Today’s prompt challenges us to “write a poem based on a “walking archive.” What’s that? Well, it’s when you go on a walk and gather up interesting thing – a flower, a strange piece of bark, a rock. This then becomes your “walking archive” – the physical instantiation of your walk. If you’re unable to get out of the house (as many of us now are), you can create a “walking archive” by wandering around your own home and gathering knick-knacks, family photos, maybe a strange spice or kitchen gadget you never use. One you’ve finished your gathering, lay all your materials out on  a tray table, like museum specimens. Now, let your group of materials inspire your poem! You can write about just one of the things you’ve gathered, or how all of them are all linked, or even what they say about you, who chose them and brought them together.” ~ NaPoWriMo, Day 19

I took these photos during my walk today. The Red Leaf caught my eye as she was trying to melt in the crowd. Wrong crowd, if you ask me. We hit it off pretty quickly. She didn’t let go of my hand for the rest of our walk. I invited her to my place. She said yes, which in her language means, apparently, that she’s moving in. She talks constantly and has many contradictory opinions, some of them quite bizarre. I tend to be a good listener, though, even when scolded–and take copious notes. This is what the Red Leaf told me.

PS–Most of the poems written this April will remain online for up to five days, after which they will be replaced by an excerpt, an erasure, or a thoroughly amateurish art piece that will only allow for bits of the original poem to peek through. At least, this is the plan. The reason being that, at some point, in the hopefully not too distant future, these drafts will undergo revision and begin their multiple-year pilgrimage through the slush piles of many a literary journal. So help me, O Muse.

PPS–After five days, the seashell angels are busy staging another tableau. Their new friends are the bird of memory and the tortoise of oblivion. I wonder which one of them will take more space here. Or last longer. Hold on. Maybe it’s the other way around: the tortoise remembers and the bird forgets… What’s that?

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Poetry from the trenches, Day 19

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