Join me in writing one poem a day for the month of April in celebration of National Poetry Month. Simply paste your poem into the comment section below!
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 30
Did you know
that in a car
you can see
the whole world?
You turn as it turns
and in turn we learn
to see—
everywhere around us—
beauty waiting
to be named,
not that it might
be owned, steered,
and commodified,
but that we might
remain human
in an age of fear
and ossified
imagination.
So come with me
to some as yet
unknown location.
The thunder of a
hundred horses pulls
us toward the sun
and the beautiful.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 29
It takes courage to grow old,
to bald layer by layer,
to flourish as bones grow brittle,
as little steps spark sufferings,
as cataracts shade spring colors grayer
with cancer haunting in the wings.
I have seen a person wither into bitterness
over all the trouble aging brings.
And I have seen another smile at the long miles,
bearing ache with graceful nerve, one with whom
I’d gladly take the hair pin curve at a speed
where others younger surely would have slowed,
but not this one, whose cueball tires still can hold the road.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 28
It’s tough, as just about everyone knows,
when you get knocked down,
to get back up, and up, and up—
like Rocky under Apollo’s blows,
or the dandelions after the lawn’s been cut.
Throwing back the covers at the jarring alarm
morning after morning is as hard as it’s cold.
Once is a start. Ten gets old.
Ten times ten is a bold sign of zealotry.
But to turn the wheels of heaven and earth
takes releasing the slap of the burn
over and over, seven times seventy.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 27
Glen Campbell once sang
that nice guys get washed away
in the snow and the rain.
I suppose since then many
a seeker of the open door
have resorted to money or muscle
or some manipulating hustle. I still vote
for kindness as the stronger force
to unlock the future, just as the gentle
blade of grass defies its grave
of concrete as a matter of course.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 26
Where you were born. The decade. The climate.
What resource you had access to and where you had to find it.
The neighbors next door. The color of your skin.
Your grandparents’ story about the way you entered into it.
School learning outcomes. Things old, things new.
What your parents and your siblings did or didn’t do.
All of this coagulating into a viscous point of view,
which now coats your veins and brain like the sludge of old oil.
It is why your blood boils over someone judging
something clear and simple differently than you.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 25
She can’t quite recall
how it came to be that
he took over all responsibility
for things financial: paying bills,
keeping the books, making sure
checks didn't bounce, setting up
various investment accounts.
Later, when he had driven
their whole life off the cliff,
she wondered how she could have missed
all the signs along the way—
the things he did and didn’t say
smooth as he was in his title role—
and she asleep in the comfortable back seat
relieved someone else was in control.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 24
When he finally fell asleep,
cherub face pressed
between the crib bar slats,
his tank only now emptied
after a day with no naps,
the young mom, exhausted,
could barely imagine
the day starting over in just a few hours.
How to keep pace with such super powers?
Uncapped in-the-moment zeal
spilling out of bowl, on the wall,
from the diaper, by the block and the wheel,
spilling up at the blossom-fall,
spilling wide with the broom—
life fumes overwhelming everyone in the room.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 23
A shocking thought bursts into my mind
like a billy goat, like a rock wrapped in a note
shattering my window in the middle of the night,
like a bell at the start or the end of a fight,
brazenly breaking my inner silence,
a vandalism of invisible violence.
To think I could even think such a thing
in my inner world gated and kept
with mowed lawns and streets swept,
invaded by shadows of loud geese in flight
honking profanities in my placid blue sky.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 22
Off the grid. Secret trip.
Cash for gas. Credit cards ripped
up. Cell phone off. Invisible to them.
Except the odometer continues to spin.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 21
After the accident
his brain transmission
no longer sent signals
to his right leg or left.
The old axis of his life,
strategic goals by the age of thirty,
shifted in a hurry for the brave paraplegic
negotiating the busy hospital hallway,
determined head over deadened heels,
beating heart, heavy breathing,
as of yet uncalloused hands
white-knuckled on two wheels.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 20
Helicoptering would be mild
in describing the ways she micro-managed
each detail of her teen boy’s life.
To ward off trouble, rife and wild
in a menacing, unpredictable world,
she would keep him safe, keep him proper:
which friends, this author, no contact sports, no cable,
web-browsing only at the kitchen table,
texts screened, email read, homework monitored, early to bed.
It may be why he loved looking at the stars
out his second story window at night.
Or why he might open it up to the wind,
his desk-papers fluttering like ducks at a gun.
And why sometimes on the way to some place
for something in his schedule maternally required
he would, quiet as a lover eloping,
hoping for a perfect escape,
undo his seatbelt with a smirk on his face.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 19
I am pretty sure that I believe you,
that at the moment I really need you,
you will nitrogen-burst from your cavity
in the blink of fifty milliseconds
and keep the crash from ravaging me.
Will the lesson of faith have to wait
for an accident? Something
I cannot intentionally pursue.
Or is my faith real now as I drive
peacefully along this freeway with you?
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 18
Certain things we choose for “if”,
always an elective:
earthquake insurance on my place.
A second alarm set just in case.
A razor should my electric break.
A doggie bag for my Porterhouse steak.
Certain things we choose for “when”,
always an essential.
Money in the bank for bills.
Ibuprofen for minor ills.
Salt for savory and sugar for sweet.
Thick-skin bumpers for the mean we meet.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 17
The microscopic parasites,
unleashed little bats from hell,
have stalled the world into neutral,
and, near as anyone can tell,
we’ll all soon be in reverse.
The governors will sift the data,
then slowly shift us back to first.
If the carnage doesn’t get worse,
if we manage to stay alive,
into second, into third,
and finally, one day, back to drive.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 16
“There is only so much I can keep inside,”
he said out loud, ready to burst.
“Trying to hide in plain sight
really is the worst kind of role play.
Just once I wish you’d say,
‘Tell me what you think is true.’
I know you won’t respect me if I do,
if you finally see my mismatched packed bags
strapped to my roof rack, exposed to any jack
next to me in the Walmart parking lot,
exposed to the hot sun high in a haughty sky,
bare before every bug-cloud simmering above a country street,
easy for a thief’s knife slicing in the deep night,
while, at least, and where, at last, I’d finally be getting some decent sleep.”
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 15
She thumbs slowly through the stiff pages
of the photograph album. Faded images
wave from far-behind. Tucked inside, she finds
a yellowing letter, dried leaves, a swatch of leather.
Smells and sounds and memories climb
out of murky time and grip her with a kind of dread.
Life seemed so much better back when all her life still lay ahead.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 14
Alexa listens in the the living room.
Google watches what I buy
and sends around ads to catch my eye.
At every intersection cameras
watch and flash the passerby.
I feel surrounded, and mostly by thieves
probing and peeking, seeking my secrets.
pick-pocketing my keys.
This website says I am safe
as my entered data turns to stars.
Still I feel I am driving naked
on a highway with a million cars
(everyone thinking no one can see them,
like my cat on the lawn pressed low on his hunt)
with our numbers plastered on our backs and our fronts.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 13
A car approaches on the dark horizon,
a tiny prick of twinkling light,
hurtling toward me at double my speed.
By faith I trust it will keep to its lane
while the plane of light intensifies.
Shielding my eyes against the glare
I grow aware its beams are on high,
expecting any moment a switch down to low
out of politeness. The answer is no.
Annoyed I grip the wheel tighter,
the on-coming light, like a comet on fire,
blinding my entire field of vision,
brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 12
I am finally on the road,
an all-night drive ahead,
five hundred miles to go.
The presents are wrapped with red
bows and buried back in the trunk
(with a bunch of other junk, I know).
There is a party in the morning
to celebrate my daughter’s baby girl, Grace.
And though these hours will be long and dark,
I wouldn’t miss the surprise on her face
for anything in the world.
National Poetry Month’s Poem-A-Day 30-Day Challenge: Day 11
(Good Friday)
is everyday trampled underfoot
by heavy boots, pressing in grime,
grinding unkindly the smear into stain
with each toe-twist-dig and slow heel-scrape:
careless, callous, thoughtless, mean
(while, underneath, the virgin carpet
is spotless, new, impossibly clean).
