Farewell

Today the Writer's Digest prompt is "Farewell." I've decided I'm not going anywhere, though; I'm going to try to keep going with daily poems for another month. I'll be away this weekend, though, so my posting might be erratic.

"Farewell" is hard. There are places too sad to go, and I can't come up with a good "good riddance" sort of "farewell" poem. I just waited until an image came into my head and then went with it.

June Before Appalachian State

The kid on the raft
stirs the river with his stick, a trick
he learned from Huck Finn
in the movies. Already his shoulders
are pinking from the sun. Already
his mother has left the pushoff point
to start the Subaru. His dad watches
as the figure, straining to look downstream,
grows smaller and older. So many
adventures to come that summer, and
so many warnings of pain. He squints
at that last sight of his son, and the hat
the kid brushed off, brusquely,
is knotted and damp in his big hands.

May You Never

Never Expect To Know the Guitar

You’ve got the knots of metal where the strings start,
the trail over the body, like a lover’s hand, to that wooden palm
at the top. You’ve got curves and abrupt angles. Holes that invite,
with barely visible words within. A broad, slightly humped back,
like an elderly swimmer’s. White look-at-me edges.
Brown places that shine when the body is moved. Discs that beg
to be turned. A perpetual faint echo
of tones and overtones.

You get all that, and it doesn’t tell you a thing
about where that voice comes from.

I didn't know there would be math

Today's Writer's Digest assignment was a sestina.

I picked some words--with thoughts about the laundromat in the Garden District of New Orleans where you can get pizza, play pool, and wash your socks.

St. Charles’ Laundromat

Years later, she would reckon it "the folly
on the trolley": the day they took the sheet
and blankets on the streetcar down St. Charles
to the bar-laundromat combo. A burr
or two had hitchhiked, but it could be hand-
picked from the blanket’s countenance. Truly,

she wished their tryst could twist so free, for truly
she recognized her hurricane-soaked folly,
her primal flush when, like a wing, his hand
fell on her shoulder, then dropped like a sheet.
"Daisy,” she'd breathed—an alias. In a burr
of Edinburgh—or Pittsburgh--he'd said, "Charles."

And there it was, that stain, that thing with Charles:
a wart she’d like to burn away. Truly
she’d wronged her Dean, looming like Raymond Burr
in Rear Window in her mind, a man sans folly,
his countenance six-hundred-thread-count-sheet
smooth. And three weeks hence, her father would hand

her off, and Raymond--Dean--would take her hand,
never again to tipple at St. Charles’
launderette, her sins washed clean. The sheet
would wear thin, and the kids would make ghosts--truly,
she didn't want kids; but thirty meant folly
should be flicked off, discarded, like the burr

blanket-caught when this fake stranger's fake burr
warmed her ear, when his faux-Romeo hand
stroked her breast. (She faked nothing there.) Folly
was to be sent packing, along with Charles--
if that was his name. You know, truly,
she’d ditch them both and start with a blank sheet

for the next act. Her head spun like the sheet
now twisted lewdly—then, razzing a burr,
it clunked still and just lay there. She’d had, truly,
enough of it all but Abita. "Hand
me the basket, Charles," she asked.... "Charles?"
Texting someone’s fiancee. The folly

on the trolley was thinking that that sheet
would ever cover Charles again. The burr
and life in hand, she rejoiced. Truly.

A quick one

I hear that a shadorma is a six-line poem with this pattern of syllables: 3/5/3/3/7/5.

Here's my first attempt.

bucket chair
aimed at the dryer
plastic-cupped
vertigo
time drags as your garments whirl
seeking perfection

Longing

Retraining

I remember, in a misty, paisley way,
when it was different, when I moved lightly through the lines
like smooth ink making my telling shapes. Now I am lame,
a cast on my arm, a brace on my spirit. I have forgotten
that I was this way before, when I started: when all was strange,
every change a challenge, every move close to a buried mine.
I look back only as far as when I was quick and beautiful.
I don’t long for the past; there is far too much of it.
I long for that moment--maybe thirteen years ago,
or twelve, or never--that was so perfect
I didn’t even know it.

Just under the wire

Writer's Digest prompt: a miscommunication or misunderstanding of some kind.

This is a first draft.

Mother Tongue

His head tilts as he watches her mouth.
Tad. Tad. It’s the sound she makes, the shape
her lips make, when there is food, or bone,
or cuddling. But she is wrinkly like
the shar-pei at the dog park, and there is no
come here, Tad, just this sagging sack
of a face. He lifts one ear, because it always
brings smiles and treats, but she isn’t even looking.
Is there another Tad? He runs to the door,
but there is no canine whiff, not even the
ringing of keys and the oily smell of the man,
her mate. His stomach feels rumbly.

In his new home, when the children say,
“His old master is dead,” he learns
another word, and he wonders
why the name for sorrow
is just a whisker’s breadth
from his own name.

An occasion

So I'm supposed to be sleeping in a cabin in the woods right now. My church had a retreat. I was there last night, but I felt ill and came home early.

"Oh, good," I thought. "I'll have time to write my poem." Time is one thing; motivation is quite another. I finally got going less than 45 minutes ago. At least I started before midnight.

Writer's Digest: write about an event, I think it said, or an occasion. This is another minefield for mawkishness, for autobiography that matters to no one besides the auto, for a Jenga-tower of cliche. And I have not done my subject justice. But the story is a lovely one.

Flower Communion

After the war, Maja Capek returned to Prague
to join her husband, Norbert. She was never again
to touch him.

Born Catholic, raised Baptist, turned Unitarian,
he had been taken to the Priesterblock of Dachau
and died among others so heretical
as to follow their consciences.

He left behind a custom. When spring is reborn
you walk out to the yard, or maybe to the market,
or perhaps to the roadside,
to find one blossom.

You take it to the sanctuary,
where the skilled hands of warm-faced ladies,
or maybe the fumbling fingers of a youth group,
arrange it with the others in a bucket.

You listen as an old story is told,
a tale of a man who found a way to unite
the motley, the ephemeral, in remembrance.

You stand in the queue until
a minister, or a child, or someone—
it doesn’t matter who—
hands you a flower.

You look at the flower.

Maybe you traded up. Maybe you feel cheated.
You quickly realize that market value,
skilled cultivation, even perfume
all cease to matter. The flower is the conduit
from hand to hand.