Welcome back, friends! My poem today is #86 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #451, including the number of poems from last year's challenge).
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “We’d like to challenge you to write [a] poem that recounts a memory of a beloved relative, and something they did that echoes through your thoughts today.”
Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a set poem [as in] set my alarm [or] set things in motion.”
I'm combining both prompts, as usual, in today's poem. The photo below is my mom, Candida, a little over 50 years ago. This poem, incidentally, will be a part of a collection of poems I'm writing about her.
What Mom Would Always Say
—curtal sonnet
When I became a young teen and started
going out more with my buddies, my mom
would always tell me, each time, “Be careful.”
The tone of any outing always set
by those inevitable words. One time,
I had already crossed the street, when Bill
said, “Hey, your mom’s calling you.” I looked back.
She was on the porch waving. What could Mom
possibly want that was so darn crucial?
It was embarrassing, but I went back.
“Love you, Vin. Be careful.”
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Today, Alan is working with the "set" prompt. If only George H, a character in the poem, were a relative of the speaker, Alan would have satisfied both prompts. But George H. can't be related to the speaker because it would ruin the point about unexpected kindness.
Radio Song
More than a quarter of a century ago,
my wife and I were stuck in awful jobs
in Knoxville, Tennessee—we followed work
(I had a brand-new PhD) and left
beloved Tuscaloosa, settled long
enough to start another search for jobs,
and hunkered down. The spring of ’91,
the best of bands released the album Out
of Time, and I bought all the single discs
in local Knoxville shops, but none of them
had gotten the fourth disc, which had the last
few songs of a live set. What could I do
but call George H., Vinyl Solutions’ chief,
and ask him please to ship it to me, years
before the internet or Amazon,
and, yes, he did, and I will not forget
the kindness of a man who knew I loved
a band, his shop, and Tuscaloosa, how
it was to be a broke grad student, kept
in time with porches, midnight croquet, cheap
and filling food along the strip, and George,
whose last name, Hadjidakis, stays with me
now as the world collapses ’round our ears.
—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
A lovely poem, Alan. Thank you.
Thanks for swinging by. See you again tomorrow!
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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