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.
Things that go fast
Suggested by Glow: Write about things in motion–horses, melting ice, the wind, a spring day. Slow down your (and the reader’s) perceptions of these things by paying attention to details, using all the senses. Dwell in the contrast between the things that go fast and the slow recollection of them in the poem.
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“No One Important” sent this:
Wind whistles down the shaft
As the arrow speeds toward its target.
The twang of the bowstring
Echoes after it
But the arrow speeds on
Leaving the sound behind
In its wake of misplaced air.
The arrow spins faster than the archer’s eye can follow
Blurring the arrowhead and the fletching.
It slices through the air
Aim pointing truly at its target,
A sudden gust of wind brushes it.
The arrow doesn’t stop until–
Thud!
Sound catches up to the arrow,
Which is planted solidly…
Outside the painted bullseye.
“Damn it! I missed AGAIN!”
Small Chores
Our lives are full of small maintenance tasks that we do without thinking about them much. These tasks–brushing teeth, washing clothes or dishes, cooking–form a framework that the other “meaningful” activities we do can be built on. If we rush past one of these tasks and forget it, things seem out of kilter.
For example, today I had a routine visit from my farrier, Tom, to trim Mattie and Sam’s hooves. Standing there holding the horse while Tom trims and rasps, I notice how each visit marks the passage of time–today we stood in soft mud; last time it was 10 below–and how the horses relax into the moment, as if they know we are tending their welfare. For a few moments, they and we have the sense that all’s right with the world.
Write about a small maintenance task, the objects involved, the textures, smells, shapes, etc. Don’t worry about the big picture. It’s always there in how we do small things.
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Response from Glow:
Toklas
no question
over 6 years
8:00 AM, 8:00 PM
insulin shots for the cat
4389 times in 12-hour spaces
rhythms our lives settle between.
On this rhythm our careers were cobbled
patchwork research, loving, cooking conducted
travel parceled out among one of us at a time
tenure built and won while one of us ensured insulin
documentary film created while one of us measured glucose
trips to the vet, crisis consultatons, kindness doled out
litter boxes organized, filled, emptied, a kind of skill
meanwhile dinners fixed, lunches packed
love made, showers taken, groceries
alloted among shelves packed with
cat supplies, needles, bottles
special canned food, best dry
new small round dishes
flowers, fruit, leaves
best size for bites
of tempting treats
designed to lull
diabetes to
sleep
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Here’s my response to this prompt:
Opening the Greenhouse
Last summer’s tomatoes
pale as skeletons,
brittle leaves:
lace handkerchiefs dangle
from bony fingers.
My fingers itch
for dirt. I tug the stems
pull the dead roots
from last year’s soil,
these plants I tended
each day, wept
to give over to frost.
I tip the planters
so dirt piles
in a plastic bin;
stack them to be washed
and the vines to compost.
I sweep the wooden bench
of dirt and leaves
where the plastic flats
hold new tomatoes,
inches high, stretching
for sun.
Now that spring is on its way here in the Interior, we’re watching for little changes that mean we’re really done with winter. Willow buds puff out into pussywillows; low spots in the road fill with water during the warm parts of the day; geese, cranes, and ducks flock in to feed and rest on Creamer’s Field, then straggle north to breed. The big, unmistakable change will be when the ice goes out on the river in Nenana and we learn who had the best guess–and a little more spending money for summer projects.
So write about the small changes that happen where you are that signify a larger change. It doesn’t have to be about spring, or not just about spring. Focus on the little things and let us read through to the big ones.
Memory
I think there’s an equation between memory and imagination. The more detailed our memory, the more imagination we use to supply that detail, which in turn allows us to invent poems or stories that are grounded in authentic detail. Both memory and imagination use the same areas of the mind.
So, pick a detail from an early memory. Enter into the memory of the detail, remembering with all five senses. Write about it without explaining or filling in what you now know.
Here’s a memory from Glow:
blue, red, and yellow birds
circled around my head
wingless endless loops
dipping soaring floating
tinkling in the breeze
from the overhead fan
flies, dazed with heat,
panted and crawled on the birds
my discovery of my toes and fingers
amazing to my eyes bleary from floaters
lilac so sweet floated among
smells of chicken frying
in the kitchen.
Black arms, hands with pink insides
pick me up, pet my parchment white skin,
cherry chocolate lips sing me ancient lullabies
lulling me with words about
birds and true love
and whispers of revolution.
The Moon as Food
Tonight, the moon was first the color of orange sherbet, then crème brulee. It occurs to me that I often think of the moon in terms of food. What things that are not food do you think of in metaphors of food? Write about an object, an experience, a feeling and let food–such as strawberries, eggs, romaine lettuce–creep to the poem.
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Here are two responses from Glow, who loves food, dogs, kitties:
my fiddle teacher brings her dogs to her studio
one of them sighs when my bow screeches
the lemon sounds pucker her patience
she sighs and leaves the room
I have progressed over the weeks
now my bowing is less like sour lemons,
more like olives, heavy ripe, still tangy, often bitter
I have tried to sweeten my sounds
tried to avoid making the dog sigh
desperate for canine approval, or at least not canine rejection
I cooked up a new idea:
treats hidden among my music.
both dogs now lay unsquirming at my feet
seemingly eating up the lemon sounds
understanding that each squirt of screech
is rewarded by a stealthy tasty bit
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many orange cats
have woven and spun through my life
all but one of them male
many had food names
pumpkin for his roundness
persimmon, discovered in persimmon season
among ripe fly buzzing fruits scattered around him
sherbert, or bert for short, creamsickle color
orangeaid, a neighbor cat who stayed with us a year
then disappeared, only to reappear three years later
with one less ear
toklas, the subject of Stein’s lifting belly
sunny, a pool of orange sunshine and sunny disposition,
a melted puddle of frozen orange juice
hesitation named for the hestitation waltz,
the way he approached his food
that had to be placed under the bed
he was so freaked out by the LSD
previous owners had given him
And the one female orange kitty
no food name,
but named for joy and elation like food:
Jubilee.
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My try at this one:
Waiting for rivers’
crack and slide, ice crashing
along banks, grinding
small rocks smaller,
the flat slabs
cutting the spring air
like slow sails, picking
up speed as dark water
seeps up, trickles, gushes.
Now, the ice, flat,
as birthday cake
a child has poked
a finger into here and there;
a few people wander the surface
or lean over holes, dangling
line, peering through slush
for the ripple of fins,
the dark running current.
The sun.
The bright gleam.
The waiting willows.
Memory of green things.
Mattie's Pillow 