Hidden Things
Yesterday, among the zucchini leaves, I found a large zuke, as long as my forearm, lying in the dirt under a yellowing leaf. It had been there a while. There were pale scallop-edged patches where voles had gnawed through the skin. I had no idea it was there, and it felt like discovering a mysterious treasure.
So, write about something that has been hidden, but emerges–an object, a feeling, a person.
Today, walking to a meeting on campus, I heard a ruckus of cranes, but looked up and saw only blue sky. I waited, and one V after another crested the hill. I hollered, “Wrong way! Go back!” as if that could stem the inevitable pull of dwindling light and creeping chill that is drawing them south. As I walked by each building on campus, I saw small groups of people standing there, looking up, awed by the force of their collective calls, and each longing to reverse the day and leap back through time to spring.
So write about a sound you’ve heard that let you know something was about to change. Or about a good-bye that was somehow mixed with a natural event, such as the southern migration of sandhill cranes.
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This is from Cast of Thousands by way of Glow:
the night she left me
August fireflies lay in the dew
too cold and heavy to fly,
scattered like sparks from a fire
in the damp grass.
they lay glowing,
pulsing with light,
piteously sending love signals
to each other
but none could fly.
i assume their tiny insect hearts swelled
their fiery fly emotions surged
hopelessly mired
in wet, chill desire.
i watched her headlights
fill the night, then vanish
as she turned the corner.
the dark rolled around me
while tiny desperate lights
blinked and blinked and blinked.
Bigger on the Inside than on the Outside
In the series Dr. Who, the Tardis, basically an old fashioned phone booth, contains all The Doctor needs for space travel, and is bigger on the inside than on the outside. I’ve been thinking of this phenomenon with the death of a friend, Roy Bird, who was large on the outside, but whose heart, mind, and spirit were far larger–truly bigger on the inside! And today, a friend, a talented teacher, expressed a sense of dread at the coming semester–something her students will never guess. And think of all those seeds we planted in the spring–now huge zucchini or tomato plants–they must have been bigger on the inside.
So what else is bigger on the inside than on the outside? What “stuff”–objects, gestures, sounds, smells, colors, textures, etc. indicate this? Post your poem or reflections as a comment, and I’ll add it to this post.
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Here’s a poem from Fiddlesticks the Defenestrator:
I loose the chickens from their coop,
They scamper hither and yon.
Strutting up and down the yard,
To welcome back the dawn.
A little boy comes running
Chasing chickens to and fro.
Youthful energy knows no bounds
Till children start to grow.
The energy inside this boy
Is more than one expects.
He’s everywhere at once
Much like flying winged insects.
His older sister sits nearby;
She’s six–a two-year gap.
She sits quite still as one small chick
Climbs up into her lap.
A heart that couldn’t ever seem
To fit in one small child
Guides the hand to stroke the head
Of the chicken, sitting, mild.
A boy and girl who couldn’t stand
Much over three feet tall,
With insides greater than one could see
If he’s paying attention at all.
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Kids Writing
Today is the first day of the Alaska Summer Research Academy, which started as a science camp for grades 7-11 and has now expanded into the arts. My friend Terry and I will be doing the Creative Writing module—this will be my third summer working with the Academy.
So, here’s our introductory prompt—which I learned from Derick Burleson: Write four lies and one true thing. We’ll be making a group poem of lies, etc. For you, however, find a way to weave the lies into the poem so that they reveal something about the true thing. Be sure you write the lies first—and put them aside for a while so that they surprise you when you encounter them again to finish this prompt.
Post your poem as a comment and I’ll add them to this post—and maybe some of the campers’ responses.
As I sit and write this, the temperature in the house is 80 degrees, though the air outside, in the lavender light of July nights in the Interior, is cooling to 70 or so. When I opened the cover of the laptop, it was cool to the touch, which got me thinking about temperature and all the ways it affects us–overtly and subtlely.
So, notice that part of your sense of touch that records temperature–walking through grass barefoot, for example, the hidden coolness beneath the blades while the sun on your head is simmering hot. Or the warmth of a horse’s sides, or the chill of a dog’s nose when you’re least expecting it.
Write something that includes experiencing temperature in a way that surprises you.
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I forgot to add this from Glow. Here it is:
We have lived together for 18 years
yet we continually argue about
the desired chair.
I’m the person, I bought the chair.
He’s the cat, he owns the chair.
I get up to get tea, gone momentarily
return to find orange fur snoring in my spot.
He gets up to sip water, snack a bit
returns to find the chair is claimed.
We’re both in it for the heat.
He’s crass about seeking my body heat,
blatant in his desire for my warmth,
eager to notice opportunities when
I vacate the desired chair.
Lately, I notice he makes up reasons
for me to leave the chair.
The water bowl in the kitchen has a fleck of dirt,
meow, meow, must be rectified at once.
The water bowl on the counter is 1/4 inch low,
meow, meow, must be filled at once.
The silver is showing in the bottom of the cat food bowl.
A true emergency worthy of caterwauling.
I understand that I’m being exploited,
but he’s my 18 year old kitty
so I get up to fulfill his needs,
be a good cat mama,
and come back to my chair to find it occupied.
He’s snuggled in my warmth,
innocence woven through his whiskery grin.
Of course, our relationship is not one-sided.
I admit that my feet are often cold
and in winter I slip them under him as he snoozes
knowing his orange fur channels the warmth of the sun.
Sometimes I have been known to move him,
ever so slightly,
so that I may lay my head upon a warm furry pillow
instead of the shocking cold one.
Occasionally, we compromise and we share the chair,
or we sleep head beside head and act as each other’s bedcap.
We hum in our sleep in rhythms established over 18 years
dreaming together of our years in the hot of the south
and the dreary cold of the north.
In his sleep, he stretches one orange paw and sets his claw
just so on my cheek.
His breath warm, in and out, in and out,
tickles the chill bumps on my arm.
He is 18. I save all of the cast off whiskers I find,
knowing there won’t be many left.
I will place each whisker in a row upon the desired chair
once he goes
and will set fire to it.
with him gone,
the chair will never be warm enough for me again.
Rain after Solstice
Just at the time when we have the most sunlight here and the garden is growing towards our first harvest, we get rain, a slow pattering that lasts all day and filters the light to a day-long dusk. We are happy our gardens are watered, but it’s not what we expected.
So, write about a day, a moment, a conversation that takes an unexpected turn. And be sure to add in the weather.
Solstice
As the days here lengthen to an extreme, each hour of the day has a different kind of light, from the brilliant light of mid-day to the pastel and silver light of the long dusky evenings.
Write a poem starting with some effect of light you notice right now where you are. Notice how light affects the plants and rocks and clouds. How does it affect animals, people, you? And what else?
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Here’s a response from Glow at Beyond Ester:
the mercury light
keeps me awake since May.
Much happens at night that I witness.
All other humans sleep
but the devil light keeps sleep at bay
so I become Witness of What Occurs
cats, drowse all night
dogs snore and twitch
voles slither among the weeds
male moose, pale brown withers
slinks through the willows
mistaken for a grizzly
until his antlers startle recognition.
mama moose and 3 week calf
slumbering among the bluebells
even the dogs missed them
I, alone, witnessed the fidgeting nursing
the aggressive butting of the calf to its mom’s teats
the mercury light warming towards dawn
to leak goldeness on the calf so that she shone
like an angel
raven swooped low to snatch a young squirrel
still living, unaware of impending doom
its tail still curled, but fruitless now
mosquito, after mosquito, after mosquito
snared in the window spider’s web
reduced to dry shells within seconds
after their twitching ends.
Life, birth, death, bones, dust.
Summer light arrives, soon to leave us
aching for more time
aching for less light
fruitless wishes. Predictable humans
with their love of warmth, but
need for the dark.
The Lives of Plants
Here in the Interior, garden planting is going on with great frenzy. A fellow poet, Derek Burleson, is posting lists of plants he’s putting in his garden on his Facebook page—every day a new list: violas, zucchini, Early Girl, etc. So, start with a list of interesting plant names, then work them into a poem. But, let the poem drift away from plants to something else—a memory, a longing, a satisfaction, a dream.
(Thanks for the idea, Derek!)
Starting with A
This morning I heard an interview on the radio with Robert Manson Myers, who just published a book of poems in which every word starts with the letter A. I loved listening to the interview. Meyers, in his 80s, has the tweedy, leather-elbow-patch voice of some of my old English professors long ago, a kind of wry Mr. Chips humor. The poems are a long-running entertainment he’s been writing for years and is now sharing with us.
So here’s the challenge—-pick a letter and write a poem that uses that letter. You don’t have to keep to Meyers’ strict rules and use every word, but set a pattern—-start every line or every other word with the letter. Be careful—-some letters are more useful than others, as every Scrabble player knows.
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Thanks, again, to Glow, our most intrepid challenge taker:
mosquitoes mob me
merciless, meandering,
mincing, miming meanness
my most mad moments
made merely moot
mindlessless morphed into meaningless
Red and other colors
In the Master Gardener class, we learned that the color red promotes flower and bud growth. Who knows what other colors might promote. Write a poem that turns on a color. Start the poem and let it crank along until you and the reader are surprised by the appearance of a color.
Mattie's Pillow 