Napowrimo - April 13

This prompt really works for me.
Look through your poem drafts, notes, and writing fragments. Choose one line that you like and refine it until it feels as complete and polished as one line out of context can be. Use that line as a refrain in a new poem. When you've completed a decent draft, try writing an additional draft of the poem without the line, using it instead as the title.

Below the three poems. The blog is not doing justice to line breaks, italics and all,
so if you really want to see this, email me: kjospe1@rochester.rr.com


First poem
**
Spruce boughs heave under the rain’s cold diamond spit
a few miles beyond the hum of the New York State Thruway
just at the edge of the fresh-skunk scent, under
a halo-sliver of moon in that moment between dog
and wolf when everything wild knows
I belong here, doing what I do
and if you hear it, you
too feel the web
of things.


Second poem
Even if the wind spits cold diamond edges of April sleet,
do not send back, dagger-dash knife-tongue.

The wind also sends kindness, like kisses.

And if the skunk leaves you a fresh-scent, and fleet-footed
deer have trampled your garden, remember the lily’s perfume

the wind sends to you, to wend your curses to kisses.

And if the moon seems cut to a sliver, greet the light
that day-wipes the stars, greet the clouds shrouding dawn

you know the wind will comes, like a kindness kisses.

**



3rd poem

The wind will come, like a kindness kisses

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.


The wind will,
as will does,
spins into comings,
goings.
We measure it in gusts,
lusty gales,
in breezes, soft as sheets billowing on laundry lines,
or stiff as the eager sail;

The wind will,
as abroholos on the coast of Brazil, or
as will does,
squall and scream,
suffer us to moan.

We measure it into rhythms
patterns of whistle,
gallop,
figures of flight,
rollings’ leap,

The wind will burn
as sirocco, tramontane, foehn or fén-fēng** (焚風 'burning wind')
as fire does,
Anemoi... to explain moods,
how the chords tighten in our throat
until Zephyros, gentlest god,
allows us to sing

and the song carries like a kindness kisses
unexpectedly,

the song presses into the wind,
like kindness,
kisses.

NaPoWriMo - April 11 -- Chary/Cherries

It's cold... but Spring... and I love that I sent Mark Strand's poem to my father in law (see below)
to which he replied: "Am struggling with "infinite"( strong quotation marks, comme des griffes), specifically in Jung. We shall eliminate this word from our language and find out if there is anything missing from what we want to say."

From Knopf today:

The below may not be a poem, but it is also not NOT a poem. It is typical of the work in Almost Invisible, a slim but significant book of playful creations from the pen of Mark Strand, whose whole career, in a way, has been an attempt to understand (or perhaps to refute!) "The Triumph of the Infinite."

The Triumph of the Infinite

I got up in the night and went to the end of the hall. Over the
door in large letters it said, "This is the next life. Please come
in." I opened the door. Across the room a bearded man in a
pale-green suit turned to me and said, "Better get ready, we're
taking the long way." "Now I'll wake up," I thought, but I was
wrong. We began our journey over golden tundra and patches
of ice. Then there was nothing for miles around, and all I could
hear was my heart pumping and pumping so hard I thought I
would die all over again.

**
My poem... What is "it" -- we say -- but where is the emphasis? WHAT is it? What IS it? What is IT
are three different sentences in English. What happens if you delete just one word? What if there were no "it" ? IT in its grandest meaning of what perhaps has been referred to, but can be so much more.

hmmmmmm. Hence my title.

Chary about It


The artist sketches lines
to test his memory: today cherries

pronounced cha –ar- ries
and he imagines the plump sweetness
hugged in taut skin, the pucker
on the tongue as purplish juice
blends with the flesh, and sun-ripe
perfume.

What does it mean to you, cherries?
WHAT does it mean
What DOES it mean
What does it MEAN
What does mean is missing it.

Just like the cherries are missing
the tree. The it of cycle: blossom,
leaf, fruit, followed by sleep
in bare branches of nubbled bark.

The artist is wearing a wool hat,
gloves that allow him to feel his pencil.
He draws branch bones whipped
by the wind— they’re flutter-filled bloom
after a snowless winter. But today,
it is cold enough to ice things over.
The cherries will be dear this year.

What do you notice?

WHAT do you,
What DO you,
What do YOU
What do you NOTice?

What does it mean to you?

Napowrimo day 10 -- Ghazal (Teal)

Today is a composite prompt... a monologue/ghazal/color prompt/forest/shade... which didn't exactly happen BECAUSE of the prompts -- but having skimmed quite a few poems and re-read the essay in which TS Eliot talks about "transforming" what we read, which has been coined as "great writers steal" (which is not quite what he said)... here is a draft.

I love the color teal -- love that it has a long history in different languages, although first used in earnest as color in 1917, and comes from a water-drake's eyes -- love that by saying teal-blue or teal green, it combines to be more of one than another... part of the prompt was to use the opposite association w/ the color -- so any mention of man-made fashion is completely out to dress "Spring"!
She has her own colors and sounds.

I'm not liking the way the blog is squishing my lines. I'm hoping that I fixed the settings...
A ghazal is in couplets. "teal" is the last word of the 2nd line. I did use a "takhallus" (pen name) which can be a nickname. In my case, my childhood nickname: Kit.
**

Spring

Teal I see you, teal, as if a lake contains you, teal—
not a banner nor the drake with eyes ringed with teal.

In morning, you mist into light, drizzle with rain,
reflecting in each drop light ringed with coral and teal.

You are free from, ice, alive in frog-dropped splash
peepers’ peel, robin call, a greenish symphony of sound and teal.

You are magic key lifting a fiddlehead ring, you are shake of blossom.
apple snow and cherry sweep, in a sky more azure than teal.

Ah how you stir the fox kit’s heart, as he leaves the birthing den
ready now to thread his long red tale through the woods dappled with teal.

Napowrimo - Day 9 -- Fiddlehead sighting!

Spring has taken a sharp blast back to gusting -- but there underfoot, in a bare patch free of the eagerness of weedy undergrowth, two ferns. One a perfectly smooth green ring -- as if ready for some wood fairy to pull it up, revealing some surprise. Who would guess in the curled up ball it will raise up, feathery fronds of fern will slowly unfurl and grow! I do hope they will seed and make more! The haiku: Fiddleheads! spring rings unwinding with no forethought-- be mindful of steps! ** There is no forethought, to quote Wendell Berry, OF GRIEF. It's not so much "be careful where you step" as be mindful of steps.

Napowrimo -- Day 8 : Serious/Sirius

Prompted by George Bilgere's poem, Robert Frost "posted in Writer's Almanac Googling Sirius I like that a star’s name can be confused with an adjective. How grateful we can be for google to tell us more about Sirius and serious. Finding out information about a dog star, allows the opening up of a can of new thoughts perhaps to share with a friend, or use to impress someone at work, or write into a poem to be sent out for publication, or rejection, considered along with the myriad poems filled with thoughts penned by other people who also have found new triggers thanks to the juggling of googled information. Seriously. Imagine if your calendar were based on the brief moment a star becomes visible above the horizon, in the case of Sirius which google suggests the Egyptians called Sopdet (and the Greeks called Sothis) and your local river flooded in conjunction with this star, you might feel Sirius is worth your attention. I know I won’t look at the horizon quite the same way at dawn, knowing now, thanks to Google, about heliacal rising where a star rises each day just a little higher, staying a little longer. If Sirius is at the root of those impossibly hot days of summer, prestilence, plague, not to mention wheat rust, the Dog Star and dog days take a serious bite into health and human welfare. Such information could prompt us to take some serious sacrifice – and pay attention to skies that are clear or misty... or go back to the idea of Σείριος (Seirios) as in "glowing" or "scorcher where star-struck is a malignant flaming up. Or simply, we can look at how human nature seriously defies change. Who shall we blame now when plants wilt, men weaken, etc, etc. Maybe serious.

O Pen : Poems for April 11

Two Trees-- by Ellen Bryant Voigt Variation: Two Trees -- by Ellen Bryant Voigt The world is a beautiful place – by Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Don’t let that horse” (#14) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15) - by Lawrence Ferlinghetti I am intrigued by what makes poems accessible. Why do we perk up our ears to certain things, and not others? I love the idea of writing a poem, and then a variation; I also love that this theme of "everything is beautiful" has endless permutations.

Napowrimo day 6-- Unportrait

I might have misunderstood a prompt -- but it produced this! At first I googled "unPortrait" and found a wedding photographer's site -- with trademark -- the unPortrait, of bride/groom/couple executed in under 7 minutes before the guests would miss them... This took a little longer than that! Self–Un-portrait If you find an endless spool of thread the flesh color of your nose unwind it until it covers every inch of your skin. and call it un portrait de soi which sounds like poured silk. If you used to say toy-boat fast until you tripped on your tongue try saying self-unportrait slowly, until you hear sell- f-un –port-rip, and see a merchant ship filled with wooden statues and start looking for one which looks like you and that you call un portrait en bois which sounds sharp as a dog’s bark as you tap it like a cane in a Parisian park. At this point the telephone rings, and your name will be announced on caller ID, unavailable, out of area, not provided. This is your very own portrait sans titre which the hard of hearing might think sounds like Saint Peter. This is where a mirror might come in handy. A little reflection, different angles, so a virtual image in all its complexity appears and you trace exactly what you see in lines as thin as silk threads resembling a ridged lute of a leatherback turtle. Of course, you are an excellent swimmer, used to cold waters, and diving deep. Un portrait d’une tortue which sounds like told you, told you, told you. In the mirror, the lines shift as you watch your face from puzzled infant, to surprised toddler, gleeful child, and then all those years where busy equaled survival. This is where you start to peel, to shuck, undo. Un-tongue which does not mean mute— un-portrait of the only self you are.