Tag Archives: NaPoWriMo 2017

Following: NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 13

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The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a ghazal. A ghazal is formed of couplets, each of which is its own complete statement. Both lines of the first couplet end with the same end-word, and that end-word is also repeated at the end of each couplet.

daily life color242My sisters and I. Strangely enough, there is not one photo of my mother and father and the three of us girls together. The only family photo ever taken was before I was born.


Following

 The youngest of three, every day down unpaved roads, I tracked my sisters’ footprints.
Nancy Drew wannabe, who needed  fingerprints when I could read their footprints?

My mother’s closet a treasure trove, hidden wonders lay obscured on the tallest shelves.
I fanned her dresses with my fingers, slipped into red high-heels that bore her footprints.

Careful where you walk, my father warned, parting tall grass near the homestead ruins.
Fearful of snakes, I fit my own feet to matted grass that marked my father’s footprints.

That frightening choice of colleges facing me, I knew no other way to decide
than to go where she’d gone, and follow in my sister’s footprints.

The obligation of college over with no more paths worn by other feet to follow,
I chose  Australia, Indonesia and then Africa––following imagination’s footprints.

My niece’s teeth clamped to the old saxophone as its mouthpiece snapped in two,
worn by each of the girls in our family and then by her, as she followed in our footprints.

Untold Stories

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Untold Stories

When her death left us all behind,
so many questions came to mind.
Why couldn’t I have asked them when
she could have answered, way back then?
What she told voluntarily,
about her life and family tree
was always very carefully chosen—
the details all rehearsed and frozen.

The same stories she told over again
about the things that once had been,
but so many things she didn’t say,
afraid, perhaps, she might display
sad facts of life she always hid—
the underside that she forbid.
We would laugh and joke and kid.
Unpleasantness we never did.

She was a good mother. Supportive, kind,
always helpful in a bind.
Generous and always there.
Full of loving, thoughtful care—
that same care that I tried to show her,
although, I fear, I did not know her.
That little girl who lost her dad
and favorite sister.  Was she sad?

Mom never talked of it so we
simply let the subject be.
The stepfather she didn’t care for—
what were the details and the wherefore?
How did it feel to give her hand
to a stranger, then to move to land
so bare and rolling with grass like seas,
empty of people and of trees?

Was she lonely? Did she have friends?
How did they come to make amends
the time she left my father and
took my sister by the hand
and went on home, angry and bitter.
Did my father come to get her?
All these family stories bold
were hinted at but never told.

My mother’s foolish Southern pride
would not permit the underside
of life to show. She tucked it in—
to display unhappiness was sin.
To please her, we followed the rules.
Joking and kidding were the tools
we used to hide unpleasantness
and thereby circumvent the mess

of sadness and humiliation.
Easier to show elation.
We told our secrets to friends, but we
withheld them from our family.
What stories took they to the grave,
my parents, generous and brave?
All those things they thought to spare us
come about to greet and stare us

in the eye on occasions when
we reminisce about back then.
“I  wonder what?” is perpetually
my thought about my family.
With parents gone, I don’t know how
we’ll ever know the answers now.
And because I barely knew my mother,
I am still looking for another.

 

 

The Day 10 NaPoWriMo prompt—yes, two days late—was to write a poem that is a portrait of someone important to you. The WordPress prompt was “pleased.”

Morning Matins, NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 12

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full moon morning 2 jdbphoto2017

 

Morning Matins

Cuddled and chirruping, choirs of birds
trill from their tree limbs in boisterous herds.
Like broken crystals, they tinkle in showers,
cacophonous clashings from high hidden bowers.
We cannot see these hermits in their hiding.
Until the sun rises, they will not be gliding
smoothly on air currents, sliding and slipping,
deft and most daring while doing their dipping.

Now a clashed chirping, like the chipping of ice.
The cooing of doves and a rooster crows twice.
The masked moon is waning, obscured by the light
as the first rays of day do away with the night.
Then the wrens take to wing and the grackles glide in.
Flycatchers and orioles desert where they’ve been.
They make their curtain calls, then spread their wings
in pursuit of their breakfasts and other bird things.

vermillion flycatcher jdbphoto2017

Being a night owl, I am so rarely up at 5 in the morning that it has been years since I’ve experienced the awakening of birds in the full moonlight before the sun has yet come out.  It was like a concert listening to birds awakening, still obscured by darkness and their sanctuaries of trees.

The NaPoWrMo prompt for day 12 was to use alliteration and assonance in a poem.

4 A.M. (NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 12)

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full moon morning, jdbphoto2017

4 A.M.

It is too early to be stirring, the world is still asleep.
The sound is all still slumbering, the darkness is too deep.
No dayness stirs the nightness. No touch is reaching out.
No stirring and no blowing. Not a whisper. Not a shout.
When I wake before the world does, it seems the end of things
instead of the beginning, when the whole world sings.
Sun rises and the birds demand. The dogs whine for their feed.
All the world around me awakens to its need.
But for now, they are all sleeping. It is a lifeless world.
Its eyes and ears and mouth closed, around me densely curled.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to use alliteration. This is quiet alliteration, like the poem.  Not too much.  Just a touch!

Racing Man

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Version 2

Racing Man

I’ve parked you in my dreams
where you sit sputtering,
engine racing,
ready to be off
over the next hill
as always, reaching to release the parking brake,
adjusting the seat back,
never noticing the rear-vision mirror
is slightly off-kilter.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a poem that is a portrait of someone important to you.

The Wheel: NaPoWriMo Repetition Poem, WP Daily Prompt

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jdbphoto

The (Wh)eel

We sail through life on an even keel,
solving every small ordeal
until one day, it turns surreal
as death slides in like a slippery eel,
our place in nature to firmly seal,
our invulnerability to steal.

It’s true these thoughts were never real,
but still, we feel what we must feel.
In youth, our lives are stainless steel,
Our pains are solved, our wounds all heal.
Then death slips in like a slippery eel—
gives no second chances. Does not deal.

A carnival barker with his spiel,
death lures us with unfettered zeal,
to spin us on the ferris wheel—
all our accomplishments to peel
and all our woe and all our weal
to cast from us, reel after reel.

On a ride that nothing can repeal,
it’s our turn to be nature’s meal.
The surreal now becomes the real,
and we join the universe’s wheel.
The organs keen, the bells all peal
as death slides in like a slippery eel.

 

jdbphoto

The WP Prompt today is “heal,” and the NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem that depends on repetition.

NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 7 and WP Daily Prompt: Outlier

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Outlier

Born to privilege, propelled to fame.
Everybody knew her name.
Medals and trophies filled her shelves.
Her friends regretted they were themselves,
not wanting to be who they were,
wanting to be just like her—
noted for her style and grace—
slim of figure, fair of face.

Yet all her silver, all her gold
could not dispel the biting cold
of her mother’s distant smile.
She could not purchase or beguile
or win that thing that she most wanted.
With craving it, her dreams were haunted.
The lack of it cut like a knife.
She could not win her father’s wife.

 

For NaPoWriMo, the prompt today is to write a poem about luck or fortune. For WordPress, it is “outlier.”

There’s No Denying Nature, Daily Post Apr 6 and NaPoWriMo Day 5

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IMG_3411

There’s No Denying Nature

There’s no denying nature, it surrounds us one and all.
Each time the palm tree shudders and its blossoms start to fall,
they cloak the water of my pool and cover every stone
that paves my outer terrace as though they must atone

for some ill that must be covered up, some sin they’re meant to hide.
It cannot be I who have erred, for I am safe inside.
Yet who am I, denying these early April showers?
I come to float upon my back, surrounded by the flowers.

Though they might create problems with the pool drain and the filter,
throwing all our man-made systems more or less off-kilter,
yet each year I must admit I suffer a few qualms
as I call the men to come and trim the refuse from the palms.

There’s no denying nature, be it human or a tree.
Each day as I look up at them, they, too, look down on me.
They see my foibles and excesses—the errors I have sown
And like forgiving neighbors, cloak my messes with their own.

 

IMG_3410

The WordPress prompt today is “denial.” I’m also combining it with the NaPoWriMo prompt for April 4.  That prompt is: a slice of the natural world that you have personally experienced and optimally, one that you have experienced often.

NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 6 Capital Punishment

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Capital Punishment

She fancies herself a raconteur while others find her boring.
Just when they should be laughing, too often they are snoring.

The topics that she chooses are usually wrong,
and the details she finds scintillating just strung out too long.

When she speaks in public, the chairs empty out fast.
Even sell-out audiences simply do not last.

She could have done much better if she’d studied elocution,
As it is, her listeners vote for electrocution.

 

Prompt: write a poem that looks at the same thing from various points of view. http://www.napowrimo.net/day-six-5/

NaPoWriMo Day 4, 2017: Number 9 Blues

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Number 9 Blues

Those eyes,
that song,
a bird the color
of the moon
we met under.

The wind
a ribbon of sadness.
Cold hands,
broken heart—
all the hue
of a trumpet’s lonely staccato.

http://www.napowrimo.net/day-four-5/ The prompt was to write an enigma poem.  Every line in this poem has something in common. Up to you to make the connection.