Photo by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver via Unsplash

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Today’s prompt challenges us to “write a poem about something that returns. For, just as the swallows come back to Capistrano each year, NaPoWriMo and GloPoWriMo will ride again!” ~ NaPoWriMo, Day 30

Once again, NaPoWriMo has been a wild, exuberant, insanely rewarding experience! I’m beyond grateful to Maureen Thorson for her delightful prompts and for the community she brings together every year. And I’m grateful to everyone who has been supportive and kind and endlessly enthusiastic about poetry.

I love this last prompt because it ends on a hopeful note. NaPoWriMo will indeed return next year. I know I’ll miss it this May, when my poetry-writing routine suffers from a lack of discipline (self-imposed deadlines don’t seem quite as urgent). And you know what else will return? Birthdays. Here’s a photo of the gluten-free cake my daughter made for me yesterday. And a photo of the meal my husband and son prepared in secret–and included some Romanian dishes. And a photo of the cards my kids wrote that brought me to my knees. It’s terrible how we forget sometimes how much we’re loved. 😭🥰🙏💜

 

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The poem below is based on a borrowed memory my father shared with me. In 1975-76, we lost several family members in quick succession, one of them painfully young. Overwhelmed by grief, my father asked me a question. He didn’t really expect an answer from his three-year-old child, but received one. I couldn’t possibly have a recollection of that moment, but have heard this story so often over the years, that I feel like I do. I picture my father and me in a park in late autumn. The leaves are falling and it’s windy and there’s this frenetic dance in the air around us. My father bends down to make sure my ears are covered. His eyes are sad. He asks me a question–and I answer.

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–The last April poem is now in my work-in-progress folder. The seashell angels are here, with me, though not for long. We’re sitting together in silence. It’s a good kind of silence–one of fulfillment, one of a job well done. Thirty days, thirty poems, thirty erasures–most of them staged by the Seashell Angels & Co. Now, to well-deserved rest. What is rest, again? they ask me. It’s when you do nothing for a while, I tell them. Or do very little. They look puzzled. What is ‘nothing’? I won’t bore you with my convoluted explanation of nothingness. Suffice is to say, I didn’t manage to convince them that doing nothing is worth their time. So, um, I think they’ll be back, most likely at an inconvenient time for me. As a parting gift, they left their gorgeous seashell wings as flower bouquets for all those who appreciated them last month–and also, for all those who didn’t. Love is sneaky like that, they told me. It doesn’t expect anything in return.

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Poetry from the trenches, Day 30

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