National Poetry Month, Day 30

For today, the last day of April, I have this poem, "The Last Kiss," which I heard on Tracy K. Smith's Showdown podcast back in October. It starts off sadly, but then there's a burst of "Where there's life there's hope" cheer at the end - and that's certainly welcome in these discouraging days.

Last Kiss
by Jane Ebihara

First, in your seventies and alone, you read that those who
count such things say the average person kisses for a total

of two weeks in a lifetime. And you realize that your two weeks
was up some time ago. Suddenly there is kissing everywhere

Here's the rest.

I managed a post each day in April, sharing at least one poem in the middle of all the grimness. And I enjoyed the progress of the Progressive Poem, ending today with Michelle Kogan, who out of nowhere produces a banjo and performs the whole thing! Thanks, friends - let's do it again next year!

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

Just because National Poetry Month is over doesn't mean you should abandon the poetry. Keep reading it; it's good for you! I'll keep posting it on Fridays, and reading it all year long.

National Poetry Month, Day 29

This prose poem by Aimee Nezhukumatathil has been open on my desktop since December; it was on the podcast The Showdown.

When I Am Six
by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

My mother waters the tomato & pepper plants. I steal drinks from the penny-taste of the garden hose. It's my favorite drink. I am six...

Here's the rest.

When I first heard this poem, I thought it would be a great idea to write a poem about being six (and of course I thought about A.A. Milne and Now We Are Six), and maybe some day I will.

Meanwhile, here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem. Tomorrow will be the last line for this year's poem.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 28

I already shared a poem this month by Jane Hirshfield (here), but since she just came out with a new book, she gave an interview on NPR a couple of days ago. She shares readers' poems, and it's such a fun four-minute listen. You can find it here. The printed text is different, and includes Hirshfield's poem "Vest," plus a link to her pandemic poem "Today, When I Could Do Nothing," published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 27

I don't know how long this has been open on my desktop. I do know it's the wrong time of year for it, since it's now time for the migration to go the other direction, back north for the hottest time of the year, instead of south like in the poem. But it's still so important that the birds make it, as the poem says, that the natural world continue to function as it should, in this time when it feels as though everything human is falling apart.

Migration
by Bianca Stone

This time of year the birds fly in elegant mobs,
tragic and sinister against gathering clouds.
It always made me sad to see the one trailing at the end, who I thought was
falling behind, tripping like a head of a musical note;
dark dots making swirls over and around the
obscene billboards,
gathering in the empty trees like relentless matching ornaments -

Here's the rest.

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 26

I love Iliad and Odyssey inspired poetry, and have shared a lot of it on this blog. This one has been open on my desktop since March 20th last year, when I received it in a daily poem email. I love the way it ties war writing through the ages together. It ends with "We all want the same thing from this world" and then the answer, what that is we all want. (What do we all want? I wonder how many ways we'd answer that question, if we sat and talked about it.)

We Were All Odysseus in Those Days
Amorak Huey

A young man learns to shoot
& dies in the mud
an ocean away from home,
a rifle in his fingers
& the sky dripping
from his heart.

Here's the rest.

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 25

Last year during National Poetry Month, I posted this Langston Hughes poem:

I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began -
I loved my friend.

Langston Hughes

When I posted it last year, I shared this link from the Paris Review offering this poem as Poetry Rx, and I also shared a story of a student at our school who lost a friend, a story that still makes tears come to my eyes when I remember that day.

This year they've all lost their friends, and so have we all. I know they, and we, are still talking in various ways, but it's not the same, and we all know it. One of my friends, whose loss I was already pre-grieving, as she was supposed to leave Haiti in May, left practically overnight, on a special evacuation flight due to the pandemic. She told me she'd like to stop by to say goodbye. I told her I couldn't let her in, because we have locked down our home for everyone who lives here and couldn't make any exceptions, but that I'd really like to see her. She knocked at the gate, and by the time I got there, she was standing across the street by her car. She'd left a box in front of the gate with some books in it and some weights, leftovers from a 48-hour dash to clean out her house and get rid of everything after ten years here. We yelled our goodbyes. Thankfully the situation was ridiculous enough that it made me laugh and not cry at that point, though I cried about it later.

There are so many ways to lose friends. Whether they choose to go, or it's chosen for them, whether you're the one leaving or the one being left, whether you get to say goodbye properly or not, it just hurts so, so much to lose people. I keep telling myself, "That's it, you're not making any more friends. You just lose them all." But then I keep making more, and I'm right: I lose them all, and if I haven't yet, I will.

But here's something happy, the Progressive Poem.

Amy has today's lines.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

Poetry Friday: National Poetry Month, Day 24

Excuse my tardiness; I've been at a Zoom meeting already today, but I posted my lessons on Google Classroom last night, so I have just a moment here (before I go spend the entire rest of the day in the futile task of trying to lower the total number of messages in my inbox) to post a poem I wrote yesterday. What a privilege to be able to focus on all of these things instead of watching the number of cases of COVID-19 in our dear Haiti climb each day; of course, I'm doing that too, but it's nice to be able to turn away from it to something on which I can have some kind of impact.

So here's my poem from yesterday:


April 23rd, 2020

In my recording for my students
the Trojan princes are bickering as brothers will,
discussing the upcoming war
and how exactly they should proceed

and in the kitchen,
my husband is making coffee,
opening and closing drawers,
taking the whistling kettle off the stove.

Hector is angry because the others are
accusing him of only wanting to fight
because of his wife’s family,
or maybe just for his own glory,
and sister Cassandra is yelling prophecies,
which nobody takes seriously,
and old Antenor warns, from long experience,
that war isn’t a good thing for anyone,
and outside all the Trojans are fixing their armor,
reverberation of hammer on bronze,

and as I explain these events into my phone
for my students,
scattered by pandemic,
and not coming to my classroom today,
my husband pours cereal,
a soft crashing into the bowl,
and makes me a cup of tea,
a clatter of mug and tinkle of spoon,

and there’s a certain sort of pre-disaster chaos
in the morning air,
back then, but now too,
fraught as these dramatic yet ordinary moments inevitably are,
when we’re trying to carry on with life as normal
and we don’t have any idea
what’s coming next.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com



After I wrote that poem, I saw this one by Joy Harjo posted on Facebook, and the two seemed to go together quite well, so here's that one too:



Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are bought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human.

Here's the rest.


Christie has today's roundup and also the lines for the Progressive Poem. 

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 23, Progressive Poem, and Happy Birthday to Me!

Today it's my turn to offer two lines to continue the Progressive Poem. Christie will choose one of them.

I picked this day, the 23rd, because it's my blog birthday. Today I've been blogging for 14 years. Let there be socially distant partying, and let there be cake!

So here's the poem so far:

Progressive Poem 2020

Sweet violets shimmy, daffodils sway
along the wiregrass path to the lake
I carry a rucksack of tasty cakes
and a banjo passed down from my gram.

I follow the tracks of deer and raccoon
and echo the call of a wandering loon.
A whispering breeze joins in our song
and night melts into a rose gold dawn

Deep into nature's embrace, I fold.
Promise of spring helps shake the cold
hints of sun lightly dapple the trees
calling out the sleepy bees

Leaf-litter crackles...I pause. Twig snaps.
I gasp! Shudder! Breathe out. Relax...
as a whitetail doe comes into view.
She shifts and spotted fawns debut.

We freeze. My green eyes and her brown
Meet and lock. Time slows down.
I scatter the cakes, backing away
Safely exiting this strange ballet.

I continue the path that winds down to the lake.

Julieanne offered me these lines:

"Missing my breakfast for beauty's sake"

and

"A heart filled with an adventurer's ache."

I picked the first, and then I was stuck. So I did what normally do when I'm stuck while writing, whether a poem or really anything else. I went to my five senses. Looking back over the poem, there are plenty of things to see, like violets and daffodils, tracks, and of course the lovely fawns. There are lots of sounds, like the snapping twigs, the banjo (we haven't heard it yet, but it's always a possibility), the breeze. There's a chill in the air to feel. There are those cakes on the ground to taste (though I guess we're not going to get to, since they're on the ground).

See what's missing? We need a smell! So I added one. I'm sorry, Christie, I'm not letting you pick whether to have a smell or not, but you can pick what kind of smell it is!

Option 1: But what's that smell up there ahead?

Option 2: But wait, what's that delicious smell?

I know what I would make the smell be, but I don't know what Christie and all our upcoming contributors will decide to do with it. That's the thing with the Progressive Poem - you do your thing and then you stand back. Take it away, Christie!


1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 22

I looked up today's line(s) first thing in the morning, because tomorrow I have to add mine. In the background all day as I've done my work, I've been thinking about which direction to take the Progressive Poem.

But before I link you to today's lines, here's a poem. It's got landscape, April, isolation...I've read it many times, and I keep finding new things in it.

Body and Soul II
Charles Wright

(for Coleman Hawkins)

The structure of landscape is infinitesimal,
Like the structure of music,
                          seamless, invisible.
Even the rain has larger sutures.
What holds the landscape together, and what
holds music together,
Is faith, it appears - faith of the eye, faith of the ear.
Nothing like that in language,
However, clouds chugging from west to east like blossoms
Blown by the wind.
                  April, and anything's possible.

Here's the rest.   

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem.

Tune in tomorrow as I add my two lines for Christie to choose from.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 21

This poem by Camille T. Dungy has been open on my desktop for a long time.


Characteristics of Life
by Camille T. Dungy

A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
-BBC Nature News 

Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
                              speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
                              of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.

Here's the rest of it.

Fascinated by that poem and this one of Dungy's, I bought her book, Smith Blue, with a birthday gift certificate. It arrived March 12th, and then March 19th our COVID-19 lockdown began. So I'm definitely going to read it, but I haven't yet. I try to write a post about books I get for my birthday - I usually get some - but I just haven't had a chance.

I know I'm not the only one that's having difficulty reading much during this whole strange experience, because I keep seeing other people writing about the same thing. It reminds me, like so much lately, of the earthquake; it was weeks before I could settle down and focus on anything, and then I chose very familiar books to begin with.

It's a time for speaking for the snail, I think, for getting small and quiet and still. Someone wrote an article about how the perfect book to read right now is War and Peace - I read the headline only, so I don't know what the argument is. To me it isn't a moment for sprawling narrative. What do you think?

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem. It's almost my turn; I add my line(s) on Thursday.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 20

A Prayer in Spring
by Robert Frost

Oh give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Here's the rest.

There's a "darting bird" in the third stanza, so I like that, but the main thing I like about this poem is the truth that you have to live one moment at a time, not "borrowing trouble," not looking too far ahead. Some day I might learn that lesson once and for all. I wonder.

Here are today's lines for the Progressive Poem.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all

National Poetry Month, Day 19

I've been writing a lot in the past few months about birds (here's my latest original bird poem), and today I spent the whole day birding (except for a brief break for Zoom church). A Facebook group I've joined, #BirdTheFeckAtHome (encouraging people to stay home instead of going out on birding expeditions that might break social distancing), had a special Big (Sun)Day today. The administrators drew a line down the center of the world map and put us in Teams East and West, and we competed for the number of species we could see from our homes. As I'm writing this on Sunday night, my daylight hours are over, but there are still birders out there. Team East is ahead as I'm quitting for the day, but that could still change! Go Team West!

I'm not sure of all the reasons why birding is so comforting in this difficult time. First, I suppose, it just takes your mind off what's going on, just the way any pastime would. But it's more than that. Partly it's because it requires you to be only where you are. You're completely present in the moment watching something that probably nobody will see if you don't. There's also something about the way the birds' lives are going on completely normally; if anything, life is better for them these days because there's less traffic on the streets and probably fewer fumes for them to breathe.

The fact is, I have been struggling a lot with how this virus is likely to play out here in Haiti. There was a BBC article about it that I won't link to because I don't want to look it up again. You can find it easily, and it might make you cry as it did me. There's nothing I can do about it, and I feel guilty about the privilege that lets me sit in my yard watching birds when so many face lives that are already unimaginably difficult, and probably about to become worse.  I read it on my birding chair, with my binoculars around my neck.

I had anticipated at least a little boost in my spirits last weekend on Easter Sunday, but not so much; it was one of the worst, saddest days yet. But there were a couple of exceptions to that; one was talking to my US family on Zoom, and the other was staring through my new binoculars (a birthday gift from my husband) at a Hispaniolan lizard cuckoo that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I could see every feather on that bird, and the supercilious expression on its face as it peered down at me from the tree. My heart leapt. I was so thankful for that moment, which I took as a gift from God. I believe in the resurrection, Easter's best gift, but I also needed that reminder of God's creative love in the here and now.

Here's a bird poem that's open right now on my desktop. I think Jane Hirshfield is onto something here with her description of nature and its indifference to our preoccupations. That Hispaniolan lizard cuckoo isn't really looking at me superciliously; it's not interested in me at all. For some reason that makes me feel better. (I think her falcon is interested in her more than my cuckoo was in me, considering that it's sitting on her head.)

Falcon
by Jane Hirshfield

Incapable of betrayal: a tree.

Incapable of holding a secret: a stone.

Without contempt for self or other:
an ant, a bee.

Today I and the unhooded bird
that sits on my head
are looking in different directions,
I into the blurring past, he into the blurring future.

Here's the rest.

Here are the lines for the Progressive Poem, from Tabatha.

1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all