Day 2 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2026 / Stafford 76

Hello again! Today's Day 2 poem is #76 in the Stafford Challenge this year (and #441 overall). Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write an express poem.” Okay, here we go, merging the two prompts today, in a Shakespearean sonnet. My First Poetic Expression I’m sure I titled it “The Sun”—my very first poem. I was probably six or seven. I was on an outing with my dad on a ferry boat, a bright morning with a blazing sun. I remember looking up at the cloudless sky, intensely blue, and musing, wondering, what the sun was. I knew it was made of gas, though I didn’t know “plasma” or “hydrogen” yet. When we got home, I wrote a poem in three quatrains, alternate rhymes, ABAB. My mom sent the poem to my elementary school, and they published it in the family newsletter. Fascinating I was at that time already a formalist, maybe from nursery rhymes. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo by alimison on pixabay.com. Here is Alan's poem today, also merging both prompts. P O E M   R E M O V E D while being submitted for publication.   Please come back later. The poem may return at some time in the future. Thank you!     Wow, that's quite an incident, Alan. The last line is brilliant . . . yes, quite a distinction between "family" and "blood." Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ