Remember the Gala.
The music blaring
Together In the grand ballroom
We danced
Raised our cup
Shared appetizers
We leaned in close for selfies
Celebrated love and gave thanks
For sisters, mothers, friends

Consider the data
New, sick, spreading
Sheltered in this damned, walled room
We glance
Stock up
Hoard sanitizer
We screen to diagnose disease
Disseminated gloves and face masks
For sisters, mothers, friends

The Day Three prompt for Na/GloPoWriMo challenges us to make a list of ten words and the use this fun and handy rhyme generator to seek out either pure or near rhymes, then to write a poem from the word bank we’ve created. I ended up with 2 poems which contrast the difference between our current reality and my experience attending a gala on Valentine’s Day just a month and a half ago. The poems work best side by side as in the picture of the text.

The pages of my journal are gold-speckled on the top margin. Here in the upper right corner of the left page I dutifully record the date – day/month/year. I recently started adding the day of the week because lately they seem to be slipping, one into another.

Seventeen pairs of gold spirals arch gracefully down the center, binding my thoughts and keeping my days in order. The white pages are faintly lined, but I don’t adhere to them. Instead my words float, dip and sprawl the page.

Sometimes I fill only half of the left page. Sometimes my pen spills my early morning musings over into the right page and the spacing becomes tighter as I to try and contain them. Two days ago the pages remained blank – except for the lower portion of the right page.

This spot is now reserved for the daily statistics: world cases, US cases, deaths…
I recently added the number of those recovered because I need a glimmer of hope to sparkle here at the bottom of the page too. Tomorrow, it seems, we may surpass one million.

I’ve added South Africa to my stats because, well you know, you’re there. Deaths there remain in the single digits.

Day Two of Na/GloPoWriMo prompts us to write a poem about a specific place. My poem perhaps is less about a place than a space. My journal has lately become an even more sacred space to retreat to in the early morning when the house is quiet.

My strings had just seemed to stabilize
hovering comfortably close to unwavering perfect fifths.
Small daily adjustments were only needed
to bring me back to concert pitch. For forty
years it seems, I’d struggled for this balance,
these firmly gripping pegs within my mind.
My song with newly tempered assurance
left shrieking flexibility behind.

That was before the world shifted, stretched and snapped.

So here I sit firmly grasping my shoulders, my neck
unwinding yesterday and seeking to thread
new ways of life through tiny holes carved in times past.
I stretch myself and expand my fibers
as I grasp for some new tuneful balance,
but these days only pull me tighter.

So I let slip the tension
and listen in silence
eyes closed
ears open
and I wait
for the rippling waves of a new horizon.

The prompt from Day One of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo was to write a self-portrait in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – an action that isn’t typically done all the time.

At 5:36 when I am still awake

I imagine I’m looking down on us from this ceiling

Her small frame wrapped up in mine, cat curled by my shins

Our bodies trading warmth and comfort

And our bed begins to float gently

In a sea of uncertainty

Sometimes Superwoman
Comes unexpectedly, dressed in black
With a red sparkling emblem across her chest

She comes when you least expect it at the end of a big night when you’re cleaning up and pretending that you got it all together,
But you really don’t

And she looks at you in your eyes and tells you – God’s got this
And calls you sister.
And though you don’t quite know what that powerful sistah-ness means (well you kind of do – you’ve glimpsed it) you recognize it for what it is – you see its struggle in proximity to history –
To days –
but you don’t deserve to claim it as your own

Then eyes embrace,
Dark and sparkling
Struggles subsiding like the slow melt of glittering sunsets at dusk

And you percieve that her emblem lies far deeper than the symbol on her chest

#1 Spring Walking

Whoa, did you see that
vaporous veiled paragon?
Spring has awakened!

#2 Scientific Fact

The human eye can
distinguish more shades in green
than other colors

http://pxhere.com/en/photo/457623

I’m in poetry prompt withdrawal now that April has passed. Thankfully I stumbled upon this one from the site iwriteher.com.

Instead of poems on my phone
these days I list daily
expenses: gas, groceries, electric,
so much more tidy than counting
syllables and tracking
my daily emotional balance.

Remember when oyster
mushrooms were a staple
on the grocery budget?
Then after that it was shiitakes.
We cooked them almost
weekly, their sinewy stems like meat.

They look
familiar and fresh
in their shiny packages today
under the produce department lights,
and the kale glistening
in the shopping mist. I toss
them in the cart and wheel on
calculating them into the budget.

Our words,
like grocery lists and budgets,
are functional these days –
communication kept to the basics.
“What are you cooking?”
“Kale and mushrooms”
“Which store did you find the shiitakes at? They remind me of the ones we used to find with stems.”
“Did you finish all the veggies?”
“I didn’t know you wanted any more.”
“It’s ok, it’s fine.”

But, on the stove I find
more mushrooms in the bowl.
All that remains of the kale are the
tiny crispy pieces.
I eat them from the pan – the tastiest of tidbits
and I ponder what it means to
seek out and savor
the seemingly insignificant bits that remain
in an empty cast iron pan.