Category: New Poem for April

Sonnet for Grieving

 

Yesterday is not the day that we count,

Even though it’s a record for our keeping.

All we have lost is now in that drawer.

We hold it tight because it’s all we have.

 

We pull drawers open, remembering.

We are afraid that if we do not look,

Then we will forget and never come back.

Everything will be gone and we’ll be lost.

 

Annie was my first family member

To die. It was time and my father cried.

What drawer did he pull open to look?

Did he see Annie’s sister, his mother?

 

Dad, home from school, found his mom’s suicide.

What’s in that drawer? Pull but don’t confide.

 

 

 

 

 

How am I doing? I assigned myself a job to write a poem a day during the month of April. It’s a month to celebrate poetry, to celebrate the art and the artists. My chosen goal was to create material for a themed Chapbook on aging.

I fell behind on Day 2. Not a great beginning for a big plan. But, most poems aren’t created on a conveyor-belt plan. There are long stretches of empty belt.

Today is Day 20. I have written thirteen poems in rough draft form. I’m behind my daily goal, but I’ve written far more often than I have in the past. For me, I count my goal as actually working for me. Today’s poem was inspired by something that I read. Too many times, the gnawing need for perfection has stopped me. For me, I would read today, without a second thought, a pioneer’s experience recounted in a daily journal. Wagon ruts and broken pencil tips be damned. The perfect does not interest me. My sister found a handwritten recipe in a book for plum pudding that our mother wrote on a scrap of paper. Its value goes beyond any publishing editor’s evaluation for a proper printing. That’s one of my poems.

And so, my themed Chapbook writings go on. Unplanned and raw– and ready for revision.

For Poetry Appreciation Month of April, I’m taking on a writing challenge to write a new poem every day for a themed Chapbook. For me it’s like rock climbing without pitons or a rope. I have no partner to shout, “On belay”, giving me confidence to step out onto a rock face. And so, I take the leap with my first poem. I will publish two poems here for each week of April–Tuesdays and Fridays.

Not So Neat and Clean

 

Just when I think that

I have everything under

Control, I’m brought back

To facing my own smugness.

 

What I don’t know would fill

Titanic with even more sorrow.

 

End of life

Decisions

Are final.

 

The end begins

Somewhere near us

Like some random

Snail deciding to

Cross a busy highway.

 

Willow tree bark drops

From a barren branch.

 

A leaf decides to go.

 

With a two-day life span, the

May fly can’t waste a minute.

 

And so, it happens.

 

 

Seeing my dog

Slowly dying

On wobbling legs

I drove to the vet

And made a date

For her to die.

 

Hearing the garage door

Opening, she burst through

The side door from the house

Into the garage with wagging

Tail to welcome me home.

 

I still remember

Five years later

 

Her moment of joy–

My moment of sitting

On the Titanic deck chair,

Two miles below the surface.