NAPOWRIMO 2018
a poem a day for the month of April, National Poetry month
a poem a day for the month of April, National Poetry month
These are the writings I am producing for the month of April to honor National Poetry Month. Please understand the poems displayed here are barely more than a first draft, and as such may feel a bit raw. I'm honored to participate in Napowrimo, a poetry challenge to write a poem a day for 30 days. Here then, are my efforts.
DAY ONE:
Wind and Waves
When the wind blows
it blows over all of us.
The size of your boat
doesn’t matter,
waves lift them all
DAY TWO:
Phobia
I didn’t realize
how much fear infused
itself into ladders and roofs
cliffs and high places for me,
until I took a job as a laborer
for my father-in-law’s roofing
company a year out of college.
I quit my teaching job
the summer before
to tour Alaska and the north,
returning home in October
with no prospects and an empty
bank account.
My first job was on an old
Victorian home, you know the type,
with a roof so steep even the pros
needed 2x6 toerails nailed every
six feet to keep from sliding off.
By then it was early November
and mornings were cold and frosty.
Tearing the shingles away warmed us,
but not the slippery roof. Clouds
threatened snow, and when the first
flakes started to fall we knocked off
for the rest of the day.
We’ll try again tomorrow, said Glen,
my erstwhile relative. I’ll bring some
rock salt. That was all I needed
to hear. When dawn broke cold
over an inch of snow, I stayed home,
worked on letters of application
for teaching jobs throughout the state,
and proudly nursed a burgeoning fear
of heights into a full-blown phobia.
DAY THREE
Balance
The kid turned the corner
silk on concrete, hovering
on in-line wheels embedded
in the bottom of his tennis
shoes without a sound. All I
saw was the back of his feet,
heels above the ground.
As far as that goes, he could
have been levitating.
I immediately wanted a pair
of tennis shoes like that.
I have a recurring dream
that rushed to my consciousness
as smoothly as that kid floated by:
in it I descend a staircase, or
sometimes a hill, long and steep,
and I barely touch the ground
as I glide to the bottom, even past
the bottom, and cruise, momentum
up, never a thought about falling,
filled with confidence inspired by
coordination, skill, the strength
of youth.
I stared into the space that kid
vacated, flying behind him in my
waking dream until my wife touched
my arm and cocked her head.
I wish I could run again, I offered
as explanation. She nodded. I miss
being able to hopscotch.
We held hands as we sought balance
all the walk home.
DAY FOUR
So Many Others
A stranger on Facebook
posted a meme today,
“Find the year of your birth,”
it said, “and you’ll see next to it
how many years of your life
the United States has been at war
or involved in military action."
1950.
45.5.
Put another way,
I was born in 1950.
We have been in a war
all but twenty-one and a half years
of my life.
Korea
Vietnam
Cuba
Vietnam
Cambodia
Iran
El Salvador
Grenada
Panama
Afghanistan
Iraq
Afghanistan
Syria
Yemen
to name a few.
Wikipedia has the list
and links to verification.
I have a lifetime.
Just within it
so many others did not.
DAY FIVE
Human Concerns
These days the news is full
of spite and hate. I admit to
being a contributor. I hate
what is happening in the national
dialog, am filled with spite
toward rabid-dog gun owners,
and despise the president
and all is stands for.
I have seen better. I thought,
naively, we were better. And
sometimes, I admit, I descend
into the miasma of social media
with vigor, determined to make
my point loudly, convincingly.
I am completely aware I change
no minds. I know I piss people off,
and I choose not to care anymore.
But a one-time good friend of mine
(I just discovered) has been diagnosed
with terminal cancer. We had a falling
out years ago, and never recovered .
Now, I am surprised at how sad I am.
I recall the laughter and friendship,
not the anger and feelings of betrayal.
And I hope his doctors are wrong.
What does the one have to do with the other?
Nothing. Not a god damned thing. Except,
somewhere, somehow, in this war to maintain
our humanity, I must figure out a way
to remain human.
DAY SIX
Serenity
New territory each day.
On some it feels like I’m
caught in an avalanche,
swept up, at the mercy
of a formidable foe.
I will perish. That is the only rule here.
I don’t get to choose how. If I can,
let me prevent it from happening
to my sons, my grandchildren.
That is hollow sentiment; you know
I don’t believe in prayer. The finale
will be what it is. There’s no avoiding it.
Some days I like it like that.
I have a friend who advised me
when I was upset about the plan
for my job after I retired: You can’t
control what happens after you leave,
only what you do while you’re here.
He was right. Still is.
DAY SEVEN
Trenches of Adolescence
She wasn’t just anyone –
she was my 9thgrade crush,
In my 14-year-old mind, like most girls
she was too good for me. I remember
thinking, Why would anyone like her
be interested in someone like me?
Usually that thought would turn
into a self-fulfilling prophecy –
all the teen self-esteem I could muster
snagged on the barbed wire
surrounding my trenches of adolescence.
I opened her door to the car;
my parents up front, we sat
uncomfortable and awkward
in the back seat. I didn’t know
what to do or say. I remember
wondering all through the concert
if I should put my arm around her.
Ultimately I didn’t have the nerve.
It was a long ride home. That was
our only date, though my crush lasted
well into our senior year. I attribute
our lack to me not being ready.
There was so much to learn.
DAY EIGHT
Dear 2540 East Broadway,
I have a few things to say
while you still stand tall
in my Indiana home town.
Thank you tops the list,
I know I can’t recall all
the reasons I owe you
gratitude, but I’ll list
the ones that stuck
in the twenty years
I spent under your roof:
thanks for all the places
to hide when things got
rough, and even when
they weren’t. Alcoves
and closets, the back stair
where no one ever looked,
the door from my brothers’
room to the roof above the
back porch. The powder
room Mom loved but never
went. The dirt-floor basement
with crumbling walls and a
disused coal chute. Dad had
a workbench down there,
but I can’t recall him ever
using it. Thank you for the
garage that once was a barn,
with the attic where my friends
and I smoked, read Playboy,
drank beer and played Ping Pong.
Thank you for the front porch,
where six baby owls came
to roost one spring morning,
where we ate buttery popcorn
on warm summer nights, sat
on wicker and a slatted swing
lined with pillows. Thank you
for the giant living room with
ten-foot ceilings and a bay window
where we put the giant Christmas
trees we laid under, surrounded
by presents, looking up at the lights,
colored globes, tinsel, nostrils
filled with pine, the very scent
of winter. Thank you for all the
escapes you provided when life
turned ugly and the yelling
started or dishes were thrown.
Your walls still hold the memories
like stout arms, mute witness,
testimony that my life began there,
happened there, and even though I
left long ago, you remain a solid presence,
crucible for all we did, thought, felt
as we sorted out the unsortable.
DAY NINE
The Source
I dropped the ball.
Started smoking again.
Had a drink.
Did the drugs.
Lapsed.
Fucked up.
I have no excuse
I am human
I am flawed.
I make mistakes
I deny nothing
It has taken decades
for me to admit
to look in the mirror
acknowledge
I am a living
breathing
mound of
imperfection.
Why then
do I feel such
emotions
as pride,
jealousy,
vanity
superiority?
Where
do they
come from?
Ahhh–
ego.
I still
have my ego.
Dammit.
DAY ANOTHER
(I've been working on the same poem for several days now. That's my excuse.)
The Pebble Mine
"We have to win every time. They only have to win once."
-Jon Broderick, founder, The FisherPoets Gathering
Choices
We make our choices:
The Grand Coulee
built for irrigation
of drought-burdened
farmland,
killed the salmon
running the Columbia.
June Hogs,
100 pound plus
Chinook salmon
swam for centuries
fed the first peoples
created culture and religion
gone, spawning grounds locked
forever behind concrete.
Dams killed sockeye, coho,
humpback and Chinook
throughout Washington.
Salmon fishing now
a ghost of what it was.
Phantom fish don’t need
to spawn. Each dam
was a choice.
Migration
Be a fish:
wander seas,
tour a blue planet
until chemicals mix
produce hormones,
influence instinct
(a clock ticks)
and tides send you home.
Belly fattens and swells
as you ride currents
back the way you came
years ago, over canyons
mountains, around islands,
through valleys.
Millions
swim with you,
ahead, beside,
beneath, above,
behind.
Until, what is it, a scent?
reaches out from the river you knew,
grasps you by the part
that remembers,
and pulls,
quickens the pace,
tightens the urge,
and you all
arrive together,
frenzied, leap
up a stream
to lay, fertilize
and die.
Only the river is gone.
Instead toxic waste
slides from a hole
where your
birthplace
used to be.
You didn’t know
your corpse
is the last,
your species
added to the litany
of all those gone,
gone before.
We knew.
Each decision
was a choice.
Mine, not Yours
This is about greed:
a copper mine
at the headwaters
of the last epic salmon run
in the world? A copper mine
with an earthen dam
holding a poison lake
in a geologically active
environment.
What could go wrong?
Ask the fish
Ask Fraser River salmon
caught in the toxic slurry
that rolled down the watershed
when a copper mine tailing dam
failed and flooded salmon grounds.
Each mine is a choice.
DAY 22 (I do what I can, when I can)
Anini Beach, Kauai
Where the color turns
turquoise from aquamarine
inside the reef where water calms,
live a family of hanu:
Green sea turtles.
On a day without riffles
or if you’re lucky enough
to look at the right spot,
you’ll see a small dark dot
break the surface for an instant
longer than a breath, then disappear,
back to the sand between the corals,
where the sea grass grows.
Don a snorkel and mask,
and dance a ballet in the current
with striped-necked creatures
whose carapace and flippers
are replications of sun-shadows
filtered through waves.
So I did once, to find a large hanu
hovering in a pocket of coral unmoving
as if asleep, surrounded by tropical fish
pecking her neck, back and bill,
cleaning her as she basked in their care.
As one we shifted,
waves rolling over us–
me the interloper, keeping
my distance breathing air through a tube;
gilled fish filtering air from water; and she,
holding her breath, placid, receiving
dozens of small, brilliant attentions
fluttering over her like butterflies–
dappled light bathing us all,
a caress of sun, water and salt.
Wind and Waves
When the wind blows
it blows over all of us.
The size of your boat
doesn’t matter,
waves lift them all
DAY TWO:
Phobia
I didn’t realize
how much fear infused
itself into ladders and roofs
cliffs and high places for me,
until I took a job as a laborer
for my father-in-law’s roofing
company a year out of college.
I quit my teaching job
the summer before
to tour Alaska and the north,
returning home in October
with no prospects and an empty
bank account.
My first job was on an old
Victorian home, you know the type,
with a roof so steep even the pros
needed 2x6 toerails nailed every
six feet to keep from sliding off.
By then it was early November
and mornings were cold and frosty.
Tearing the shingles away warmed us,
but not the slippery roof. Clouds
threatened snow, and when the first
flakes started to fall we knocked off
for the rest of the day.
We’ll try again tomorrow, said Glen,
my erstwhile relative. I’ll bring some
rock salt. That was all I needed
to hear. When dawn broke cold
over an inch of snow, I stayed home,
worked on letters of application
for teaching jobs throughout the state,
and proudly nursed a burgeoning fear
of heights into a full-blown phobia.
DAY THREE
Balance
The kid turned the corner
silk on concrete, hovering
on in-line wheels embedded
in the bottom of his tennis
shoes without a sound. All I
saw was the back of his feet,
heels above the ground.
As far as that goes, he could
have been levitating.
I immediately wanted a pair
of tennis shoes like that.
I have a recurring dream
that rushed to my consciousness
as smoothly as that kid floated by:
in it I descend a staircase, or
sometimes a hill, long and steep,
and I barely touch the ground
as I glide to the bottom, even past
the bottom, and cruise, momentum
up, never a thought about falling,
filled with confidence inspired by
coordination, skill, the strength
of youth.
I stared into the space that kid
vacated, flying behind him in my
waking dream until my wife touched
my arm and cocked her head.
I wish I could run again, I offered
as explanation. She nodded. I miss
being able to hopscotch.
We held hands as we sought balance
all the walk home.
DAY FOUR
So Many Others
A stranger on Facebook
posted a meme today,
“Find the year of your birth,”
it said, “and you’ll see next to it
how many years of your life
the United States has been at war
or involved in military action."
1950.
45.5.
Put another way,
I was born in 1950.
We have been in a war
all but twenty-one and a half years
of my life.
Korea
Vietnam
Cuba
Vietnam
Cambodia
Iran
El Salvador
Grenada
Panama
Afghanistan
Iraq
Afghanistan
Syria
Yemen
to name a few.
Wikipedia has the list
and links to verification.
I have a lifetime.
Just within it
so many others did not.
DAY FIVE
Human Concerns
These days the news is full
of spite and hate. I admit to
being a contributor. I hate
what is happening in the national
dialog, am filled with spite
toward rabid-dog gun owners,
and despise the president
and all is stands for.
I have seen better. I thought,
naively, we were better. And
sometimes, I admit, I descend
into the miasma of social media
with vigor, determined to make
my point loudly, convincingly.
I am completely aware I change
no minds. I know I piss people off,
and I choose not to care anymore.
But a one-time good friend of mine
(I just discovered) has been diagnosed
with terminal cancer. We had a falling
out years ago, and never recovered .
Now, I am surprised at how sad I am.
I recall the laughter and friendship,
not the anger and feelings of betrayal.
And I hope his doctors are wrong.
What does the one have to do with the other?
Nothing. Not a god damned thing. Except,
somewhere, somehow, in this war to maintain
our humanity, I must figure out a way
to remain human.
DAY SIX
Serenity
New territory each day.
On some it feels like I’m
caught in an avalanche,
swept up, at the mercy
of a formidable foe.
I will perish. That is the only rule here.
I don’t get to choose how. If I can,
let me prevent it from happening
to my sons, my grandchildren.
That is hollow sentiment; you know
I don’t believe in prayer. The finale
will be what it is. There’s no avoiding it.
Some days I like it like that.
I have a friend who advised me
when I was upset about the plan
for my job after I retired: You can’t
control what happens after you leave,
only what you do while you’re here.
He was right. Still is.
DAY SEVEN
Trenches of Adolescence
She wasn’t just anyone –
she was my 9thgrade crush,
In my 14-year-old mind, like most girls
she was too good for me. I remember
thinking, Why would anyone like her
be interested in someone like me?
Usually that thought would turn
into a self-fulfilling prophecy –
all the teen self-esteem I could muster
snagged on the barbed wire
surrounding my trenches of adolescence.
I opened her door to the car;
my parents up front, we sat
uncomfortable and awkward
in the back seat. I didn’t know
what to do or say. I remember
wondering all through the concert
if I should put my arm around her.
Ultimately I didn’t have the nerve.
It was a long ride home. That was
our only date, though my crush lasted
well into our senior year. I attribute
our lack to me not being ready.
There was so much to learn.
DAY EIGHT
Dear 2540 East Broadway,
I have a few things to say
while you still stand tall
in my Indiana home town.
Thank you tops the list,
I know I can’t recall all
the reasons I owe you
gratitude, but I’ll list
the ones that stuck
in the twenty years
I spent under your roof:
thanks for all the places
to hide when things got
rough, and even when
they weren’t. Alcoves
and closets, the back stair
where no one ever looked,
the door from my brothers’
room to the roof above the
back porch. The powder
room Mom loved but never
went. The dirt-floor basement
with crumbling walls and a
disused coal chute. Dad had
a workbench down there,
but I can’t recall him ever
using it. Thank you for the
garage that once was a barn,
with the attic where my friends
and I smoked, read Playboy,
drank beer and played Ping Pong.
Thank you for the front porch,
where six baby owls came
to roost one spring morning,
where we ate buttery popcorn
on warm summer nights, sat
on wicker and a slatted swing
lined with pillows. Thank you
for the giant living room with
ten-foot ceilings and a bay window
where we put the giant Christmas
trees we laid under, surrounded
by presents, looking up at the lights,
colored globes, tinsel, nostrils
filled with pine, the very scent
of winter. Thank you for all the
escapes you provided when life
turned ugly and the yelling
started or dishes were thrown.
Your walls still hold the memories
like stout arms, mute witness,
testimony that my life began there,
happened there, and even though I
left long ago, you remain a solid presence,
crucible for all we did, thought, felt
as we sorted out the unsortable.
DAY NINE
The Source
I dropped the ball.
Started smoking again.
Had a drink.
Did the drugs.
Lapsed.
Fucked up.
I have no excuse
I am human
I am flawed.
I make mistakes
I deny nothing
It has taken decades
for me to admit
to look in the mirror
acknowledge
I am a living
breathing
mound of
imperfection.
Why then
do I feel such
emotions
as pride,
jealousy,
vanity
superiority?
Where
do they
come from?
Ahhh–
ego.
I still
have my ego.
Dammit.
DAY ANOTHER
(I've been working on the same poem for several days now. That's my excuse.)
The Pebble Mine
"We have to win every time. They only have to win once."
-Jon Broderick, founder, The FisherPoets Gathering
Choices
We make our choices:
The Grand Coulee
built for irrigation
of drought-burdened
farmland,
killed the salmon
running the Columbia.
June Hogs,
100 pound plus
Chinook salmon
swam for centuries
fed the first peoples
created culture and religion
gone, spawning grounds locked
forever behind concrete.
Dams killed sockeye, coho,
humpback and Chinook
throughout Washington.
Salmon fishing now
a ghost of what it was.
Phantom fish don’t need
to spawn. Each dam
was a choice.
Migration
Be a fish:
wander seas,
tour a blue planet
until chemicals mix
produce hormones,
influence instinct
(a clock ticks)
and tides send you home.
Belly fattens and swells
as you ride currents
back the way you came
years ago, over canyons
mountains, around islands,
through valleys.
Millions
swim with you,
ahead, beside,
beneath, above,
behind.
Until, what is it, a scent?
reaches out from the river you knew,
grasps you by the part
that remembers,
and pulls,
quickens the pace,
tightens the urge,
and you all
arrive together,
frenzied, leap
up a stream
to lay, fertilize
and die.
Only the river is gone.
Instead toxic waste
slides from a hole
where your
birthplace
used to be.
You didn’t know
your corpse
is the last,
your species
added to the litany
of all those gone,
gone before.
We knew.
Each decision
was a choice.
Mine, not Yours
This is about greed:
a copper mine
at the headwaters
of the last epic salmon run
in the world? A copper mine
with an earthen dam
holding a poison lake
in a geologically active
environment.
What could go wrong?
Ask the fish
Ask Fraser River salmon
caught in the toxic slurry
that rolled down the watershed
when a copper mine tailing dam
failed and flooded salmon grounds.
Each mine is a choice.
DAY 22 (I do what I can, when I can)
Anini Beach, Kauai
Where the color turns
turquoise from aquamarine
inside the reef where water calms,
live a family of hanu:
Green sea turtles.
On a day without riffles
or if you’re lucky enough
to look at the right spot,
you’ll see a small dark dot
break the surface for an instant
longer than a breath, then disappear,
back to the sand between the corals,
where the sea grass grows.
Don a snorkel and mask,
and dance a ballet in the current
with striped-necked creatures
whose carapace and flippers
are replications of sun-shadows
filtered through waves.
So I did once, to find a large hanu
hovering in a pocket of coral unmoving
as if asleep, surrounded by tropical fish
pecking her neck, back and bill,
cleaning her as she basked in their care.
As one we shifted,
waves rolling over us–
me the interloper, keeping
my distance breathing air through a tube;
gilled fish filtering air from water; and she,
holding her breath, placid, receiving
dozens of small, brilliant attentions
fluttering over her like butterflies–
dappled light bathing us all,
a caress of sun, water and salt.