Poem A Day Challenge April 30, 2019

Hurrah! It's done! Thirty poems in thirty days!

While singing last night at the drop in choir I go to, I wondered if I could possibly write a poem that expressed what singing with others is like. At home later on, I came up with this draft. 

Choir

Can anyone write a poem

About how it feels to sing?

Music's a universal code,
With no words for this thing.

Soprano, alto, soar above

Bass and baritone below,

A holy commune of vocal range

From which the sacred grows.

We the lowly warblers,

Let harmony feed our souls,

And head on home into the night,

Cerebellums healed and whole.

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here.

Poem A Day Challenge April 29, 2019

Last week I read a post about Opposite Poems by Alan J Write at Poetry Pizzazz. Referencing Paul Janeczko from 'How To Write Poetry,' Alan explained the model and provided some samples. According to Alan, "the poems are written in rhyming couplets" but can be expanded. 
I thought I would try one and then couldn't stop!


Here are a few of mine.


What’s the opposite of magic?

A boring world, dull and tragic


What’s opposite of me?

Is not you, it’s we.

United us raising a fuss,

On this beautiful round blue bus.


The opposite of spring

Are leaves that autumn brings.


The opposite of hate,

Is imagining your fate,

If you were someone other

Than your sister or your brother.


The opposite of emptiness,

Is our grandchildren’s messiness.

Without them we can survive.

But with them here, we will thrive!


The opposite of storm

Is inside where it’s warm.

Blue sky and yellow sun,

Outside play, having fun.

What's the opposite of home?

A poet who has no poem.

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here.

Poem A Day Challenge April 28, 2019

My eco anxiety is real and well founded. Yesterday we experienced record breaking blizzards at the end of April in two provinces who have elected rightwing climate change denying governments.

earth wept

in region
after region,
earth
sobs
angry tears
howls
storms
of frustration

ordinary squalls
shift into
successively
sinister

ARkstorms,
blizzards
cyclones
hurricanes
the new
normal,
category
4 and 5
expected

explosions of
air and water
flood and flush
plants, timber,
animal inhabitants
and the land itself
into malevolent
dead seas

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here.

Poem A Day Challenge April 27, 2019

Only three more poems to go!

Substitute

outside,

overcast sky

inside, a tall, square vase

of yellow tulips fills in for

the sun

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here.

Poem A Day Challenge & Poetry Friday April 26, 2019

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink. Check out her page for links to more poets sharing work today.

In 1958, when I was five years old, my parents and other relatives set out on a great adventure north. I have been writing bits and pieces about that time for a while. Over the last couple of years as I write more, I interview remaining family members for more details and stories about their experience. To motivate myself to write, I plan to post bits and pieces of their saga here every Friday. They might not be in any kind of order. I'm just hoping to get some kind of reasonable drafts out there. I hope for feedback both on the construction of the poetry, and more details from family.

This is the fourth instalment. You can read the previous posts at the links below.

Leaving
Characters
journey

Arrival

Early afternoon
they arrived at the settlement.
Found, 

nestled in a grove of pines

along the river, 
an assortment of ragged
cabins.

Not dignified enough
to be built of logs,
rough shiplap
nailed together
rose up to meet
a low peaked roof.

No insulation, 
no interior walls,
just two room shacks 
with wind whistling tunes
through cracked wood and
empty knot holes.

Filthy abodes, 
infested with
mice,
pack rats 
and other forest creatures.
Birds nested
in chimneys
and ceiling corners.

A family of skunks had
taken up in one of the cabins
and were left alone.

Dismayed but undaunted,
optimistic crews
of men, women and older children
set to work shovelling out
what would be their winter homes. 

My mother,
seven and a half months pregnant, 

scrubbed alongside them. 

A passel of children,
the oldest set to 
looking out for the youngest,
explored this new landscape.

Inside these hovels,
one small window,
covered with plastic,
welcomed sunlight into 

the kitchen eating area. 

An even smaller one,
high on the wall,
invited a sliver of light
into the sleeping space.

Out back,
a ramshackle outhouse
waited for you to do your business.
Water was hauled in buckets from the river. 

The wood cook stove in the front room
provided the only heat.

Come dark,
kerosene lamps
radiated golden
as the travellers bedded down,
camping out
that first night
in their new dwellings.

Links to my previous April poems can be found here.

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in the poem a day challenge.

Poem A Day Challenge April 25, 2019

My mother in law enjoyed dressing up in fancy clothes with matching baubles. After she died she left us with boxes of costume jewelry. Her quality pieces, and much of her better trinkets, went to her one granddaughter. Beaded necklaces in glorious colours and shapes filled numerous boxes. We gave most of them away to primary classrooms to use as they wanted. I kept one of them.

Marguerite

I wish you were here.
Ada and Everett

adore your beads:
putting them on,
taking them off,
parading around

adorned in colour.

I wish you could have met
these great grandchildren.
You would have revelled
in their antics
and love for each other.

I imagine your face, 

incandescent with joy.

I wish you could see

how your son
cavorts and carries
on with his wild beasts.
How proud you’d be
of the man he’s become.

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here.

Poem A Day Challenge April 24, 2019

Last summer as our part of the planet was burning, I began to write a collection of poems connected to climate change. I have been working on them off and on. This is one of them. 

And The People

And the people, 

egged on by their 

corporate masters 

dug more deeply,

extracted more thoroughly, 

spread more freely

the black death,

And called it good

And they integrated

it into their lives,

drove their cars, 

heated their houses, 

flew their planes,

extended their dietary horizons,

And called it good

And they transformed

the black death,

furnished their houses,

adorned their bodies,

filled supermarket shelves,

saturated landfills,

And called it good

The corporate masters 

created a new creed 

of the economy,

a modern mathematics 

for keeping score.

Earth was raped,

profits soared,

And they called it good

As the shadow

of the black death 

began to descend,

the corporate masters

plotted and schemed,

confounded truth,

proliferated lies,

gutted democracy,

And called it good

And the people, 

in thrall to their 
corporate masters,

embraced 

the black death,

dug more deeply,

extracted more thoroughly, 

spread more freely

the black death,

And called it good

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here.

Poem A Day Challenge April 23, 2019

Writing the story of my family's journey north, has set me to thinking about stories about my grandparents. Here is a picture of them with their first four children and my grandfather's mother. 

Grandma and Grandpa

Walter was a logger,
a large man
with large hands
who spent
time in camp
falling timber
with saws and axes.

Belle worked hard
alongside her parents
in the hotel they ran.

His best pal
was walking out with
her best friend.

Baseball was the passion of the day.

They came to know one another 
during outings to games.

Belle was ten years younger.
Thought he was handsome,
but she was to young for him.
Walter admired her looks 
and liked her spunk,
but he was to old for her.

When Belle was 16, 
her mother died.
Her father, 
always fond of drink,
sunk deep into despair,
and even deeper into the bottle.

Strange men visited the house,
consumed copious amounts of drink,
played poker and
roamed the premises.

Belle stuck knives 
in her bedroom door
to keep those men out,
and her virtue safe

On a trip home from camp,
Walter discovered what was going on.
Married her to get her out of there.

One year later,
Belle, not yet pregnant,
worried she was barren.

It’s a good thing she was wrong
or my mother,
the last of their seventeen children,
wouldn’t have been born,
and neither would I.

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here

Poem A Day Challenge April 22, 2019

Today is Earth Day. 

Last Saturday, while Hoyoun, Ada and I were out walking, we admired a lot full of dandelions. It was eerily silent without the buzz of bees. For the rest of our walk, we searched for them in every clump of flowers. Eventually we found one. I have been trying to come up with a poem for dandelions and the missing bees ever since. I ended up with using a dodoitsu format you can read about here. 

Spring is here. Dandelions

In golden abundance, wait,

Wondering, just like we do,

What happened to bees?

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here

Poem A Day Challenge April 21, 2019

This poem was inspired while reading My Dog is A Carrot by John Hegley. He has six poems in it about glasses that tickled my fancy. While reading them, I remembered an episode in my teen years when my sisters and I lost our glasses. I let the idea percolate for a bit before sitting down and starting writing. John Hegley's poetry is full of humour. In his honour I've tried to write a poem that might make you smile. 

A Poem For Lost Glasses

High ho! High ho! High ho! High ho!
Into the mountains we did go.

We chanced upon a clear clean lake,
and so a stop we did make.

The day was hot and so were we.
Off went our clothes, one, two, three.

From the wharf we all did dive,
leaving our glasses there behind.

Three pair sitting on the edge,
till someone knocked them off that ledge.

Down, down to the deep they went.
A lot of money the folks had spent.

A reward was offered for their find,
while we meandered nearly blind.

Those glasses never were retrieved,
leaving our parents poor and aggrieved.

We all learned forever more
to leave our glasses on the shore.

Somewhere still on that muddy bottom,
our glasses are there but not forgotten.

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here

Poem A Day Challenge April 20, 2019

A Skinny is a short poem form that consists of eleven lines. The first and eleventh lines can be any length (although shorter lines are favoured). The eleventh and last line must be repeated using the same words from the first and opening line (however, they can be rearranged.) The second, sixth, and tenth lines must be identical. All the lines in this form, except for the first and last lines, must be comprised of ONLY one word. The Skinny was created by Truth Thomas in the Tony Medina Poetry Workshop at Howard University in 2005. They are poems about social issues. 
With the recent elections of right wing political parties here in Canada, here's mine.

Politics

What do we lose when they win?
more
powerful
corporations
wanting
more
poverty
prisons
partisanship
more
What do we lose when they win?


What do we lose when they win?
less
hospitals
libraries
schools
less
diversity
planet
protection
less
What do we lose when they win?



Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here

Poem A Day Challenge & Poetry Friday April 19, 2019

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm. Make sure you read her ongoing story poems about John and his dog, Betsy, and check out her page for links to more poets sharing work today.

In 1958, when I was five years old, my parents and other relatives set out on a great adventure north. I have been writing bits and pieces about that time for a while. Over the last couple of years, and as I write more, I interview remaining family members for more details and stories about their experience. To motivate myself to write, I plan to post bits and pieces of their saga here every Friday. They might not be in any kind of order. I'm just hoping to get some kind of reasonable drafts out there. I hope for feedback both on the construction of the poetry, and more details from family.

This is the third instalment. You can read the first one here and the second one here.

journey

they set off north
abandoning
the grey green shades
of cactus,
grease wood,
sage and
darker hues of
lonesome

ponderosa pine

left behind
irrigated 

lowlands and
orchards ripe with fruit

hoodoos and
silt cliffs
saluted them
in the early morning
light of their leaving

took the ferry across
Okanagan lake
where Ogopogo
is rumoured to swim

saw terrain transform
from orchards
into ranch land

drove
through town
after town
when main street
meant something

reached the interior plateau
and headed west
through Kamloops
to Cache Creek
traversing
a desolate landscape

hills so barren,
the dried grasses
on their exposed bones
wearily waved them on

continued north again
up Highway 97
to Clinton where
they stopped,
rested,
spent the night
with family

Peggy and Maurice
welcomed them
fed them,
and sent them
on their way
the next day

onward they pressed
deep into the heart
of the Cariboo
passing through
country lush with lakes,
following the old gold rush trail
in search of a different kind
of riches

through
100 Mile House
William’s Lake
and Quesnel

mile by mile
groves of white and green
aspen attended them,
bearing witness 

open grasslands
merged into
northern pine forests

that second evening,
arriving in
Prince George
they halted
overnighted with
family again
Alma and Red,
mom’s eldest sister

had fresh baked

huckleberry pies

waiting for them

next morning they set out
northeast across the rockies
on the last
leg of their journey
into what would become
their new homes
their new lives


Links to my previous April poems can be found here.


Here is a link to blogs of other participants in the poem a day challenge.

Poem A Day Challenge April 18, 2019

This is part of collection of poems I've been working on since last summer. I'm not saying I'm finished with it. Desperate to get something out there today might be closer to the truth. 

drought

day after day

through a

carbon charged

atmosphere,

the sun god
radiates,

desiccates

the earth

plants,

her once fervent

worshipers,

whimper,

whither,

dry leaves curl into

thirst dreams:

dewdrops

rivulets of rain

cool sweet streams

and raging rivers

desperate

for damp,

roots extend,

tendrils splay out

seeking respite

seeking life

offered only

dry earth

crumbling into dust,

hope

is abandoned,

death

is embraced

arid winds

whorl

dried leaves,

brittle roots,

stems

and topsoil

into space

day after day

through a

carbon charged

atmosphere,

the sun god
radiates,

desiccates

the earth

Here is a link to blogs of other participants in this challenge. 

Links to my previous poems can be found here