April is National Poetry Writing Month. NaPoWriMo 2015 is a challenge to write a poem every day in April. Today’s prompt: write an aubade – a morning poem….perhaps about love, perhaps about Monday.
Monday’s Promise
Last night’s shooting star
carried my wish
streaking across the sky
someone listening
outside our universe
promised me
tranquility and love
in yesterday’s tomorrow.
Sometimes you just have to chuckle when an idea pops into your head. Like when you’re walking down the street and you see someone with neon purple hair, and then two blocks later, someone with a fushia head! Perfect for a One Sentence Poem!
Reptilian Style
Like a chameleon,
she changed the color of her hair
to blend in with the new décor.
Before my rejuvenatement, I was crazed in an all-consuming job — well, being honest — I let it be all-consuming. I used to blame caffeine for my hyper and frenzied approach to life.
So here I am, drinking the same amount of coffee, savoring it rather than gulping it, and mea culpa to the goddess caffeine. Slowing down, my body – not my mind, has made all the difference.
Mornings at Sixty-Seven
Eyes open unbuzzed awake
see him next to me half-covered
grey hair matted with sleep.
Legs stretch with pointed toes
while arms uncoil overhead
the body lumbers out of bed.
Breakfast made and savored
rich aromatic espresso beans
fingers smudged tasting newsprint ink.
At sixty-seven,
my mornings have elongated
into the sublime.
Have you ever just escaped the craziness of the world by tent camping? It makes you realize how little we really need to be happy.
All We Need
We travel at a hurried pace
away from a stoplight-elevator-world
toward those long-planned
six nights and days.
The tread wheel flattens
heart rates slow
as the green meadow comes into view
scattered clumps of butter-cups and violets.
Personnas molted, we sit
and breathe deeply
the kind of gut-breaths
that expand the good parts of your brain.
Coffee gurgles over the fire
lit by one match
branches, twigs and
scraps of yesterday’s paper.
The one we quickly scanned
standing up at the glass table
gulping from mugs
with ergonomic handles.
With long swishing swallows
of aromatic elixir
we watch our six day world
through the thick mesh of a tent flap.
Rain starts to fall
quietly in that all day soaking way –
so we laugh
and clink our tin cups together.
Have you read About me yet?
So here I am, comin’ round the bend in my stages of life. And it occurs to me, there’s a reason why I bought a refrigerator magnet that says Do More of What Makes You Happy. Do you do that? Guess what I choose in the poem below.
The Next Stage
A tectonic shift in life occurs
racing to the next mile marker.
Youth and middle age behind,
we peer
beyond the line.
This time
we will choose.
We’ve earned that right.
Read carefully
and then apply.
Wrinkle-free?
Slap on an age-defying
mystical cream
or pull on press-free
dungarees and tee.
Duty-free?
Must have
a tax-free everything-watch
or toss off the Timex and live,
task-free with exuberant flair.
Have you ever been asked to “define” yourself?
In Holly Wren Spaulding’s poetry class, we were asked to write a Self-Portrait Poem. That seems a bit softer, less in-your-face and serious than “defining” myself.
By way of explanation, I took dance lessons from age 4 to 17 with Miss Edith Tewes in Waukegan, Illinois. She was one tough lady and for a long time I fancied myself a budding Rockette. Photo is me in one of the many Boston rehearsals mentioned below.
Self-Portrait: Dancer Down
There it was. Audition.
Wanted: 100 dancers
for three months prep to perform
in Boston’s Copley Square.
No experience required.
I did this twenty years ago –
in Iowa.
Ninety-nine hoofer-wanna-bes
plus Gene Kelly and me.
Thousands saw me
in the big-ten half-time show
or took a trip for hotdogs
and the john.
So I did it. Again.
Ninety-nine plus me
two nights every week.
Loud fast rehearsals
with slow
every day
repeats
at home
to video
online.
I should have known.
I was twenty years older
not newer.
One month to go.
On burgundy shag carpet
right-turn-slide-spin.
Then on wooden
unforgiving studio floor.
Five-six-seven-eight……
Crap.……dancer down.
Legs sagged. Muscles be damned.
Relegated to rice.
Rest-Ice-Compression-and-
– – oh hell,
I forget what the E stands for.
I’ve always loved the sound of rain.
My most vivid memory is from the first years of our marriage, when we went camping in the woods near Lake Superior in our old canvas tent. The kind where you couldn’t touch the canvas “walls” or they’d “bleed” — meaning the rain would seep in. So you had to center yourselves — which somehow is really what the rain seemed to do.
We’d fall asleep quietly, just listening to the rain. Have you ever done that?
Rain Song
Plop
patter
ping
slow steady
nocturnal rain
tapping on the yellow-green ceiling
of my ancient canvas tent.
Comfort seeps in
as I burrow deep
in my cocoon zippered bag,
crisp cold nose
just outside the seam.
Lids shutter
slowly
to listen as thoughts float
in a cool haze.
A hooting owl sits sheltered
beneath spring’s green-yellow canopy
the drip
drop
patter
plops above his feathered head.
Dreaming now, I see
a moon sliver guide me
to a moment of clarity.
These rain notes
are nature’s evensong:
a prayer for all who sleep
in this forested place.
If you haven’t read my About, now would be a good time. Looking at this post, it seems to fit with who I am quite well.
Pollyanna
She was called a pollyanna.
Positive exclamation addicted
she high-stepped and varied her pace
through life’s shifting textures.
Retrieving sea glass and a scallop-cut piece of shell
from the day’s foam ruffled waves
at the edge of iridescent aquamarine.
She lived as a greeter.
Always expectant, rounding each corner
to meet until-now unfound friends or catch
a coin’s shiny glint from the sidewalk’s crevasse.
A collector too, she gathered smiles as she
walked past and sometimes toward faces
moving to their meeting places for the day.
She said regrets lead backward.
Ruminations rehash long ago or too current
memories looking for what-ifs and what-thens
not in her mind the stuff of collectibles.
She chose to live today
and dream tomorrow
always loving forward.
This was written in response to a poetry class writing prompt: think about your regrets. I sat down with my journal, a morning cup of coffee, and began to “spill” on the page. Thoughts, not coffee. And then I stopped. Not fun. And it wasn’t me. So I started again and out came Pollyanna. Have you heard the term? I can define it by something my daughter once said to me, Mom, every movie can’t be The Sound of Music!!!
The picture is from Provincetown, MA, many years ago. It just seems to fit with this post, right? Besides, sunflowers always make me smile.
And so it begins today.
Rejuvenatement, not retirement.
Poetry, my voice from within, now has the time and the space.
I’ve always found the sounds and sights of the ocean mesmerizing.
My spouse of 45 years and I spend two weeks every year in Provincetown, MA, the very tip of Cape Cod. Many have found the magic of this place as their muse: playwrights Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams; Pulitzer Prize winners Norman Mailer (author) and Mary Oliver (poet).
Glisten
Our footprints disappeared
in the cool damp sand ridges,
walking farther and farther
into the wetness of low tide.
Heads bowed, we shaded our
eyes from the sun’s glare,
the glisten it created as the water
deepened in the distance.
We shared our solitude
quietly grateful
we chose the off-season
to rediscover our togetherness.
lillian the home poet 