Prompt # 69

Yesterday was a lost day. That headache grew till it blocked out the day, the ability to think or feel or write. I kept a hat on and took meds and finally hid under a sheet till it eased up late last night. The cat was delighted. He loves it when I am sick. He can sleep next to me and not be lonely. I hate days that are lost for no good reason. I did spend some time looking for bird poems last night. I am loving how this prompt writing has me reading poems again. I like my brain better after poems in the morning. Hunting the right poems takes me across a vast territory. I read many poets that are new to me, and some of my old favorites. I feel dipped in metaphor and steeped in images. Poetry reminds me of painting. I feel the same sense of a visual scene building, though one is through words the other through a paintbrush dipped in color. Writing poems is full of color for me. My brain goes that way when I'm writing a poem. It's not unlike visual journaling for me. 

 No headache this morning. The sky is lighting up and I am ready to make up for lost time, minutes, ideas and words. 

Today will be a full day and there will be art in it before the day is over; I get to make visual journals with E today. I love playing with the paint and the images and having something I can use afterward, to write in. I'm almost done with my death journal. I started it in the car on the way up North to see S and I have two more pages to fill. It's a great tool for capturing ideas, experiences and for processing grief. I feel like the last two pages are waiting to hold the rest of my grief that splashes up like little waves on the dry sand when I'm least expecting it. I'll be glad to make a new sort of journal and to have some mystery about what I will use it for. 

What does your Sunday hold? Is it a day of rest for you, or play or work? 

Breakage

BY MARY OLIVER

I go down to the edge of the sea.

How everything shines in the morning light!

The cusp of the whelk,

the broken cupboard of the clam,

the opened, blue mussels,

moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—

and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,

dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.

It's like a schoolhouse

of little words,

thousands of words.

First you figure out what each one means by itself,

the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop

       full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

Black bird, red wing

 

by Nickole Brown

So this is where the last year 

of the Mayan calendar begins—

5,000 birds falling on Beebe, 

Arkansas, a state that could smooth 

out with the sway of the plains 

but instead sputters the silence 

of the first syllable like a pothole 

that hits before you're off the 

on ramp—say it—

ar-    

           -can-saw—

ending with that blade 

of rusted teeth to chew 

through the last of what's left 

of those woods, a fast-driving 

diesel flatbed of felled trees 

and all of us in a tight spot 

between that chugging machine 

and the concrete barrier 

as we hope the straight back 

of our consonants will 

hold, even if they are quiescent 

monsters, reticent prayers, 

because we can't help it, we lean 

towards letters that do not bend, 

try our exhausted weight 

on the middle of that state, 

that silent K—the shape of a man 

trying to hold up the ceiling, 

trying not to think 

of its falling 

as the sky's.

These are the poems. Not themed to the day, just two poems that caught me- one last night and one this morning. 

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We lean towards letters that do not break...

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sputters the silence like the first syllable like a...

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The whole of Mary Oliver's poem is a prompt for me so I share it with you to view it as possibility for your own words to move from. 

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I count the lost days, finger them like prayers on a rosary, bead by bead...

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I hope this day of play or rest of work has room for you to breathe all the way in and all the way out.