Today, our poems are a sneak peek into the warmer evenings of summer coming on, one hopes soon.
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today, I challenge you to write a nocturne. In music, a nocturne is a composition meant to be played at night, usually for piano, and with a tender and melancholy sort of sound. Your nocturne should aim to translate this sensibility into poetic form!"
Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: "Write a dance poem. The poem can be about the process of dancing or just somehow incorporate or reference dancing in the poem. There are so many styles of dance out there and even more occasions for dancing: school dances, daddy-daughter dances, wedding dances, people who dance when they are happy, people who dance when they are sad, people who dance in large groups, and those who dance alone. And, of course, there are so who just won’t dance for anything."
Alan got done first today. He says, "If y'all don't like dactyls, you're hard up today."
Hoedown Lullaby
Counterintuitive, picking the baby up,
picking the toddler up, singing a song
that’s too loud, older brother’s mad,
doing his homework while I’m honky-tonkin’
and boot-scootin’ babies to bed,
make it funny and laugh, there’s adventure
in countin’ a 1-2-3 unlike the time
each will spend as a grownup
and cope with duality,
pray to a trinity,
dream of infinity,
whisk up the baby, now,
whisk up the toddler, now,
let them be loved with a laughter, a song
about trailers and cigarettes,
moonshine on Rocky Top,
Tennessee waltzin’ and losin’ a darlin’,
while Mom pulls the covers back,
I pack ‘em in like a hundred-weight cotton sack,
tickle for giggle and now there’s a fairy tale
or the next chapter of wizards and mugwumps
in schools of adventure and mystery,
sleepy then prayerful to name
everybody we want to remember,
including big brother who, homework done,
gets much less grumpy and stays up
because he is big but not yet big enough
to sing classic old country
and wheedle like Willie or thunder like Johnny
or croon just like (no, not true) Merle
as I walk down the hall from soft voices
and lights out and thinking I’ve given them
something they’ll keep a long time.
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Here's my nocturne for the day, or maybe I should say for the night. This poem came to me when I saw this morning in a bare tree — spring hasn't quite sprung here yet — what looked like an upside-down birdhouse.
Night Wings Love
In the royal blue wash of July night
a yellow glow surrounds the lone street lamp,
whirling school of flying insects punch drunk
on bright light, dancing a frenzied foxtrot
in thick air, their wings whirring loud in amped-
up concerto. More love than you would think
existed in the world. But other love
waits in the wings, so to speak. A ballet
troupe in fur and leather enters the fray,
gliding through the crowd, a soundless dive.
Glorious bats, intoxicated with this trance
of love on the wing, this lavish wheeling dance.
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
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Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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2 comments:
Hoedown Lullaby is delightful!
Thank you, Ms. Blood!
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