Poetry Friday: NPM Spring Cleaning Day 30, Happiness

 

It's the last day of National Poetry Month. I'm pretty proud of myself for posting every day this month. Most of my posts fit into my Spring Cleaning plans, writing about tabs I had open on my desktop so that I could then close them. I had sooooo many tabs open. I still have more than some people would be comfortable with, but I have way fewer than when the month began. 

One thing I noticed right away as I was categorizing my tabs was that I had a lot about happiness. I'm fascinated by happiness: what makes people happy, how much of happiness is a choice, how much it's related to physical well-being or living in privileged circumstances. I always read the studies that measure happiness from one country to another (like these on the World Happiness Report). I'm thrilled to know that birds make people happy. (Here's another good one on that.) And I had this article open too, on how becoming a beginner at something can make you happy (I picked birding). 

 

Something else that makes me happy is poetry. I've posted so many happiness poems in the past, like this one, this one, and this one.

 

Language makes me happy. This month, Tabatha asked for bilingual poems, and I wrote one that she has on her Poetry Friday post today. 

 

Another thing that makes me happy is celebrating. That's why I always try to stretch out my birthday as long as I can. And last week was my blog birthday. Fifteen years, and the traditional gift for fifteen years is crystal, so I asked people to leave poems about crystals. Here's what I got in the comments:

 

from Jama:

 

 

from Linda Baie:

for Ruth, for her 15th blogiversary

a crystal for healing
a crystal for stars
a crystal that sparkles
wherever you are
a crystal that pleases
a crystal for smiles
I wish you these crystals
to wish on a while

Linda B ©

 

and from Laura Salas:

 

Brinicle

Arctic Ocean,
dark, vast
water cave guarded by an
arc of sea ice above

Ceiling recedes,
feeds salt to the deep
Super-saltwater ribbon flows,
grows, and sinks

Stalactite
with a frigid core
wears a crystal
cloak of ice

Brinicle gushes,
rushing down to the
sea floor,
an icy finger of death

© Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

And edited on Friday afternoon to add this golden shovel poem from Michelle Kogan, using a line from Jama's song as a strike line!

CRYSTALFILLED VIBRATION
For Ruth on her 15th Blogosphere Birthday

Illuminating from 1,000 points, crystal
sparkling blue
luminous light of pure persuasion.
It satisfies, mmhmm
basic human calls, desires, it’s
all we need—A
love for peace, and new
found, hope-filled, world-movement full of vibration!

© 2021 Michelle Kogan

 

Edited Sunday afternoon to add this anniversary gift from Heidi Mordhorst, a poem about spring cleaning and realizing how much is really necessary:

 

classroom, you are my second home
my queendom
my domain of wild imagination
and utter control
you are the box which I may think outside of
the envelope which I daily push
you are a magic hat of rabbits and bouquets
called caterpillars minnows
diamonds and pandas

you contain multitudes
all the small packages of life come to
burst my boundaries and
draw erase redraw the essential lines
of faces bodies lead and follow
you are my petri dish of blue-green molding
my clear plastic cup of kindergarten carrot seed
my test tube of dirty living creek water
my chrysalis of compare and contrast
my stone soup of democratic socialism

you swallow me.

I am drowned
simmered baked consumed
I am the Little Red Hen
married for better or worse to
doing it all by myself

and the truth is, it’s not me, it’s you.

I am leaving you and the breakup
is a long messy self-sliced surgery
of many stages and sloppy stitches
oozing wounds and second thoughts
but there is no other way

no graceful ending
no grateful celebration
only touching each paper book artful idea
only shouting at myself “throw it away”
only piles of planbooks
to mark the work we did

which I will
hold on
hold on
hold on to
while I let go and
finish growing out of

into

 

Thanks so much for these gifts, and for the other birthday wishes, too! They made me happy!

 

Here's what I posted this past week. On Saturday I shared an all-prompt post. On Sunday I shared a poem by Marie Howe, plus two others that went with it on the subject of despair. Monday was a miscellaneous day, with lots of links that didn't fit in anywhere else in my Spring Cleaning. On Tuesday I had an original poem, "Ordinary Birds." On Wednesday I posted a poem and link about friendship.  And yesterday I shared the Richard Wilbur poem "Year's End."

 

Today the Progressive Poem ends:

 

April 1 Kat Apel at Kat Whiskers
2 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
3 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading
4 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
5 Irene Latham at Live your Poem
6 Jan Godown Annino at BookseedStudio
7 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
8 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
9 Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche
10 Molly Hogan at Nix the Comfort Zone
11 Buffy Silverman
12 Janet Fagel at Reflections on the Teche
13 Jone Rush MacCulloch
14 Susan Bruck at Soul Blossom Living
15 Wendy Taleo at Tales in eLearning
16 Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe
17 Tricia Stohr Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect
18 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
19 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
20 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
21 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
22 Ruth Hersey at There is No Such Thing as a God-forsaken Town
23 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
24 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
25 Shari Daniels at Islands of my Soul
26 Tim Gels at Yet There is Method at https://timgels.com
27 Rebecca Newman
28 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
29 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wondering
30 Michelle Kogan at More Art 4 All 

 

 
And here's a roundup of some of the amazing, creative projects going on during NPM this year. 

 

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup!