The Poetry Marathon

It’s getting closer and closer … and the excitement is building. Another 12-to-24 hours of a unique community-and-poetry-building experience. Positive reinforcement. Judgment free. Helpful comments. Optional prompts. A steady diet for a half/full day of words, words, words. What could be more delicious?

Thank you again and again to Caitlin and Jacob for imaging, creating, maintaining and expanding this world-wide event. Having assembled dozens of anthologies over the years – including formatting several for publication – I completely ‘get’ what is involved in that side of things. And while I would happily volunteer my time/experience to creating this one, I also want to emphasize that the marathon is about the experience, not the product. As Louise deSalvo writes in “Writing as a Way of Healing:” “It’s not what you write that is important; it is who you become as you write.” Yep! Process over product.

So enjoy every moment and good luck choosing great snacks!! You’ll thank yourself every hour.

Erasure Poem

Source: from Out of the Fog, C K Ober; 267 words; http://erasures.wavepoetry.com/sources.php

sarahw

this is my first erasure poem – more frustrating than a found poem because I’d like to move lines around, format and punctuate differently!!!

SHE AND I

Sitting by the stilled pond, I am startled
by the earnest green eyes gazing up through me
to the tall pine tree, imposing trustee
of my childhood home and innocence.

She is nine, has just learned how tender
her guileless heart toward a young kid in need,
the joy of its gamboled frolic at her
approach. She gazes skyward

never imagining herself salt-and-peppered,
awed still by the promise of nature
as in her youth. I quell an urge to touch her cheek,
the soft slope of its sadness dragging her down,

unnoticed, into ‘not good enough.’
For what, I want to ask? Good enough,
I want her to see, to have lived
sixty years more emerged

from invisibility into tangible life —
our three children — whom I suddenly wish
she could befriend.  I raise my own eyes
to the trees ringing the pond

none a tall pine, but grand enough
to take me back to these roots,
my natural loves twined together
like our images on the pond’s surface.

sarahw

Not a letter, but true to the prompt in other respects. I wrote this poem years ago in response to a different-but-similar prompt and really like the way it turned out. And, right now, my eyes are burning from so much screen time that I’m needing a break.

In the hush of early morning fog,
a single moonbeam barely sufficed
to light my way toward the dock.

In deed, I tripped on the concrete step
as a less-than-muted DAMN! escaped my lips.
Perhaps, had I downed less coffee in previous hours

(the old Army surplus canteen managed to keep it
surprisingly warm and invigorating), I would have
been steadier on my feet.

sarahw

A Love Letter

Hope Never Dies
in The Gone World.
Severance
Will Only Hurt a Little, like
Taking the Arrow out of the Heart, despite
Cravings: Hunger for More.

What is Real?
The Order of Time –
How to Invent Everything,
Be Prepared.

There, There
Woman in the Window,
Everything Here is Beautiful – The Map
of Salt and Stars,
All the Little Lights.
Little Fires Everywhere
Burn Bright,
All the Light We Cannot See.

Wade in the Water,
The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
In The Great Alone, I have
Room to Dream.
Still Me, Becoming
A River in Darkness.
A Force of Nature.

You Go First
On the Path Between Us.
Year One will be
Not That Bad.
I don’t need
Useless Magic;
Something in the Water
offers Brief Answers to the Big Questions –Who We Are and
How We Got Here –
The Astonishing Color of After.

You Think It, I’ll Say It:
I Was Born for This,
A Spark of Light
Taming the Sun –
Heart Talk in the
Dark Between Stars
An American Marriage,
our House of Dreams.
A Love Letter.

sarahw

I took several titles of current books from the Goodreads site, turning it into a found poem of love and light for my recently departed husband.

Sevenling

We spent years looking for the perfect house –

200 years old, wide pine floors, walk-in fireplace

with huge central chimney, beech tree, and space for gardens.

We lived longest in an angular house, modern

with high ceilings in odd places, lots of windows

but too many bathrooms, and space for the kids to grow.

I can’t wait to move to my small cottage, alone.

“Resurrection Fern”

I settle back for some good finger-pickin’ guitar,
a gentle beat in the background. Is this
old-time steel pedal guitar Jim loved so much?
Already I am slipping down a memory lane
I have neither visited nor recall.

We will live like a ghost will live, the voice croons
in dulcet tones, the beat compelling,
the words unclear; until I hear
the fallen house across the way will keep
everything … the baby’s breath, our bravery…

and suddenly the lane is ours, the fallen down house
the one grandson Paul routinely mentions
ever since Jim and I took him, last summer,
on a house tour of the tumbling-down old,
the renovated and the obscenely huge modern.

Yes, our house, though not falling down,
will indeed keep the baby’s breath –
those raised, those visiting, and if I am lucky
that planted in the garden – to remind me
of our bravery. But it is the oak tree

that captures me most, the feature of our yard
now shading La Casita to house family
and friends come to celebrate Jim’s life, his
foresight in claiming this land for the lives of us all,
and especially the resurrection of spirit and tree

through his patient pruning and the gifts of time.
If his ghost wants to live with me there, so be it.
I shall welcome the company, and with my own
stubborn green eyes that see everything,
re-magine us as a pair of underwater pearls.

sarahw

Shrinking World

The day came when he said, my world has become very small –

my bedroom, bathroom, the toilet. But that was spacious

compared with the day, not so long after that

he struggled for the last time onto the bed.

This is where I’m going to spend

the rest of my life, isn’t it?

Less question than fact.

And it was. The rest

of his life lasted

just three

days.

sarahw

WILD NATURE

It’s an ordinary day. I’m driving
my morning’s scheduled routine, when
thundering across the near horizon I hear,
before seeing, a herd of wild mustangs,
hundreds of them

spilling in round-rumped abandon
through meadow and crossing ahead—
a mingling of manes, arced tails a blur
of exhilaration – nobly

proclaiming with whited eyes
their surprise at this galloped
layering of worlds, pulsing forward|
unhindered

the rumbling waves tumble now
through open window,
sweat scented freedom compelling
and feral, calling me distant,
deep and wild.

The rhythm resolves as the
herd hurries on. I return to my day,
to what is planned
and not.

sarahw

How can you look at this
and not see
a political statement?!

The obvious juxtaposition
of fresh and dried; of fruit
and seed; of sharp and soft;
of stiff and flowing…

Texture, size, density;
color, habit, origin;
and all gathered together
in one gorgeous, harmonious
blended whole.

Maybe florists
should run the world.

sarahw