Day 21: Blessings for Parents

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Today’s assignment at POETRYisEVERYTHING is to write a parody of a well-known poem. I decided, instead, to write an imitation.

One can’t improve on the Beatitudes from Matthew, but they make for an interesting foundation, a kind of map to explore other kinds of blessings. (I remembered, as I worked on my imitation, that “to bless” means, etymologically, “to wound.”) I started writing with the intention of being light, and then it…sort of changed. I’ll let it compost in the drafts file and see if something else cooks up from it.

Beatitudes for Parents

Blessed are the parents of infants, sleep starved as mystics, endlessly rocking, for they shall see visions of all that is possible.

Blessed are the parents of toddlers for they shall learn the limits of earthly patience.

Blessed is any parent of an ailing child for they shall be exposed to their own limitations, they will learn the limits of their own too-permeable limits.

Blessed are the parents of seven-year-olds for they shall be called wise and, if truly wise, they will know how foolish and how brief wisdom can be.

Blessed are the parents of fourteen-year-olds, for, as in the days with toddlers, they will grow infinite patience and yet none will call them wise.

Day 20: Seeing Differently

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The assignment today is to write about a family photograph. As it is also Easter, I thought I’d share an Easter photo from my childhood. My parents took one of us every year — from when there were three kids, to the time my older brother left home. About.

Okay…so I went searching for Easter photos and couldn’t find one with the baskets and all (often taken outside). But here’s a picture of me with my mom and sisters. I’m thinking that the smaller pic is me at about 9, the age at which I got glasses. Where are the glasses? Well, read my response to the assignment below. Looking at it, I found my brain going in a completely different direction than Easter. Or maybe not. Isn’t Lent (culminating in Easter) all about seeing differently? 

*

What She Doesn’t See

My mother saw that I needed glasses before anyone else did.
I always had my nose

in a book. Dad thought the books
were all right, but for heaven’s sake, turn on a light.

I wonder now what I was afraid to see,
what made me out of four siblings and my clear-sighted parents

the one person with specs. Oh, too bad, 
Mom told me when I got my first pair,

Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.

Did I care? Didn’t I keep trying to fall
through the lines and into the story, 

and, by contrast, out of mine? But, why?

 

Day 19: Poem in your Pocket Day

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Visit poets.org to see some possibilities for Poem in your Pocket day. I have heard that Elizabeth Austen, our new Washington State poet laureate  will be at the Mount Lake Terrace library at 2:00 this afternoon. (Go to “Events” to find the listing.)

One of the suggestions is to text a poem to all your contacts. This gave me an idea. I’m combining POETRYisEVERYTHING’s prompt, to write a gripe, with a poetry assignment I once gave my students (the ONE time my college allowed me to teach poetry). This assignment was called a HONKU, cribbed, if I remember correctly, from a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” piece about a wave of protest poems, Haiku’s posted on telephone poles, etc. (My students were inspired to write some pretty amazing ones, and they were required to post at least one in a public place.) So here’s a new one from me.

Well, everyone knows that a Haiku plays with syllables…though it doesn’t have to (in English, so I’m told, we can mess with that). I stuck with the formula of 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. The first two lines set up the problem, the final line delivers the protest.

Daughters up all night —
Friends dropping in, shrieks, laughter.
I’m old! I need sleep!

I know, I know, I’m not all that old.

Happy Poem in your Pocket Day.

 

Day 18: My Writing Acrostic

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I learned some things from this prompt, from POETRYisEVERYTHING — so I thought I’d share it on my blog. (I didn’t know that acrostics occur in Proverbs, Psalms, and Lamentations.) You’ll find my acrostic at the end.

PROMPT 18 – Acrostic Poem

Relatively simple acrostics may merely spell out the letters of the alphabet in order; such an acrostic may be called an ‘alphabetical acrostic’ or Abecedarius. These acrostics occur in the first four of the five songs that make up the Book of Lamentations, in the praise of the good wife in Proverbs 31, 10-31, and in Psalms 9, 10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119 and 145 of the Hebrew Bible.[3] Notable among the acrostic Psalms are the long Psalm 119, which typically is printed in subsections named after the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, each of which is featured in that section; and Psalm 145, which is recited three times a day in the Jewish services. Acrostics prove that the texts in question were originally composed in writing, rather than having existed in oral tradition before being put into writing.

Acrostic poetry was very common in medieval literature and often served to highlight the name of the poet or the patron who paid him. They were also used to make a prayer to a saint. You’ll find alphabet acrostic poems which are called Abecedarius poems in the first four of the five songs that make up the the Book of Lamentations. They praise the good wife in Proverbs. There are many Acrostic Psalms, the most notable is the very long Psalm 119 where each section is named after the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, the final chapter “A Boat, Beneath A Sunny Sky” is an acrostic of the real Alice’s name: Alice Pleasance Liddell. (Good trivia question to ask: What’s Alice’s full name….).

The Poem begins….

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July –

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,

. . . and the poem continues from there…

When the muse moves you,
Runs her hands through your hair, pours
Ice down your spine,
Tickles you until you cry —
It isn’t her call what happens next. It’s yours.
Now is the moment in which to
Gallop in the direction of your dreams.