The Poetry Marathon

Hour Six

Prompt 6

Taking the Air

When I was a child 

and my grandmother lived with us, 

she got out in the  fresh air 

nearly every day. She kept up 

with the neighborhood as she toured,

with my friends’ families and 

with the grocer in the small corner store. 

She knew before many that he was moving

to a new store. There aren’t any 

such things as corner stores anymore, 

but when I put on my sturdy shoes 

every day to stride out into 

my neighborhood on my route 

long ago planned, I think of 

my Grandmother and how 

she would lace up her special shoes 

to go out and take in the air.

The Time Capsule

An old metal box, dirt pasted to it, sits at the side of the hole that will be the basement. I’m here, as I am every day, to check on the progress of our house. Up till the past few days there’s not much visible progress. A worker points to the box. It’s yours. Came out of a bulldozer load. A hundred or so years ago this was a cattle ranch. The neighbor knows the layout of the ranch. Sold years ago, it’s been platted into odd-sized city lots. This one, ours, is more than a lot. It goes deep into the bloci. Whoever surveyed these lots should have been fired and the lots re-surveyed. “Okay,” I say, “let’s open it.” Startled, he looks at me. Now? “Yes, now.”  He presses a bar between the top and bottom. With a twist of the bar the box opens. A moldy stuffed animal, perhaps a rabbit, is squashed inside, a crude drawing of a fence with horses  inside and a letter. It is dated 107 years before. Dear Reader, it begins, I am placing some treasurers into this special box because Daddy says we must sell our home, our ranch. This is the only place I have lived and I am twelve years old. This rabbit, Jehosaphat, is like one that lived on our ranch for years and then some wild animal got him. It’s the way of the land, I know that. Mama found him in the Sears catalog and ordered him for me.  The letter went on and I folded it to read at home. The worker reboxed the treasures for me, put them in the car and the crew returned to work. I thought of the little girl, Emily Ann, who spoke to me from her time capsule and wondered how she had lived her life. 

My Grandchildren

Prompt 4

My Grandchildren

Last line from These Unlucky Stars by Gillian McDunn

I love my grandchildren.

They are smart, clever, kind, generous and thoughtful.

I love my grandchildren.

They are growing into the people they will be.

I love my grandchildren.

They are themselves, they are their best selves.

And they are perfect within themselves.

And I wouldn’t change a thing.

Prompt 3 – Use the Image above

Hour 3

Her Enchanted Place

She stood on the rocks below the wind-scraped, two-story house where her grandparents had lived and where she had played beneath the bridge every summer from when she was eight or nine.  Less brush then. Rocks, big and flat, for mud pie tea parties with Sandy, her favorite doll, and Squeal, her dog. Tommy, from the next house over, had come over every day that last summer she was there and played ball with her most days or they went bike riding or fishing with Grandpa and ate sandwiches and cookies Grandma made. They didn’t know it was the last summer life was normal. The house had stood empty since she was sixteen, abandoned, to the seasons after the last renters had vacated. It was time now to sell the land. It would be cleared and divided, plots sold. She looked around her at this place, the bridge, the house on the hill and the rocks. She walked up the hill met the realtor and told her decision about her enchanted place and this plot.

Prompt 2

Poem 2

The Dog

He was supposed to sit by her chair

at the table,brown fur neck encircled 

with a narrow blue ribbon, large brown

eyes reflecting the light. But it was just 

the first time he would wander wherever

he went. She came to the table, sat and

something cold and damp touched her

leg. She squealed, which is how he got his name,

Squeal. Friends for life. After she died,

he rested upon the fresh-turned earth,

knowing somehow she was there.

Poem 1

The Last One

When she was a young mother with a toddler

and an infant, she said that she would make 

note of the last washer load of dirty 

diapers she washed. As the children grew, she

realized that she could pass that magic 

day without noticing it. So she made 

a mark on the calendar each time she 

washed diapers. The years rushed by and she made

marks on her calendars signifying 

the last of milestones like school years and summer

camps and then the days she surrendered her

hopes and dreams to the reality of 

aging. Her children flipped through the stack of

calendars in the box in the closet 

the day they finished cleaning out her house,

the day after the day they put her in the home.

Well, I finished way back at 9 p.m.ish EDT. This was a fun experience. As I worked on the last couple of poems I was glad that I was nearly done. I couldn’t have made it through the night. Congratulations to all who did.

I hope I’m on an email list or some sort of communication so that as events occur, I’ll get the word. I’ll always watch Facebook just in case.

I saw some notes about printing our own certificates, so I’m going to look around and see if I can find such thing.

Karen B. Call

Life

Life is mysterious. 

Allowing it 

to breathe in, 

be quiet 

and remain 

still for a few 

moments comes 

close to creating 

magic and harmony

in my life. Calm 

Comes through effort. 

Be still 

so all things 

can remain calm.

Medville

Do you want to go to Medville? 

Getting in is complicated. 

Not everyone is accepted. 

You must apply, be ill 

through no fault of your own. 

If you have an illness caused 

by your lifestyle, you won’t 

be approved. If you have a 

birth defect, how you have 

lived the first years 

makes a difference. 

What you have done, 

what you have tried to do,

can give you an edge 

in the application process. 

Or hold you back. You 

need a reference, too. 

If you know someone 

who went there, talk 

to him or her, but they 

are hard to recognize. 

They don’t look the same 

as before. Medville 

will change you.

Moonshadow

After Yusef/Cat Stevens

I’m being followed.

Are you being followed, too?

It’s a moonshadow

always following me.

My body is fragile. As time goes by 

I may lose the use of its parts.

It’s a moonshadow

always following me.

If that happens, I will also lose connection

with parts of my life. My world will be smaller.

It’s a moonshadow

always following me.

I will use whatever parts remain

accessible to me to fill my life.

It’s a moonshadow

always following me.