NaPoWriMo – Day 18

Decided to experiment this morning by combining the Poetic Asides prompt calling for a “temptation” poem, with the call for a reverse, line-by-line response to a published poem. Sounds a bit more complicated than it is, but here are the rules:

  • Find a poem in a book or magazine (ideally one you are not familiar with).

I am not sure mine really meets the “response” instruction, but I just went where my mind took me.  I suppose I’ve been influenced by news of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and other daily news about the threats to water. I’ve posted my poem first, and the source poem below.



Hands in the Well


Tempted by still, blue water

how long do we cup it in our hands

before bringing it to our greedy mouths?


Our solar system, even beyond

awash in water they say,

liquid planets.

Life could be teeming

in the smallest drop.


Here it is not a maybe.

What makes this home

a home,  welcoming water smile.


When did we start

to take it for granted?

So humdrum it even falls from the sky.

Pour in the dirt. Bottle up the clean.

It doesn’t care if we dance

in praise or thanks.


Our eyes clouded by

too much too much too much,

we’ve forgotten the word sublime.

Can’t see past the mirrored surface.


Together, our hands panning for gold

what can we get get get.


Minds clogged

like a pipe jammed with

grease and hair.


Future solutions,

gummed up in there somewhere,

if only we can rinse them free.


The poem I reverse responded to was “With My Back to the World” by Saskatchewan poet Judith Krause, from her book Homage to Happiness.


With My Back to the World

by: Judith Krause


I have no ideas of my own.

I empty my mind every day


and wait for inspiration.

Alone, my back to the world,


I seek the sublime.

Nothing in nature


can match the happiness

I find in rectangles —


so much friendlier

and welcoming than squares.


The grid is my door

to the universe.


Bands of colour wash

through me onto the canvas —


green waves of beauty.


NaPoWriMo – Day 4

The Poetic Asides prompt today asked for a “case” poem, and focused on the importance of nouns in poems, especially when trying to convey an abstract idea. I’m not sure what I wrote here actually meets either of those challenges, but maybe. I saw a photo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s briefcase, circulating online today because of the 50th anniversary of his assassination. The short poem came quick as a response. A few words that can in no way encompass all the emotion inspired by one photo.


still-open briefcase

it’s the hairbrush that gets me.
too personal. like knowing the particular
cadence of a heart when your
ear’s pressed against a bare chest.

the newspaper, read and reacted
or kept for a later, quiet moment,
bare feet up on the sofa, giving in
to the heavy pull of rest.

but the book, tucked there like a message
in a lunchbox. don’t forget. I’m thinking of you.
still. it takes strength to love, true, but it’s there.
a second after the shot or fifty years later,
when you need it most.