QUARANTINE DAY # 11 — NATIONAL POETRY MONTH DAY # 1

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Receding patches of snow with rainbow. Ootischenia, end of March

So here we go. Poetry Month is upon us. The reading I was part of scheduled for the Ides of the month at the Kootenay Gallery has been cancelled. Or postponed. Funding from the LCP or Canada Council (I'm not clear on which) is still going forward so likely we'll do something digital. We just haven't decided what yet, but you can be sure that when we do I'll let you know via all the appropriate channels.

The NaPoWriMo 2020 website is up and running and here's today's prompt:

"...write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – one that typically isn’t done all that often, or only in specific circumstances. For example, bowling, or shopping for socks, or shoveling snow, or teaching a child to tie its shoes."

So this poem came to be over the course of the day while I worked with a friend who was getting FaceBook messages from a fake me. Fake Me is into promoting bitcoin, it seems. But in a nice, fake, round-about way. Good job, Fake Me. Now get a real one!

To begin with, I thought I was heading somewhere else with this, hence the title that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense but then I think of all the poems I've read where the poems didn't appear to make sense and I can't think of another one right now and in half an hour we're having another family Zoom get-together so I have to go prep something for us to eat while that's happening. 

She Was Never Prompt

As last patches of March snow recede

            behind a land awash 

            in dirty leaves and gravel

            and a tiny, deadly speck

            is killing people 

I realize life’s a book 

you make up as you go along

and I'm in the poetry section

but not a couplet or a sonnet

no tight, cohesive little lyric here,

I'm a longer poem in that book

one that always finds a way 

to be challenging for someone—

itself

other poems 

designers 

            I’m sorry       I need

            another half-page

            two weren’t enough

            yes, long, but still 

            worth reading 

            no we can’t double up those lines

            oh, you don't read poetry—

invitation to passing glance dance

received and understood

while aficionados 

of the longer poem

may be found in groups

            —remember groups—

            made merry by each other,

await the deep, restoring breaths 

a longer poem invites,

always keen to listen. 

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