It occurs to me that while NaPoWriMo is about writing poems, it wouldn’t hurt to share some of the poems I have collected in my journal and books that inspire me and lend me rhythm to move forward when I sit uninspired.

Here’s a piece of one by Rowan Ricardo Phillips, from “Over the Counties of Kings and Queens Came the Second Idea”.

After a long night
swimming
in the dry dark of a book
I heard outside my window
a sound that changed my window.

Each of the planets unseen sang
as though in the grooves
of a record I loved.
Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Mars,

A scratch where the Earth
Where the Earth should be
Where the Earth should be
and is….

Here’s my poem for the day.  This is a rif on a writing from a retreat in 2016.  I’ve used the idea several different ways – all pleasing to me.  None of them exactly the same. This time borrowing from an earlier poem’s idea and a all of it melded.

The moon refuses to cede the sky
despite the sun’s violent pink uprising.

Stars glitter here and there and
for all I know Venusian wraiths and
Martian warriors are dealing
with their own set of implausible.

In front of me sullen gulls huddle,
a rising wind whips up froth, lace
at water’s edge touching toes of
two Plovers surprised by its approach.

Once-red long- stemmed roses write
a scattered song (to be sung in tongues)
marking the morning’s high tide where
the turtle with no eyes watches.

Rain falls, mixes with salt – tears and
ocean.  The sun gives up, pouts
behind a cloud and  the moon laughs
from her comet pocked mouth.