Day Nine of Na/GloPoWriMo challenges us to write a concrete poem. I need to go grocery shopping today.

As my morning soles cling to the sidewalk
The streets stretch vacant
Save the occasional passing car

The morning briefing from the branches
Is published in the breeze
It’s pressed in the mist over the river
Where it’s drawn back up into circulation by the rising sun

Too-wheeted in a flurry of whistles and calls
The treetop headlines reign over the quiet streets
And I wonder what they report:

The Forsythia have reached their peak of flowering, azaleas are beginning to bud

Squirrels report lowest number of deaths in decades

Two legged concrete-dwellers remain in their nesting boxes…

Day Seven of Na/GloPoWriMo challenged us to write a poem based on a news article. I instead chose to imagine what kind of news the morning bird calls herald. I am struck lately with the vibrancy of their song in the relative stillness of the world these days.

Small furry ball of fire
pouncing to the top of trees through the early morning window while
waiting for me to stir
then tiptoes up my side and
sits like a soft statue on my hip
sniffing my musty morning breath.

Pa-dump, pa-dumping adeptly
before me down the stairs and through the kitchen
she is Helios with a tiny sun on the tip of her tail
singing a sweet tangerine scented meow.

My cloudy eyes seek out kettle, cup and masala tea to lift
the morning mist. Meanwhile
she weaves her slender charioted requisition longingly
through my legs. Once fulfilled, I sip
as she consumes tidbits to fuel her inner fire, whereby the Poynting flux
propagates into her corona through the buffeting of magnetic fields by turbulent connective cells. In other words
the zoomies are unleashed! –
ricocheting from floor to ceiling
sending sparks simultaneously shooting
from the pads of her paws and the tip of her tail.

Her solar wind engulfs all the tiny planets of our atmosphere
scurrying small objects, scooting over the floor
until at last it subsides
settling sleepily like the small umbral grey spot
on her left haunch.

And she retreats
creeping under clouds of blankets to her camera obscura
where she will dream that she is painting glimmering specs
over rippling waters full of fluttering fish.
Until after hours of hazy slumber she emerges
to eclipse the advancing evening.

The prompt for Day Five of Na/GloPoWriMo challenges us to incorporate “Twenty Little Poetry Projects” (a list originally developed by Jim Simmerman) into one poem. This was a challenge indeed! I’m sure I didn’t include all twenty projects, but I think I hit most of them. Our sprightly cat, Sunny (pictured above) provided the inspiration for my poetic attempt at this challenge. She is bright orange and white with just one small grey spot on her back left hip which I find intriguing – a little umbral fleck in her sunny disposition. She came to us at Christmas when our spirits needed a little ray of light!

The text in italics in the third stanza is taken from this abstract of an article in Nature Astronomy. Science has its own dialect that I don’t often understand!

Here is the list of projects:
1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

A month ago I dreamt you came back
You walked in a door where there is now only a window
Smelling of cigarettes
Oh, I was so pissed off at you

Last week I dreamt you were at work with me
Carrying a small yellow box of donations
Someone else commented that she didn’t realize you had come back
I felt settled and life seemed too insipid

Many years ago I dreamt we were together in warm, cloistered, brick room
Outside it had snowed on a myriad of sunflowers
That surrounded us
I felt such intense, powerful, all-encompassing love

The sunflower seedlings I planted this year dried up and withered on the shelf

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.