National Poetry Month and daily poetry prompts

In the days when I could jabber on the phone for hours, one of my favorite things to do was ask my friend Deesh to read me a poem. He’d have me pick a date from a year or two or three years ago, and then he‘d look up his old notebooks and read me the poem he had written on that date. Since I was listening from a distance, I didn’t always “understand” it, but the mood it created was definite, roughly tangible.

When I started life on a different continent, I started doing it myself. And most of the time these are pieces that cannot stand alone--but re-reading them, they hint, rather than remind me, of laughter or disappointment or scrutiny that happened long ago. They’re typically unvarnished (unless I went back to tinker) but I like the way they process experience into a dappled utterance.

This month, in honor of National Poetry Month, Robert Lee Brewer will post prompts to encourage his wordsmith-audience to write every day. I may post there, but mostly may not--I’m not a particularly group activity type--but I’ll save some back here.

WORD-PICKING

Perhaps perfect words
fall like leaves, relief
not thoughts, stones
prodded, turned over

My son motions
at the fruit bowl
the bananas, he says
have gone Dalmatian

At the first, gleeful
lift of storm wind*
Baby pauses, parses
AaaAAAAAAngaa

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*“Breeze” was too tame, but I paused before I used “wind” because of its ambiguity--anyone who’s been around Baby A knows that she is a gassy little monkey : ).

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