It's Poetry Month Again!

I'm getting off to a slow start with the poem-a-day for April, but I read my friend Vince Gotera's poem for today on his blog, http://vincegotera.blogspot.com/, written in response to a suggestion from Maureen Thorson at http://www.napowrimo.net/2012/04/day-six/ to write a poem about an animal. You should definitely check out Vince's poem! He's inspired me to write a poem about a squirrel too, but for now, here's one about a bird, and other things associated with this time of year:

THINNING

Imagine this: you kneel in dirt

littered with yellow blossoms,

a delicate carpet fallen from heaven

and high in that heaven of palo verde branches

cactus wrens have built their nests, two kinds,

those they use and those that serve as decoys,

built to trick the eaters of their young.  

You’ve watched them bring food to their young

as you hung your laundry and weeded your lettuce.

Today you are thinning beets,

your sensitive fingers move among the thin red stems,

easing the crowding with gentle tugs, wasting nothing.

Today’s thinnings will be on tonight’s table.

It is a peaceful, meditative occupation.

A few yellow blossoms drift down

onto your shoulders, into your hair.

Then suddenly you find, between the rows of baby beets,

 a baby cactus wren,

round and soft and dead, fallen from heaven,

and again you think, why do they build up there?

It is so high. The babies fall so far.

Every spring you find some in the garden

and wonder how any survive.

But of course they do.

The mornings are filled with their squawking.

This one’s feathers already show

the characteristic markings.           

Your fingers move around it, continuing their work,

and you who are not really thinking at all—

that’s why you come to the garden partly, to not think—

you muse on flesh enriching the soil,

and let it lie there. 

You forget, until one foot with thin exquisite claws

catches around your smallest finger

and you lift your hand amazed. 

The bird hangs like a pendant,

round and soft on one side,

eaten away to bones on the other.

The tiny decomposers have been busy.

It is dry and weightless, with bones like thin silver wire.

You shake it loose from your finger,

drop it a few feet away, onto bare ground.

Finished with the beets, you take the thinnings—

their fine red stems like veins,

their threadlike roots, their small and tender leaves, 

into the kitchen, then go back out to plant herbs.

You dig one hole deeper than the rest,

in good dirt, enriched with manure and compost,

and bury the little bird under the parsley.

The big palo verde tree that towers over our house and part of the garden.

A Poem a Day for April

April is National Poetry Month and my friend Vince Gotera (see his very cool blog at http://vincegotera.blogspot.com/ ) turned me on to Robert Lee Brewer's blog "Poetic Asides," http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/, where Brewer is posting a prompt each day so that those of us who choose to (and I think it's a great idea) can get some help warming up and flexing our literary muscles. This is my poem for yesterday, April 3;  the prompt was to imagine a world without you.

A World without Me

In a world where I was never born,

for starters, my parents would not have needed a babysitter,

my father, who would not be my father after all,

untempted by her sweet pink Barbiedoll flesh,
might have stayed married to

my mother, who was not my mother but might have been,

The world would be missing a few more people too,

not just the babysitter’s child, my unacknowledged sister.

If I hadn’t been I would never have been sixteen,

or had a boyfriend, so the I who did not exist

would not have seen him drive past the picnic area at the lake

with another girl, on their way to a wedding where he was an usher

and she a bridesmaid, and that non-existent girl who didn’t see them

would not have thrown his class ring into the lake

--or had it to throw--

or flipped him off and thrown the ring in his face when he came back

(her best friend’s little brother having dived in and recovered it),

he would not have sought comfort in the arms of the minister’s

daughter, and she would not have gotten pregnant,
not just then, anyway, and

they would not have gotten married and had four children altogether.

He would not have left her after the second one to try going back

to the me who never was and, failing that,

returned to her and had two more.

Later they who were not they

but strangers who perhaps would never meet

would not have bought the market where he worked

or introduced natural foods and better wine

to that corner of Idaho, and so it would have remained

a far less civilized place without me,

as would some other places, perhaps,

though by then I, even if I had existed,

would have been long gone. 

There are undoubtedly many other sites that offer writing prompts. Here are just a couple more:

     http://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises

from Poets and Writers Magazine will send you an email every week with a new poetry prompt and a new fiction prompt;

     

Toasted Cheese online literary journal and writing community, http://www.toasted-cheese.com, offers exercises, daily writing prompts, quarterly writing contests, and more.

As the KIngston Trio (I think) sang long ago, 

       

     You've got to prime the pump, 

     You must have faith and believe,

     You've got to give of yourself 

      'fore you're worthy to receive.

     Drink all the water you can hold, 

     wash your face to your feet.

     Leave the bottle full for others.

     Thank you kindly, Desert Pete

Maybe some of the prompts offered by the generous folks at these sites will offer what you need in order to prime your pump. Happy April!