Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “write a spirit poem. Poets may write about a ghostly spirit. Or pen an ode to the spirits found in a pub or liquor cabinet. Of course, there’s also school spirit and the spirit of adventure. Personally, I like The Spirit of comics and radio fame. Let the spirit of poetry lead the way for you today.” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “write a triolet. These eight-line poems involve repeating lines and a tight rhyme scheme. The repetitions and rhymes can lend themselves to humorous poems, as well as to poems expressing dramatic or sorrowful moods. And sometimes the repetitions can be used in deceptive ways, by splitting the words in a given line into different sentences, and making subtle changes.” My spirit triolet today comes from a hazy childhood memory. This is a topic I've wanted to explore in writing for many years, and I'm grateful for today's prompts eliciting this poem. Bedridden Aunt Returns in Spirit Tia Nena, my dad's sister, my reclusive maiden aunt, was a mysterious, mostly unseen presence in my grandparents' home. I was probably five, maybe younger, and when we grandkids would play in the house, we could sense her watching us from her bedroom, the door slightly ajar. Our parents would say she was ill, an invalid, but I don't know what her physical ailment was. I wonder now if she may have been agoraphobic, plagued with clinical anxiety, and simply retreated and hid from the world in her room. I have a vague remembrance of having been in her bedroom once or twice to visit, an infirm woman, pretty, who hid her smile behind her hand, though maybe I just imagined those visits? I remember, after she died, thinking once I saw her peeking in our living room window, just a small sliver of her face, which seemed very odd to me, a small child, because I'd never known her to be out in the world. Alan is an English professor who is teaching his formerly face-to-face classes online, and his triolet today focuses on those specifics. Education in the Time of COVID-19 I love how "room" in the poem's two occurrences can refer to a literal room and also to the virtual online rooms of Zoom. Brilliant! 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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