Line 7 of the 2026 Progressive Poem is Here!

April 1 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
April 2 Cathy Stenquist at A Little Bit of This and That
April 3 Patricia Franz at Reverie
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 6 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 7 Ruth Hersey at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
April 8 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 9 Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche
April 10 Janet Clare Fagel at Reflections on the Teche
April 11 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 12 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 13 Linda Mitchell at Another Word Edgewise
April 14 Jone MacCulloch at
April 15 Joyce Uglow at Storied Ink
April 16 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
April 17 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 18 Michele Kogan at More Art for All
April 19 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 20 Buffy Silverman
April 21 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
April 22 Karen Edmisten
April 23 Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe
April 24 Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 25 Tanita Davis at Fiction, instead of Lies
April 26 Sharon Roy at Pedaling Poet
April 27 Tracey Kiff-Judson at Tangles and Tails
April 28
April 29
April 30

 

I've been following the poem eagerly so far. I love the piles of books (reminds me of my bedside table) and of course I'm happy any time birds fly into a poem. But I'm a little worried about where the birds are actually going, where they live, and how they interact with the building-high anthologies. I got distracted by many side quests like looking up different parakeets (rhyming with streets) and sadly discovering that lots of them are extinct, researching bird-friendly buildings (the horizontal lines of the books are good because the birds won't collide with buildings like that as easily, since they can see that they are solid, unlike huge sheets of glass often used on skyscrapers) and exploring what kinds of birds live in cities (hint: not just sparrows and pigeons). Most people don't notice urban birds, but I'm sure that's not the case in the Land of Poetry, right? I wanted to put in some gorgeous Ugandan city birds, but I decided to keep the birds generic and maybe even just metaphors. We'll let future poets decide. Denise, I hope it's OK that I changed your period to a comma. Rose, the poem is all yours! 

 

 

 

On my first trip to the Land of Poetry,
I saw anthologies of every color, tall as buildings.
A world of words, wonder on wings, waiting just for me!
Birding for words shimmering, flecked in golden gilding.

binoculars ready, I toured boulevards and side streets
exploring vibrant verses, verses so honest and tender,
feathery lyrics, bright flitting avian athletes  

 

 

 Photo from this article