NaPoWriMo
2024, April 29 Prompt
Lines
My pin-striped socks,
too short and thin for today
serve to remind me to
write some lines.
The pattern reminiscent
of the cardigan I never knit,
like an elegiac afterthought.
Maybe its better this way,
a pin-striped cardigan would
be torture for a poet.
NaPoWriMo
2024, Prompt April 28
Birds of Ontario
We didn’t recognize the birds that flew over the blonde fields.
Small raptors maybe with cinnamon breasts, alone or in pairs.
Are the Birds of Ontario still the birds of Ontario?
NaPoWriMo
2024, April 26 Prompt
Pop
Caught by the colour of the dogwood
on the shoulder. Barely bleached coral,
tropically floral.
Even the small dead
fir trees are glowing today.
Salmon, no, peach, no, orange sherbert or sherbet
depending on what I’m not sure.
The light on this road
to the lake I take by bike.
Never noticed this rich, riot
of red in the ditches before.
Once home, I
remove sunglasses, glance
around at the suddenly drab
and taupe late winter palette
and see all that pop
on my ride was
pimped, by plastic.
NaPoWriMo
2024, April 25 Prompt
Proust’s questions
Ah the Proust questionnaire.
What does it reveal?
Intentions, insecurity, class,
identity, beliefs, values?
Capacity for love?
For honesty?
We humans can’t just
come out and ask
but need to make a game
of it all with ourselves.
As if we could know
anyway.
NaPoWriMo
2024, April 24 Prompt
Guesthouse
–after Rumi
This being human is a guesthouse.
You never know who might drop by
looking for shelter. For whom you will need
to cook something up. For whom you wish
you had dusted.
Who will leave a tip
an address
a comment
a melody
a stripped bed
a dirty sink
a sock
an emptiness.
NaPoWriMo
2024, April 23 Prompt
Porcupine
You have a superpower son,
a cape of spiny tines that
protect you from any threat.
Don’t worry about being slow,
take your time.
The son now lies dead
mid-lane as rows of morning
traffic file past
and turkey vulture lurking.
Two miles later,
a skunk.
NaPoWriMo
2024, April 22 Prompt
Nighties
I have a thing for nighties.
Especially the frilly, flowery, cotton
and preferably thrifted kind.
They look so innocent.
So incapable of becoming
a straightjacket
a girdle
a breast binder
a noose
a choker
or a headband.
That’s what they want you to believe
and I fall for it every evening.
As if last night never happened.
I just look at the pale yellow
roses and pearly buttons and lace
details and before I know it I
am jumping into bed like
Laura freaking Ingalls.
Meanwhile my stealth nightie
can’t wait to see my 3 am
Harry freaking Houdini
moves. And I can’t help wondering
whether their previous victims
died before or after the
nighties ended up at the thrift store.
NaPoWriMo
2024, April 21 Prompt
Something Old
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
–Old English Rhyme
Bread baking bulges my belly beyond bridal breadths.
And old fears say beyond belonging.
And I’m kind of ok with it.Which is new.
My mother is in the audience, along with the other wedding guests but
it’s my body. And it’s all borrowed anyway.
Our time, our ideas, the bodies we call me, I, us.
Water has been calling.
It started with my blue car, then three blue coats, one at a time.
Then my front door and the zoom blue scarf I am knitting for my mother.
And now I want to swim again. In my grown-up body, in my grown-up way.
And I can write where and what I want to with the blue ink and not only in the
chart on the wall by the pool with the skinny columns
date,
weight,
morning heartrate.
NaPoWriMo
2024, April 19 Prompt
Fire
All winter I feel it coming
its breath on my neck
on windy dry days.
Warm temps in January
(is the corollary of Indian
summer petroleum spring?)
make people jubilant.
I just get agitated, off.
In spring I keep an eye
on the forest floor.
Search for puddles,
low places of wetness,
rain in the forecast.
All summer I am on
tinderhooks, hunted.
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn.
What would Jesus do?
The Buddha?
I am neither.
Human, I try to make sense
then remember I can’t.
Stay low, seek water,
hold my breath.
NaPoWriMo
2024, April 18 Prompt
I Am a Pussywillow
The cushy, cottontail kind.
The kind you want to cuddle up with
and brush against your lip.
Silver signal of spring,
I proffer early pollen to visitors
who often linger for a snuggle.
On breezy evenings my friends
and I whisper our sensual secrets
to each other in exhalations
of essence of equinox.
I love being a pussywillow.
I love how at first glance
I’m mistaken for a sunlit droplet
and how certain people blush
when they say my name.
Tendril 