Day Two ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2020

Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “write a poem about a specific place — a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances (“three and a half blocks from the post office”), the types of trees or flowers, the color of the shirts on the people you remember there. Little details like this can really help the reader imagine not only the place, but its mood — and can take your poem to weird and wild places.” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “write a space poem. Your poem could be about outer space or inner space. It could opine on the social spacing much of the world is currently doing. Or poets can write an ode to having the space to write or read or whatever. Honestly, I’ll be disappointed if there isn’t a Star Wars or Star Trek inspired poem today. Now, I’ll back off and give everyone plenty of space to write their poems today.” My poem using both prompts imagines the International Space Station, where the striking concrete details, I would think, would not be within the station itself but in the globe below. The ISS and COVID-19 Ultimate social distancing: besides my podmates here, astronauts from several countries, there is not one living human closer than 250 miles. The virus spreading, spreading below, under the light blue carpet of clouds, over the aquamarine pockmarked oceans, within the sharp bright matrices of pinpoint light — cities in the black expanse of night. A corona widening out, invisible. Are we safe up here from it? Will the next Soyuz delivery of supplies bring COVID-19, complete its dominion? —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Alan's poem is much closer to home, an invitation to friends in happier days, once and future. Shed Once I’ve built me a shed out back beneath the locust trees, beside the red bud blooming near the stump wrapped up in briars, won’t you come? I’ll screen a porch to let the breeze shift papers while I read and write. We’ll play guitars and watch the clouds surround the moon. I wish you’d come. Late August, we’ll just open up that little room where I’ll keep dry the little table and the chairs when it turns wet in winter. Come. I’ll keep a cushion for you there, a special one, a cotton throw as well to stay the twilight chill, and watch you rest, if you’ll just come. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Thanks again for reading our poems today. Stay well out there. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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