Day Seven ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2013

Day 7, O gentle readers. 7 is a magic number. Or at least a number that has had mystical or metaphysical connotations in human thought for millennia. For example, here's a little snippet from the King James bible: "Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven" (Matt. 18: 21-22). Instead of "70 times 7," some translations say "77" (that is, 70 plus 7). Here are a bunch more . . . 7 days of the week 7 deadly sins 7 wonders of the world 7 dwarfs (even before Disney!) 7 layer salad 7th Day Adventists 7th generation That last 7-thing is related to Native American thinking. The Seventh Generation corporation bases its sustainability-focused products on a supposed Iroquois idea, I believe, that whatever we do today, ecologically, should be undertaken keeping in mind the needs and benefit of people of the 7th generation from today, a century and a half hence. The "7th generation" is also a prediction by Black Elk of the Lakota: it will take seven generations for his people to recover from the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890. The Lakota's 7 rituals will finally be whole again when the 7th generation mends the "sacred hoop" of the people and the Lakota culture. The current generation is number 7 and in 2012 there appeared a propitious mystical sign: the birth of a white buffalo. Amazing. Beautiful. Okay, on to the prompts for Day 7: Robert Lee Brewer of Poetic Asides says: "[W]rite a sevenling poem. Never heard of a sevenling poem? Well, it's a 7-line poem (chosen because today is the 7th day of the challenge) that features two tercets and a one-liner in the final (third) stanza. . . . The first two stanzas should have an element of three in them that can either play off each directly, work as juxtaposition, or have no connection whatsoever. The final line should work as either a punchline, weird twist, or punctuation mark." Maureen Thorson of NaPoWriMo suggests: "[H]ere is our optional prompt for this, the seventh day of NaPoWriMo. I challenge you to write a poem in which each line except the last takes the form of a single, declarative sentence. Then, the final line should take the form of a question. With any luck, this will result in poems that have a sort of driving, reportorial tone, but with a powerful rhetorical finish. Let’s hope so, anyway!" Today, I was lucky enough to be able to merge the two prompts: my sevenling starts with six declarative sentences and ends with a question. Here you go: Meditation at a Church Wi nd ow on Sunday Morning In a hollow between stained glass and clear are carcasses. They're whitened, empty shells, like little sarcophagi. Almost puffballs, they are: wasps, ladybugs, beetles. They remind me of a Tarzan movie I watched when I was nine. He and Jane were tracking a dying bull elephant . . . blood trails. They found him in a graveyard of bones, the three a picturesque tableau. Is this how we all will go — both minuscule and massive — nothing more? —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Thanks for visiting the blog today, friends. I hope your National Poetry Month has been beautiful throughout this first week. See you tomorrow? Comment below, won't you? I give you 7 thanks. Ingat, everyone.   ;-) P.S.  I've just remembered that a poem I published a little over 7+7 years ago focuses on Native American themes and also features the number 7 in several ways. It's an elegy for a renowned Yuki poet who was, at the time of his death, starting to publish work about his Asian American side; his surname Oandasan is Filipino. Elegy for My Brother Poet Filipino & Yuki Indian —for William Oandasan, 1947–1992 Jagged as chipped obsidian are the words of some Indian poets, knowing their infant death rate is seven times greater than the American average — but your words, Oandasan, are gentle raindrops, hummingbird wings simmering in ancient Sequoia forest. In the Badlands, the Lakota retraced the trail of Chief Big Foot back to Wounded Knee, seven generations after that bloodletting — but your words live on in the blood, snowflake red platelets swimming in the brain. In Manila, Ferdinand and Imelda buried poets in iron and tarmac — but your words are lizards, green and swift, dragonflies in a painted desert. Helicopter gunships threatened peasants at harvest time in Vietnam, El Salvador, Afghanistan — but your words live on in sacred corn, in wheat's amber waves, in the holy words of Tayko-mol. Oandasan, your poems fly like rainbow-feathered spiders in seven directions — mountain, valley, forest, city, ocean, sky, home. — Vince Gotera      Crab Orchard Review, 1998. So there you go, folks, two 7-related poems for the price of one today. Interestingly, when I mention Afghanistan in this poem, I was referring to the Soviet war, but now there we are, similarly stuck. Hmm. Take good care, all. Be good to yourselves 7 times. Again, please comment below. Ingat. POEM-A-DAY 2013 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30