Day 29: The Remodel

/2 Comments/in , , /by

cabin4At POETRYisEVERYTHING, for Day 29 of National Poetry Month, Chris Jarmick assigned a house remodel poem. He also made some lovely, encouraging comments about the challenge to write a poem a day this month, for instance:

“And if you’ve paid a little more attention to poetry during our month long sharing of prompts and writing —thank you… I know good things will come of it.”

Because of Chris, I also have become a subscriber at Elsewhere in the Rain (the link should take you to a post that includes a list of poetic terms),  which I highly recommend.

So here is my poem. Er, draft of a poem. May good things come to you.

I’m not sure why, but I have been thinking
about how death reorganizes us.
I don’t mean anything simple, no cleaning out of closets,

it’s more than donating the old suits
and scuffed shoes to Good Will,
throwing out the years of National Geographics

and Good Housekeeping. Something more primal,
more like remodeling, tearing out closets,
breaking out a window to add a cupola

or a deck, making the kitchen brighter,
expanding the bathroom to make room for a tub.
It isn’t our own death that does all this hammering

at the stays of existence. Other peoples’ deaths,
or whatever that category of event
that wakes us, that insists we see

the necessity of a wicker chair under a skylight.
Don’t wait to call the carpenters until things are dire,
until the time is more expedient–

Your own death will arrive one midnight and then your house
will be a small room, smaller than this one
in which you sit and write.  You can promise

to write, but no letters arrive from the dead.
There’s no desk there and the ink
in your lucky pen dries up after the first millennium.

Day 25: Almost There

/0 Comments/in /by

There’s always a point where you have to let a story go. Art isn’t finished, as many people before me have pointed out, only abandoned. And eventually you abandon your new child and hope that you’ll get it right next time, or the time after that, and you never do. –NEIL GAIMAN

This was the advice today at Jon Winokaur’s blog, Advice to Writers. It was fitting. No, Bethany, you do not need to read the novel one more time.

And, for National Poetry Month…it was a another day in which I didn’t get a chance to look at the poetry assignment. But, somewhere in there, midday (sitting in my car, looking at the water), I wrote this:

Who knew the ocean could be so implacable–
implacable, a word that has nothing

to do with plaits, with implicate, for instance,
with inextricable, with intricate. The ocean

waves are like braids undone, or like pleats
of a skirt unfolded, coming undone, white caps

not like demure Puritan caps with their tucks and embroidery,
but maybe like Victorian petticoats

or knickers…implacable as in constantly assailed,
unassailable if only in the sense

of not caring at all for the assault,
for your fingers tapping along with its pulse.

Day 16: Ae Freislighe

/2 Comments/in /by

Today Chris’s POETRYisEVERYTHING linked me to another blog, elsewhere in the rain, which in turn introduced me to an Irish form, Ae Freislighe (aye-fresh-lee), which has four lines (perhaps more than one stanza) of seven syllables each and an A, B, A, B rhyme scheme. The blogger, Brendan McBreen, further explains that the end rhyming words have a set syllable count: lines 1 and 3, 3 syllables; lines 2 and 4, 2 syllables. The first word or phrase of the poem repeats at the end of the poem. (I’m cribbing most of this from Brendan; see his blog for more details.)

The original prompt was to write a toast. I immediately thought of the Caim blessing(the Celtic Christians had a practice of drawing a circle around what they wished to bless, with stones, or, I imagine, in mind) that hangs on the bulletin board over my washing machine — and so I did a quick Internet search for more such, and found a Celtic Blessings site, which included this little gem:

May those who love us, love us.
And those who don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts;
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles,
So we will know them by their limping.

Maybe you have to have spent 6 weeks on crutches or with your foot elevated to appreciate that fully.

And after all that fuss to introduce you to the ae freislighe form, I’m giving up. We’ll consider it a draft to be revisited.

Inside this Circle 

Blessings on her striped-shirts,
the mis-matched socks, polka-dotted
bras, denim jeans, too-short skirts.
Blessings on what her pockets

hold: hair-ties, chapsticks,
the fortune from a Chinese cookie.
My girl, swift and difficult,
inside this circle, bless and bless.

 

Oh, dear, Day 14

/3 Comments/in /by

My Headache Ghazal (and my excuse for not posting last night)

What is a headache made of? Made up in the brain,
of course, what I’ve called “an exquisite pain.”

But why call the pain exquisite? What can that mean?
Delicate, beautiful? An exquisite pain —

from the Latin, sought out, from ex- and to seek.
But  who seeks even an exquisite pain?

Highly wrought another dictionary suggests,
good or bad, an exquisite pain,

torture as well as art. That fits. But carefully selected?
Bethany! Stop choosing this exquisite pain.

*

See Chris Jarmick’s prompt: Day 14 of National Poetry Month, and here’s a link to Agha Shahid Ali’s “Even the Rain” — another fine example of a ghazel (from a master) at poets.org.