Day 14 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2025 // Stafford 88

Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt is based on Kay Ryan's poem "Crustacean Island": “[T]ry writing a poem that describes a place, particularly in terms of the animals, plants or other natural phenomena there. Sink into the sound of your location, and use a conversational tone. Incorporate slant rhymes (near or off-rhymes, like 'angle' and 'flamenco') into your poem. And for an extra challenge – don’t reference birds or birdsong!” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “[W]rite a losing poem. Losing often comes with negative connotations, like losing a game or a family pet or socks (seriously, where do they all disappear to?). However, a person could also lose some weight, bad habits, and/or negativity. ” Here's a small Shakespearean sonnet in short Kay Ryan–like lines. Merged both prompts but cheated on the characteristics of the place described — no plants or animals — all human sounds. Losing the Earth on the Moon Actually, you don’t. If you expect to hear something, you won’t. You have to wear a space suit, and all of the earth’s manifold sounds are in there: breath, the loud rumble in your stomach, the distant crackle of your left trick knee. All those live noises — you’re alive! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo oF Spacesuit on th3 Moon from NASA Alan's poem is a beautiful evocation of sound in a snowscape. Pinnacle View Road Impassible; Pinnacle Overlook Sound If I could stand there, where just last spring I watched hawks circling but always below me and felt rising warm air as the green musk reached even that vantage point, if I could permit time to lapse until the access road became impassable to ice, and I had only a moment to withstand the cold in the clothing appropriate for late spring, I would hear downy impact as quarter-sized flakes layered upon themselves, the plop when branches dipped to their weight, the soft white noise of erasure, even as the flakes caught my lashes, my curls, and brought me to shiver, a vulnerable human sound lonely, only to me perceptible so high above the huddled who cannot hear it. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

NaPoWriMo / PAD 2025 • Pick a day: 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