QUARANTINE DAY # 14 !!! — POETRY MONTH DAY # 4

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Comfort food, Day #14, which involved opening three cans—white beans, black beans, and diced tomatoes, frying up some hamburger meat with garlic and onion and Chinese Five Spice and throwing the lot into the crockpot for about an hour and a half. Served on egg noodles in one of Ted's fine eating bowls. Note the steam rising!

Ah yes...what a difference a solid nine hours of sleep makes. Went to bed at nine o'clock last night and FitBit tells me I was asleep at 9:20. Today is a much better day.

So today's prompt from NaPoWriMo is to write a poem based on an image from a dream.

I used to dream like crazy when I was a kid and can still remember a lot of them as they tended to recur. Nowadays I know I've dreamt but can rarely remember details. BUT...last week I had an interesting one, so interesting I actually jotted down what I could remember about it in a journal when I first awoke. So I will have a read through that and see what image sticks out and then I'll attempt to write a poem about it.

After today we'll be able to do our own shopping again. Tomorrow we'll drive over to Robson where Ted's car spent the last couple of months and then we'll both have cars we hardly use. I'll be able to go visit Mom through glass. I can drive past my son's house, do some waving from a distance. And you know what? I have no desire to go anywhere at all.

Here's the poem:

Hat Trick

Tiny village, southern clime, 

man with a hat at the door,

ragtag coat, trousers silk,

no ordinary man, this,

but it’s his hat that draws your eye,

the one he removes 

and without uttering a word

begins to swat you with.

Scene change, quick as a Viewfinder,

room fills up with men 

in ragtag coats and silken trousers,

voices loud, pompous, wrathful,

gather round a table 

that’s appeared in the hall.

Abruptly they are gone—

two shakes, lamb’s tail,

all at once, in a trice, 

but look, that table, 

at every place 

where plates should be,

a hat. And every hat the same—

black bowlers waiting for their men

who have vanished 

like scent of honeysuckle

in morning light.

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