Retrospective - NaPoWriMo 2021 - 3. Week Three

Retrospective – Week Three

*Warning for sensitive content in #15

#15

The poster went up three days before he died.

A picture of an unassuming face wearing a cowboy hat

And oversized glasses.

The words of a desperate man seeking companionship,

Relationship, any kind of –ship.

Snickers and scoffs followed,

Along with pointing and derision,

In the dining hall line.

“That’s him”

“Pathetic”

“Loser”

He bore it with quiet stoicism.

No one saw through the plea,

Saw the drowning man abandoning ship,

Until it was too late.

#16

And the emptiness turns its face to us and whispers “I am not empty, I am open.”

It beckoned me to enter,

So I did,

And walked slow concentric circles,

Until there were none left.

Then I stood and listened

Wondering what it would say,

But expecting silence.

“You are not alone,” the emptiness said,

And I retraced my path,

Hoping to believe.

#17

The brown rabbit stops and sniffs the air.

It nibbles the lush, verdant grass.

The only thing moving is time.

I am a housecat trapped inside, twitching my tail.

The only thing I can do is check my email.

#18

In Praise of Adjectives

Nouns are boring,

But add the lowly adjective

And people, places, and things become

Vibrant, colorful, and interesting,

Leaping from the page like verbs.

#19

Nature is taking the scenic route through spring,

Breezing by to visit long-lost summer,

Then realizing she’s neglected winter

And completely forgotten about fall.

Snow-covered blooms stare at her, bewildered.

#20a

Time is slow and inexorable,

Yet viper-quick,

Meaningless when it strikes.

#20b

Time stopped moving in March of 2020,

Even though another number is peeled off the

Cursed calendar every day.

#21

That Same Small Town

The long blast of the train whistle stirs distant memories,

And I ride the Doppler Effect thirty years into the past,

As the engine chugs rhythmically along the tracks behind the grocery store,

Where we shopped in our pajamas at three in the morning,

Giggling and stocking up on cheese puffs and cookie dough,

And doing the Russian Cossack dance in Aisle 8.

The sound travels across the road, to campus and the dorms where I met my family.

Nine of us with little in common, yet somehow we bonded

Over Meatloaf and Don Henley

And midnight runs across the Old Quad when everything became too much.

Years go by, yet nothing has changed,

Bonds intact,

We’re back in that same small town,

A part of each of us

Unbroken

Unwavering

Timeless

Prompts:

15. Unprompted

16. It’s Tomas Tranströmer’s birthday. He was born April 15,1931 and died in 2015. To honor this amazing Swedish poet, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for literature, let’s start our poems today with a Tranströmer epigraph. They are stunning even in translation.

17. Tranströmer Form Imitation Exercise Copy the form of the four stanza poem below. Stanzas: 1. an external image in two brief sentences (following stanzas each only one short sentence) 2. A stanza/statement beginning “the only thing…” 3. an “I am” image 4. Another stanza/statement beginning “the only thing…

18. Grammar School Exercise Write a poem about grammar or that teaches a point of grammar. However, the trick is to also have it say something meaningful or funny beyond the grammar lesson. Steve Kowitt’s “The Grammar Lesson” is a villanelle for Pete’s sake. Who’s Pete?

19. Detour Prompt Allow a detour of some sort, actual or metaphoric, to be in today’s poem.

20. Let today’s poem in some way talk about Time itself and perhaps your relationship to it.

21. Time Travel Prompt The prompt is to go ahead or go back in your personal story or in some larger history. Be perhaps muddled or awestruck. What is time anyway?