellow poet alongside . Thank you!

        Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      April 24, 2019 at 11:38 pm

      “wrapping us, sheer as a veil:
      gauze, for all our unquiet tomorrows.”

      Wow. Thank you for sharing this with us, Laurie.

      My heart goes out to you and your family.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 25, 2019 at 12:09 pm

        Bethany, thank you for reading and responding with such caring warmth.

        Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 25, 2019 at 10:20 pm

      I second Mary’s comment. Those lines are exquisite and wrenching. Brava!

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 26, 2019 at 11:26 am

        Thank you, Richard.

        Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 26, 2019 at 6:08 pm

      Laurie – ‘Come, Vespers’ is so powerful and poignant. So many moving and sensory words and phrases in this poem. To name a few: ‘shunt of sundown,’ ‘hemlock,’ ‘wordless as moss,’ ‘pour us two shadows,’ and …
      ‘the other shadow
      belling outward, tenebrous,
      wrapping us, sheer as a veil:
      gauze, for all our unquiet tomorrows.’

      I love this poem, Laurie.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 26, 2019 at 8:12 pm

        Sandra, thank you!

        Reply
  69. Richard Maxson says

    April 25, 2019 at 10:17 pm

    Day 25

    Gears

    A few shavings
    off the edge
    of time required.

    Now the gears,
    each one,
    will slow.

    How they do this
    you will know,
    a dissonant

    grind. Maybe
    only what’s said
    drives the day

    in day out way
    lives fall from grace,
    like rain on concrete,

    hissing dark, until
    it cools, kills the spark,
    fills in the empty spaces.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 26, 2019 at 8:09 pm

      Richard, the voice in this poem arrests me. And the fears. And the fragments and varied syntax, creating a moving target my eyes follow. I feel slightly off balance (in a good way) that ramps up curiosity . . .

      Then these line breaks— their unexpected staccato paired with long A sounds : they startle me, rivet my attention . . .

      “Maybe
      only what’s said
      drives the day

      in day out way
      lives fall from grace,
      like rain on concrete,”

      And then the last stanza, all those S sounds embodying Mystery: the killing, healing rain.

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 26, 2019 at 8:10 pm

        Typo!

        Gears, not fears. 🙂

        Reply
  70. Richard Maxson says

    April 26, 2019 at 12:36 pm

    Day 26

    Uses of Enchantment

    There are many ways to enter
    the woods or, if you prefer, a forest,

    let it remain enchanted,
    no matter what words we use.

    The first of all attributes is magic:
    snow expanding the landscape,

    or near the May Apples in Spring,
    near the Ash trees, a fairy ring,

    obscured by the hours gone by,
    yet now its umbrellas surround you.

    This is the way the world begins,
    with a silence, deep in nowhere.

    The vivid face in the sun’s mirror
    shows you the roundness of chaos.

    So much occurs in the silence of space,
    in the vast everywhere you are not.

    There was an old movie, a fantasy,
    of a rocket in the moon’s eye,

    possible now say our numbers, yet
    you say unbelievable, as you believe.

    These are the new woods we watch
    fill up with stars, knowing that snow

    is local. Let each morning sun be new
    and different, as when we danced for it.

    —title from Bruno Bettelheim

    Reply
  71. Laurie Klein says

    April 26, 2019 at 7:50 pm

    #26

    Bijoux

    O confetti-ed light, torn
    from incoming waves, I’ve missed
    your reflection, kinetic

    as fireflies Luck flung skyward,
    an icy dazzle against
    the rustling vault long elliptical

    leaves created, concealing
    a child. Unnatural, some said,
    my shagbark hickory cruelly

    skewed, like the letter J. It was
    code, for my middle name. Before
    soaring, the lower trunk

    slued, hard—shingles of bark
    worn smooth at the crook, perfectly
    sized for one small bottom. Once

    upon a tree, Time wore yellowing
    gloves. Gathered in fives,
    leaves became funnels I spiraled

    tightly, stitched closed with a twig,
    my lake sapphires captured,
    still winking within.

    Reply
    • Richard Maxson says

      April 28, 2019 at 4:42 pm

      Oh my! This is terribly beautiful. This so reminds me of Rilke’s poem “Childhood,” translation by Robert Bly, but your poem is even more beautiful.

      Read aloud it is full of music. Hard to separate out, the lines flow so perfectly together.

      “Unnatural, some said,/my shagbark hickory cruelly//skewed, like the letter J”

      “Before/soaring, the lower trunk//slued, hard—shingles of bark/worn smooth at the crook”

      And my favorite that reads like a perfect fairy-tale:

      “Once//upon a tree, Time wore yellowing/gloves.”

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 30, 2019 at 10:47 am

        Thank you, Richard. Your words mean a great deal to me. And the Rilke poem, “Childhood,” is new to me. I’m grateful to have read it.

        Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 29, 2019 at 7:15 am

      Laurie – Your poem Bijoux is such an extraordinary vision. So filled with gems in each line. I agree with Richard that it is musical … beautifully lyrical like a song. It’s hard to chose a favorite line … but I do like “I spiraled/tightly, stitched closed with a twig, ….”

      Reply
      • Laurie Klein says

        April 30, 2019 at 10:48 am

        Sandra, thank you, so encouraging!

        Reply
  72. Richard Maxson says

    April 28, 2019 at 9:03 am

    Day 27

    Beefsteak

    You must grow your own miracles.
    Special has been hormoned
    and hardened against the bump
    and bruise. Pretty in the produce
    aisle, but pithless and pitiful.

    I prefer a nude stocking sling
    for the heft, a slow blush,
    not the red-on-arrival rouge
    needled in the green-to-go.

    In a hot June—the prize, only
    once a year, the furrowed fruit
    weighs down its stems for clipping
    in your open hand, quite full
    of tender skin. Take care carrying
    them to the kitchen prepare
    the bed of lettuce or only bread
    and mayo, and oh! say a prayer before
    you slice a single slice and lay
    the flawless redness down and bite.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 30, 2019 at 10:56 am

      O how Delicious! And witty. So delightfully dismissive of the market’s inferior (and interfered-with) cousins. Playful, yet pointed commentary.

      You had me at the opening line. I love the way you relish the words as well as the subject. Innuendo and commentary alongside come-hither sensuality. Now I want to grow my own again . . .

      Reply
  73. Richard Maxson says

    April 28, 2019 at 4:17 pm

    Day 28

    The Trouble With Holsteins

    In summer, the fence rails
    corral the Holsteins
    grazing or lying in the dark
    circles of shade, like storm clouds
    broken from the sky.

    They eat the grass.
    You can hear the thunder
    in their mouths.

    The breeze sounds in the branches.
    The rain is coming.

    The cows are indifferent
    as to why you are here,
    or why you are leaving,
    watching them in the mirror—

    some in cloud shade,
    under the tree leaves,
    others moving unhurried over the pasture,

    some still, anchored by their grazing,
    like boats in the mirror of a harbor,
    under the dream of a green sky.

    Later, this illusion returns to you,
    a Bastille in which some knowledge waits.

    The Earth is neither up nor down,
    you think, the sky is an illusion,
    made blue by lack of distance.

    The dream from childhood has told you
    the sidewalks are wide enough for promises,
    and long enough to take you home.

    But the grass cracks them like egg shells,
    the grass is full of thunder, a warning.
    Heaven is not skyward, but inside us,
    and we are tasked, its steward angels.

    If Earth is an egg, we are the yolk,
    progenitors of its future.

    Reply
  74. Richard Maxson says

    April 29, 2019 at 8:38 am

    Day 29

    With the Elephants

    I would sleep here, if there were a suitable tree,
    a lion, svelte of mind, with a healthy fear.

    The city and the moon have plucked the stars
    from the midnight sky, but I cannot be reached.

    Here, in my garden, I watch the rabbits eat
    the surplus green I have grown for them.

    In the light of a false afternoon, the four-o’clocks
    mark time and space with their fragrance.

    Queen Anne’s Lace nod and sway
    like spirits busy with their evenings work.

    They do not see me, sleepy-eyed on a limb,
    here where the crook-necked squash wave

    their giant leaves like elephants
    fanning their ears on a dark savanna.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 30, 2019 at 1:21 pm

      Richard, the title and opening couplet entrances. And this one as well:

      “They do not see me, sleepy-eyed on a limb,
      here where the crook-necked squash wave

      their giant leaves like elephants”

      Wildly imaginative!

      Reply
  75. Mary Van Denend says

    April 29, 2019 at 12:21 pm

    Fully up to date with reading all these wonderful poems. Not so much with the writing of my own! But I have two more to offer. One on the subject of Loss (Day 24? 25? maybe). And the other for finding a place of Peace. (Day 26?) I’ll share them in separate comments. First one:

    Old Blind Cat

    This was never the way I meant
    for you to end, in rainy April,
    disappearing from the back door stoop
    where I lay you down last Monday morning,
    merely for some fresh air–
    At sixteen you were already a gray ghost,
    half in this world, half the next.

    I imagined you’d just fall asleep,
    on a soft summer day, closing
    your milky eyes in a cloud of margarites,
    nestled among those little white stars
    in a bowl of green. But you have not returned–
    your cranky, irritating, old lady’s rasp
    gone silent these five days past.

    We have searched the perimeter yards,
    front and back, under the boxwood,
    by the wood pile, even scooped the fish pond.
    Hoping both that we’d find you,
    and that we would not. The dog, too–
    your boisterous friend, occasional foe–
    seems to intuit that you travel elsewhere.

    My prayer for you, old arthritic Kitty,
    is that some kindly Virgil found you,
    stumbling, lost in the dark wet grass,
    and held his lantern aloft to lead you safely home.

    Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 29, 2019 at 4:56 pm

      Oh, Mary, the sad psalms of our lost pets. This one so tender. The not-knowing multiplying the grief. We know those old cats “gray ghost/half in this world, half the next” do love sunning in the fresh air. I liked how you ended this memory of loss, and I, too, hope the “kindly Virgil” tenderly led her.

      Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 29, 2019 at 5:38 pm

      Thank you, Sandra. It is a psalm, of sorts, helpful to write. But a strange mystery. She just vanished.

      Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      April 30, 2019 at 11:10 am

      Oh, Mary. I’m just starting to catch up here, and this is the first poem I read.

      even scooped the fish pond.
      Hoping both that we’d find you,
      and that we would not.

      Even scooping the fish pond. Oh my heart. That not knowing is the hardest of all, I think. And your description –those eyes. I just have to sit with this now for a bit.

      Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 30, 2019 at 1:05 pm

      Mary, this is deeply poignant, the closing image exquisite and wrenching and filled with the labor of reconciling oneself to the unknown.

      I especially love these lines:

      “already a gray ghost . . .”

      “your milky eyes in a cloud of margarites / nestled among those little white stars / in a bowl of green . . .”

      “Hoping both that we’d find you,
      and that we would not. The dog, too–
      your boisterous friend, occasional foe–
      seems to intuit that you travel elsewhere.”

      Reply
    • Laura Lynn Brown says

      April 30, 2019 at 1:35 pm

      Ohhhh … you can see it coming from the first line.

      You know sometimes they like to crawl off and go alone. But uncertainty is harder even than knowing of a hard ending, isn’t it?

      I love the specificity of so many images, especially all the places you searched. Even the verb “scooped.”

      Reply
      • Mary Van Denend says

        April 30, 2019 at 3:21 pm

        Many thanks to Sandra, Sandy, Laurie, and Laura for your kind responses to my cat poem. It’s so hard to write about pets without lapsing into sentimentality. From your comments I must have succeeded. I know that both cats and dogs will wander off when they’re ready to die, to find a quiet, safe spot somewhere. This is my hope.

        Reply
  76. Mary Van Denend says

    April 29, 2019 at 12:39 pm

    And this one, about a serene place not far from home. I’m curious to know how you’ll react to its Frost-like quatrains. Maybe overbearing, too sweet? The opening nod is to Yeats, of course.

    Bald Hill, Sunday

    Let us arise and go now
    to the trails at Bald Hill Farm,
    and from their winding ridges learn
    the ways a walk can charm.

    Each footstep forms the path anew,
    though many times we’ve been,
    this man and I, this little dog,
    in seasons bright and dim.

    Let us arise and go now,
    it should not take us long
    to leave behind the wailing world,
    to hear the creek bed’s song.

    Everything’s alive today, awake–
    the moss, the ferns, the bleeding
    hearts in palest pink
    that line the bank in turns.

    The jogging and the limping,
    we met them all today,
    humanity out walking–
    all sojourners on our way.

    If you should come upon us
    sitting on a stump, oh let us
    rest five minutes more,
    just let the dog’s tail thump.

    Just let the soft light find us,
    where green and wild things give
    their voice to this enchantment,
    this mirrored place we live.

    The forest knows the world grows
    weak, there’s sorrow in its bones.
    The forest knows we need its balm,
    its bird call and its stones.

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      April 29, 2019 at 1:29 pm

      I especially like:

      “The forest knows we need its balm,
      its bird call and its stones.”

      Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 30, 2019 at 1:18 pm

      Mary, I find this stanza especially vivid and the gentle humor triggers a sense of recognition:

      “If you should come upon us
      sitting on a stump, oh let us
      rest five minutes more,
      just let the dog’s tail thump.”

      Reply
    • Laura Lynn Brown says

      April 30, 2019 at 1:37 pm

      To hear the creek bed’s song. The jogging and the limping …

      This does a lovely job of holding Yeats’ rhythm and his peaceful sense of place while also bringing your own place to the fore. Lovely.

      Reply
  77. Sandra Fox Murphy says

    April 29, 2019 at 4:48 pm

    Day 29 —

    Jonah’s Revenge

    Oh, to swim with the great blues,
    diving and diving, in grace,
    where the chilled krill live
    and inching up to breathless air,

    where blue baleens, toothless,
    chomp on a prophet, abandoned
    action figures, and seasoned
    Styrofoam that will endure

    long beyond salted whalebone
    scrimshaw, yet, sorrow fails
    to deter the roundelays of rorquals
    awash in nylon webs, their wails

    unheard back on land where
    a wind-up whale, a tub toy diving
    in bath bubbles, affirms our hapless
    notion that all life is but whimsy.

    Reply
    • Laurie Klein says

      April 30, 2019 at 1:12 pm

      Sandra, this poem is sobering. It also makes me want to learn more about whales. 🙂

      “O to swim with the great blues”

      “long beyond salted whalebone”

      I admire the range of music carried within these lines—poetic, actual, awful:

      “to deter the roundelays of rorquals / awash in nylon webs, their wails / unheard …”

      Reply
    • Laura Lynn Brown says

      April 30, 2019 at 2:49 pm

      So many strong words and pairings here. The chilled krill, the toothless chomp, the surprise of “seasoned / Styrofoam,” roundelays of rorquals … And to end, rather than begin, with the no longer innocent tub? Memorable.

      Reply
    • Mary Van Denend says

      April 30, 2019 at 3:53 pm

      Sandra–Your word choices, as others have mentioned, are so original and smart. Styrofoam, scrimshaw, krill, chill, baleen, bath bubbles. And the marvelous line: “to deter the roundelays of rorquals”. I’m not even sure what that means, but I love how it sounds. Whales are just amazing creatures. You managed to put humor into a serious poem about protecting their welfare, and their ocean habitat. Thanks for all the poems you shared this month. I’m most partial to the one about the abandoned house and the one about the night sky in Texas.

      Reply
    • Sandra Fox Murphy says

      April 30, 2019 at 10:03 pm

      Thank you, Mary, Laura, and Laurie, for the feedback on Jonah’s Revenge. I am thankful for National Poetry Month and this forum to share. Grateful for the opportunity to be awe-struck in reading everyone’s poems, all the stirring words merged so magically, sometimes fun, sometimes heartfelt.

      Reply
  78. Maria Sheena Celeste F. Diego says

    April 21, 2022 at 8:40 pm

    0073
    Rugged-misty cliffs I long to see,
    Now it’s all gone devoured by the sea.
    Hallowed scene too much to bear,
    Everything is so unclear.

    Memories slowly fading,
    Picture perfect seemed missing.
    How can change be so cruel,
    My heart starting to boil.

    Blame it on the climate change,
    Of rapid progress and long-term gain.
    Maybe too late to realize and blame,
    Cherished scenery in flames.

    My eyes are now in pain,
    But great awakening remains.
    Salvage each great place and stop the blame,
    Change should begin with me.

    Reply
    • L.L. Barkat says

      April 22, 2022 at 3:01 pm

      Thanks for sharing, Maria. “Salvage each great place”… it really does begin with seeing the greatness of the special places we each have in our back yards and taking care. Wishing you the best on your journey of change.

      Reply

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